OrangeSoda Internet Marketing Blog

Sometimes getting a good online reputation is more important than getting a stellar rank. In other words, rather than rankings, you focus on getting search results about your company to be full of good news. Plus you want to bury negative or inflammatory search results. This takes a different approach than we’re used to.

Here’s an example: Let’s say someone was mad at you or your business and they wrote a negative blog post about it. So now whenever anyone types in your name or your business name, their post is one of the first results that come up.

Perhaps it was a disgruntled employee. Whatever it is, it’s the kind of information that you’d rather not be there because people read the post, and may decide not to do business with you.

Try typing in the term: “First Command” - they are a financial services company. Last I checked this otherwise very reputable company had an article from 2004 show up in the top 10 search results. It talks about a lawsuit that was settled. Again, this was from 2004 - four years ago! If I were them I’d rather not have that brought up again and again. It’s kind of like that uncle who won’t let you live down your embarrassing past!

On the third page there is an overview of their company (see http://www.sybase.com/detail?id=1056392). If they could get this higher up in the results they could push down the negative result.

To do this, you’ll need a diversity of links from different sources, not just from your site. Third party reviews and recommendations are more powerful than information on your web site. So here’s what we suggest – find good information on other sites and help promote it so the information rises to the top of the page. That’s right – build links to someone else’s web page! This is like one of Rand Fishkin’s headsmacking tips.

Do a search on Google or another search engine on your company name and see what comes up. Find the good results and start building links to those pages in hopes of promoting them to the top of the list.

Top 5 ways to promote Someone Else’s Content to the top of search results:

1. Build a hubpage and link to the page in your article – use the name of your company as the text of the link.
2. Build a Squidoo Lens and link to web pages with positive or objective information.
3. Link to the page on your company blog or on your web site.
4. Create a blog post with a list of 3rd party information about your products, company, or services and link to every good post you can find. Be sure to say thank you.
5. Create a social media profile on a site like Facebook and link to the positive articles.

Usually OrangeSoda focuses on getting your web site to the top of search results, but in the case of reputation management, you want to get other web pages to the top too. This can be a big shift in thinking when just starting out with a reputation management campaign. It was for me!

To read more about reputation management, read what an expert, Andy Beal has to say on the subject, including a recent MarketingSherpa interview. Also, if you have a good tip to share, please comment.

Like SEO, web analytics is not as clearcut as many would like. Unfortunately, there is no standard that all web analytic companies follow. And here’s the even worse news: without a “standard” there can never be reconciliation of web analytic data.

Why not?

Because every program defines a visitor, a bounce, and a click, differently. So when it comes to web analytics this holds true: “The trend is king when analyzing web analytics data.”

There are general guidelines that may help make sure you’re comparing data from two different site tracking information. Here are some important questions to ask.

1. Are both analytics tracking codes implemented correctly on every page of the sites?
2. Are the reporting date ranges the same?
3. Is the same page of the website being reported?
4. Is the bounce rate an isolated metric? Are there also massive differences in the number of visitors to the site, or other statistics?

And the final kicker…

How does the web analytics program define a bounce?

What is the difference in the definition of a bounce for each program? One program might define a bounce as someone leaving after 5 seconds, another 10 seconds, etc. This could result in a big difference. And there are many other variables that can create large discrepancies, in fact, some programs allow the web developer to define their own parameters of a “bounce.” Because of these reasons and the fact that this information is usually propriety, it is not possible to reconcile data from different analytic programs.

If we look at the trend then the differences don’t have to be a problem, but can be complementary. However, those that like to deal with absolutes, this is a hard pill to swallow. It certainly doesn’t make our clients happy and some threaten to cancel unless we can reconcile web stats. It’s not something we’re going to take on but we can guide our clients through to try to make sense of the information.

The bottom line?

SEO and PPC is an art form that are always chasing a moving target.

This post was written by Clint Eagar who previously worked for web analytics company Omniture. I asked him to write it after some complaints about numbers on our tracking not matching the client’s tracking system.

OrangeSoda got an honorable mention on Lee Odden’s SEO blogs of the week. Odden has a great reputation and is well-respected and recognized in the SEO community. We appreciate (almost) making the list - and will try to blog more regularly!

Google Alerts - a free way to track your business online

Any business online should know what is being said about their company, brand, and/or CEO online. This information can be valuable to alert you to both negative and positive feedback so that you can promptly respond or recognize it. One way to do this is through Google Alerts. You can set up a list of important terms to track. Google will send an email detailing where you show up online.

Use Google Alerts to:

• Monitor the impact of your marketing and see who is linking to you.
• Build goodwill. See who is writing about you then follow up through commenting, writing an email, and thanking people where appropriate.
• Track your competitors.
• Follow your industry by tracking specific terms - this gives you ideas on what to blog about, what to create whitepapers about, identify trends, get ideas for press releases, and to stay up-to-date.

I have a Google alert on “OrangeSoda” and “Orange Soda” (but I stopped because it was all about soft drinks, not a variation on our company name) and various other topics I want to track online.

How to set up a Google Alert:

1. Go to www.google.com/alerts
2. Type in the terms you want to track (your product name, your company name, your CEO’s name, etc).
3. Choose the “type” of tracking you want (just blogs, forums, etc. Comprehensive means track everywhere).
4. Select how often you want email updates: daily update, weekly update or “as-it-happens” (which might be too many if your term is popular).
5. You’ll get an email with a link and short summary of information that has appeared online for each term.

A tip from Duct Tape Marketing about Google Alerts: Track your URL by putting this in the tracking box: link:http://www.yourblogurl.com or link:http://www.yourcompanyurl.com(yourblogurl is of course the address of your blog and you can also put in your company web site URL).

You can manage your alerts - or refine them by clicking the “manage your alerts” link on the Google alerts page. It will give a list of all of your alerts which you can edit, delete, or change settings.

Be sure to put your term in quotes or it will probably be too broad and give every instance of the words, in any order. By putting quotes around terms it will just alert you when those terms come up in that exact order.

It’s amazing what you’ll learn with Google alerts - sometimes you’ll discover your employee’s have a personal blog and write about your business. You’ll find out what people really think of you or get suggestions or ideas. If you’re not getting many alerts it’s a signal you need to do more to build links to your site (like hire an SEO company to build content and links).