Managing Your SERPs

Many large companies suffer from bad press. Often times these articles are incorrect or attempt to damage the market leader. If a significant publisher posts such an article, it can end up near the top of the search results for that company.

In some cases, an individual may try to abuse the system by creating a ton of articles in an attempt to push the primary corporate site down within the rankings. This tactic is very difficult to fight, when a site has an overall lack of inbound links, since search engines use links to determine quality and credibility to stay in a position, in many cases for their brand and or company name.

These attacks focus on service-based companies with a very targeted offering, and normally not toward companies with a large array of offerings. Most of these single-service companies don't have enough links to dominate in their market. A company offering several services may receive links to multiple products, which will create a concrete position and make it hard to move within the search engine rankings.

Are you a victim of this type of attack? Even if you're in the number one or two positions within the results, you may have eight additional results bashing your product offering at a completely unfair level!

My suggestion is to build alternative media types, e.g., forums, social media sites, LinkedIn profiles, and YouTube videos. Every domain has a different score and has the ability to rank along with your primary domain. If you can find compelling content that can be linked to, you can clear up the majority of the unwanted press by moving it down through the rankings.

Creating these pages isn't enough to make them rank, so it's important to consider getting other sites to write articles about these pages. Without a set of high-quality links, these pages won't rank and will be a waste of time. It's important to create compelling content that may provide a level quality that someone may want to write about.

If you create video content, it needs to be interesting enough that viewers will want to share it with their friends based on reaction. No matter what type of compelling content you decide to create, make sure it's easy to share. The majority of sharing is done with social media-based applications, such as Facebook, blogs, and or any application that may provide a level of excitement or attachment.

Forums are difficult to build, but they can be very powerful if put together well. Seeding the forum with compelling questions and/or high quality content can provide data that may attract users to either take over or contribute content that will attract other dedicated contributors.

If you sell products or services, make sure to follow up with your clients to rate their purchasing experience. This data is valuable to other users and can help you tune your site for other users. Do whatever you can to make things better and not ignore them.