What matters to you is that “keywords” simply represent how you are referred to, represented, or identified online. So if you are an individual, some “keywords” that matter to you first and foremost are phrases involving your full name. If you are a company, some “keywords” that matter to you would be phrases and comments involving your business name.
If there is information out there online that is relevant to you as an individual or information relevant to your business, Google will likely be the first to know about it and place it in their search engine index. The search engine index contains the list of website results people see when they type in your name or the name of your business into Google. Something that can often be very unfortunate for individuals and companies is that the Google algorithm seems to especially love highly-controversial topics and what can simply be described as “drama”. From a search engine’s perspective, “controversy” indicates natural human user engagement and social significance on some level. Google’s engineers that work on their search engine strive to design an algorithm that identifies and rewards natural human behavior within a web environment.
The Internet has a memory, and anything of note that happens to anyone is bound to find its way onto sites where everyone can see who you are and what you’ve been doing with yourself. All of it: the good, the bad and especially the really ugly.
It could be incidents that at the time, seemed funny or cool, but upon later examination turn out to a source of embarrassment. Companies have similar issues, where their online presence can be marred by misdeeds or other issues, or could even be “hijacked” by outsiders or competitors with different agendas.
The Reputation Management Process
The typical reputation management story goes something like this:
- The client – an individual or a company – has a problem with negative search engine listings and social media content
- The client engages a reputation management firm to address the problem
- The firm posts a series of positive content about the client is placed on the Internet.
- This new, positive, content, if delivered properly, begins to push down the negative content off the top pages of search engine results
- Eventually, the negative listings no longer show up on the first page of search results, which represents a much better situation for the client.
Based on the case studies displayed by Reputation Manager, the positive content is delivered through the use of press releases that emphasize the aspects the client would rather see on the Internet, as well as the creation of new websites with the client’s information prominently displayed, even within the URL.