SEO for Reputation Management
by Jessie Stricchiola, Rand Fishkin, Stephan Spencer, Eric Enge
The Art of SEO
- The Art of SEO
- Dedication
- Foreword
- Preface
- 1. The Search Engines: Reflecting Consciousness and Connecting Commerce
- The Mission of Search Engines
- The Market Share of Search Engines
- The Human Goals of Searching
- Determining Searcher Intent: A Challenge for Both Marketers and Search Engines
- How People Search
- How Search Engines Drive Commerce on the Web
- Eye Tracking: How Users Scan Results Pages
- Click Tracking: How Users Click on Results, Natural Versus Paid
- Conclusion
- 2. Search Engine Basics
- Understanding Search Engine Results
- Algorithm-Based Ranking Systems: Crawling, Indexing, and Ranking
- Determining Searcher Intent and Delivering Relevant, Fresh Content
- Analyzing Ranking Factors
- Using Advanced Search Techniques
- Vertical Search Engines
- Country-Specific Search Engines
- Conclusion
- 3. Determining Your SEO Objectives and Defining Your Site’s Audience
- Setting SEO Goals and Objectives
- Developing an SEO Plan Prior to Site Development
- Understanding Your Audience and Finding Your Niche
- SEO for Raw Traffic
- SEO for E-Commerce Sales
- SEO for Mindshare/Branding
- SEO for Lead Generation and Direct Marketing
- SEO for Reputation Management
- SEO for Ideological Influence
- Conclusion
- 4. First Stages of SEO
- The Major Elements of Planning
- Identifying the Site Development Process and Players
- Defining Your Site’s Information Architecture
- Auditing an Existing Site to Identify SEO Problems
- Elements of an Audit
- Usability
- Accessibility/spiderability
- Search engine health check
- Keyword health checks
- Duplicate content checks
- URL check
- Title tag review
- Content review
- Meta tag review
- Sitemaps file and robots.txt file verification
- Redirect checks
- Internal linking checks
- Avoidance of unnecessary subdomains
- Geolocation
- External linking
- Page load time
- Image alt tags
- Code quality
- The Importance of Keyword Reviews
- Keyword Cannibalization
- Example: Fixing an Internal Linking Problem
- Server and Hosting Issues
- Elements of an Audit
- Identifying Current Server Statistics Software and Gaining Access
- Determining Top Competitors
- Assessing Historical Progress
- Benchmarking Current Indexing Status
- Benchmarking Current Rankings
- Benchmarking Current Traffic Sources and Volume
- Leveraging Business Assets for SEO
- Combining Business Assets and Historical Data to Conduct SEO/Website SWOT Analysis
- Conclusion
- 5. Keyword Research
- The Theory Behind Keyword Research
- Traditional Approaches: Domain Expertise, Site Content Analysis
- Keyword Research Tools
- Determining Keyword Value/Potential ROI
- Leveraging the Long Tail of Keyword Demand
- Trending, Seasonality, and Seasonal Fluctuations in Keyword Demand
- Conclusion
- 6. Developing an SEO-Friendly Website
- Making Your Site Accessible to Search Engines
- Creating an Optimal Information Architecture
- Root Domains, Subdomains, and Microsites
- Optimization of Domain Names/URLs
- Keyword Targeting
- Title Tags
- Meta Description Tags
- Heading (H1, H2, H3) Tags
- Document Text
- Image Filenames and Alt Attributes
- Boldface Text
- Avoiding Keyword Cannibalization
- Keyword Targeting in CMSs and Automatically Generated Content
- SEO Copywriting: Encouraging Effective Keyword Targeting by Content Creators
- Long Tail Keyword Targeting
- Content Optimization
- Duplicate Content Issues
- Controlling Content with Cookies and Session IDs
- Content Delivery and Search Spider Control
- Cloaking and Segmenting Content Delivery
- When to Show Different Content to Engines and Visitors
- How to Display Different Content to Search Engines Versus Visitors
- The robots.txt file
- The Rel="NoFollow” attribute
- The meta robots tag
- The canonical tag
- Blocking and cloaking by IP address range
- Blocking and cloaking by user agent
- Using iframes
- Hiding text in images
- Hiding text in Java applets
- Forcing form submission
- Using login/password protection
- Removing URLs from a search engine’s index
- Redirects
- Content Management System (CMS) Issues
- Optimizing Flash
- Best Practices for Multilanguage/Country Targeting
- Conclusion
- 7. Creating Link-Worthy Content and Link Marketing
- How Links Influence Search Engine Rankings
- Further Refining How Search Engines Judge Links
- The Psychology of Linking
- Types of Link Building
- Choosing the Right Link-Building Strategy
- More Approaches to Content-Based Link Acquisition
- Incentive-Based Link Marketing
- How Search Engines Fight Link Spam
- Social Networking for Links
- Conclusion
- 8. Optimizing for Vertical Search
- The Opportunities in Vertical Search
- Optimizing for Local Search
- Optimizing for Image Search
- Optimizing for Product Search
- Optimizing for News, Blog, and Feed Search
- Others: Mobile, Video/Multimedia Search
- Conclusion
- 9. Tracking Results and Measuring Success
- Why Measuring Success Is Essential to the SEO Process
- Measuring Search Traffic
- Tying SEO to Conversion and ROI
- Competitive and Diagnostic Search Metrics
- Search Engine and Competitive Metrics
- Site Indexing Data
- Link Building, Link Tracking, and Link-Based Metrics (Including Anchor Text Analysis)
- Rankings
- Crawl Errors
- Tracking the Blogosphere
- Tracking Your Blog(s)
- Search Engine Robot Traffic Analysis
- Web Traffic Comparison
- Temporal Link Growth Measurements
- Key Performance Indicators for Long Tail SEO
- Conclusion
- 10. Domain Changes, Post-SEO Redesigns, and Troubleshooting
- The Basics of Moving Content
- Maintaining Search Engine Visibility During and After a Site Redesign
- Maintaining Search Engine Visibility During and After Domain Name Changes
- Changing Servers
- Hidden Content
- Spam Filtering and Penalties
- Content Theft
- Changing SEO Vendors or Staff Members
- Conclusion
- 11. Honing the Craft: SEO Research and Study
- SEO Research and Analysis
- Competitive Analysis
- Using Search-Engine-Supplied SEO Tools
- The SEO Industry on the Web
- Participation in Conferences and Organizations
- Conclusion
- 12. Build an In-House SEO Team, Outsource It, or Both?
- The Dynamics and Challenges of Using In-House Talent Versus Outsourcing
- Solutions for Small Organizations
- Working with Limited Resources/Budget
- Solutions for Large Organizations
- Hiring SEO Talent
- The Case for Working with an Outside Expert
- Selecting an SEO Firm/Consultant
- Getting the Process Started
- Preparing a Request for Proposal (RFP)
- Step 1: Nominate a “point person” for the engagement
- Step 2: Define “needs” and “wants” using a decision matrix
- Step 3: Define your success metrics
- Step 4: Prepare to disclose all known influencing factors
- Step 5: Provide an estimated timeline and budget for project completion
- A sample RFP document outline
- Communicating with Candidate SEO Firms
- Making the Decision
- Mixing Outsourced SEO with In-House SEO Teams
- Building a Culture of SEO into Your Organization
- Conclusion
- 13. An Evolving Art Form: The Future of SEO
- Index
- About the Authors
- Colophon
- Copyright
Since one’s own name—whether personal or corporate—is one’s identity, establishing and maintaining the reputation associated with that identity is generally of great interest.
Imagine that you search for your brand name in a search engine and high up in the search results is a web page that is highly critical of your organization. Consider the search for Whole Foods shown in Figure 3-5.
SEO for reputation management is a process for neutralizing negative mentions of your name in the SERPs. In this type of SEO project, you would strive to occupy additional spots in the top 10 results to push the critical listing lower and hopefully off the first page. You may accomplish this using social media, major media, bloggers, your own sites and subdomains, and various other tactics.
SEO enables this process through both content creation and promotion via link building. Although reputation management is among the most challenging of SEO tasks (primarily because you are optimizing many results for a query rather than one), demand for these types of services is rising as more and more companies become aware of the issue.
Here are some factors to think about when considering SEO for reputation management:
- When to employ
If you’re trying to either protect your brand from negative results appearing on page 1 or push down already existing negative content, reputation management SEO is the only path to success.
- Keyword targeting
Chances are this is very easy—it’s your personal name, your brand name, or some common variant (and you already know what it is). You might want to use keyword research tools just to see whether there are popular variants you’re missing.
- Page and content creation/optimization
Unlike the other SEO tactics, reputation management involves optimizing pages on many different domains to demote negative listings. This involves using social media profiles, public relations, press releases, and links from networks of sites you might own or control, along with classic optimization of internal links and on-page elements. It is certainly among the most challenging of SEO practices, especially in Google, where query deserves diversity (QDD) can mean you have to work much harder to push down negatives because of how the algorithm favors diverse content.
-
No Comment