With so many channels of online communication, reaching your customers have never been easier. With the freedom of speech the internet allows there also comes the opportunity for malicious rumours and false claims. If you or your company finds themselves victim of a poor online reputation there are now companies you can turn to in order to try to clean up your online profile. Many traditional search engine optimisation companies are now offering online reputation management services as well as their standard offerings to help you achieve just that.

What do reputation management companies do?

The methods and services offered by reputation management companies vary from company to company but the general goal is usually the same, to push down negative results in the search engines and promote more favourable articles and comments. Generally the type of service you get depends on your budget. For lower budget clients the most cost-effective method is usually finding and promoting existing online content by traditional SEO practices, mainly generating lots of backlinks to the favoured content hoping this will push them up in the rankings thus pushing down the negative reports. This approach generally works quite well as long as there are favourable reports you can use already indexed by the major search engines. A more specialised approach favoured by the more expensive reputation management companies is to place their own content above the negative results. This approach is generally a more pleasing method for the client but it comes at a cost. Firstly, this usually takes more time as you have to write the content, set up new sites and get them ranking from nothing. Also, if anyone has ever used a SEO company to promote their own website they will appreciate the costs involved in hiring a reputable SEO firm to do the work. Now, imaging multiplying that cost by ten to place ten different websites in the top ten positions. This is where it gets costly and this approach is generally only an option for big companies, the wealthy and PR firms. Many modern online marketing agencies will have a good rep management company they outsource their clients work to.

I need reputation management, how do I find the right company?

This is where it gets tricky. When you are researching a traditional search engine optimisation company you can generally ask for references from previous clients or examples of work they have done for clients. With reputation management the client is generally more secretive. They do not want people to know they have had to employ someone to clean up their online reputation and in most cases the reputation management company would have signed a non-disclosure agreement so they would be breaking the terms of their agreement. This is actually a good starting point for finding a reputation management company. If the company you are speaking with will not disclose details of previous work they have done it is a good sign of their integrity. The best way would be to arrange a partial payment plan with a well respected SEO company, if the SEO company has good results and references, chances are they do good reputation management work too. If you can agree a set time-scale for the job and a cost, many companies will do a deal whereby you bay a percentage upfront and the balance when the agreed target is met. This is probably the best deal for both parties. Some will even offer a no win no fee agreement but you are advised to check the small print with these types of deals.