Copy Brighter

Hey!

I know it's been a little slow on the blog recently and I apologize to any loyal readers or subscribers here who were expecting fresh content.

My philosophy has always been to (try my best to) publish original, high-quality content that was useful to people... not just to echo other stuff or rant out my opinions. Creating this kind of content takes a lot of time energy.

(I've been doing all I possibly can to research social media, online reputation management and SEO, work on client projects, teach internet marketing classes, develop other domains and somehow try to squeeze the vapors of a "life" into the late night hours and cracks...).

Recently I have been profesisonally focused on social media marketing. I have also been hard at work launching and writing content for my new blog,  SocialMediaRockstar.com

It features interviews with the top social media experts sharing their tips, and also original commentary on social media marketing and culture. If you like social media, then I strongly encourage you to check out this new blog and subscribe to the RSS feed.

I will do my best to keep this blog updated from time to time... and if you have any comments or  questions - please don't hesitate to leave them in the comment form below or through the contact form here on Social Media Rockstar.

I really, really appreciate your feedback and your continued support!

Very sincecerely yours,

-Brett

Keeping track of your various social media accounts and identities can be tricky. Fortunately there is a new web application, UserNameCheck.com that will let you check where your username is registered.

While I don't recommend overloading on social media profiles as a primary online reputation management strategy, it is defintiely good to secure your personal or company name for future use and brand control purposes.

Thanks to the guys at the Capture the Conversation blog for this great tool tip!

Some online reputation repair campaigns are relatively easy. You build great pages and get links from good neighborhoods and the "bad" content slowly washes away.

Other times, it is maddeningly difficult. Seeming impossible.

Google's will find a third-rate slander page (with 1995 design and sloppy writing) and seemingly weld it to #3. You can rank content above or below it, and Google won't budge the negative listing from its place. The normal laws of SEO don't apply...

A stubborn listing that won't budge from the front page, no matter what. image: Semaforo

SEO Rand Fishkin blogged about this phenomena a few months back and asked if a "Quality Deserves Diversity" algorithm exists at Google? I have observed this phenomena firsthand, and I agree that it exists.

How Diversity Helps Search Engine Users

Diversified search results help the end user to quickly find the tone or "flavor" of content they are looking for.

Say someone is searching for "alcohol" - it would be ideal to serve up a mixed brew: the Wikipedia entry on "alcohol (solvent)," the Bacardi liquor page, and then the Mothers Against Drunk Driving "Alcohol Abuse Facts" page. Same thing with a search like "Scientology." It would benefit searchers to display the organization's official site and also a popular Scientology critic site near the top - so people can get a balanced picture, quickly.

How The Diversity Algorithm Can Destroy Reputations

If someone publishes a defamatory page and it gets included as a diversity result by Google, it can make a nearly indelible mark against your reputation.

Google's semantic analysis algorithms appear to identify when a page is negative, or "against" a certain topic or keyphrase, by using on-page text and link anchor text. Some suspected trigger words I have noticed before are things like are "anti" (as in Anti-PayPal site) and "sucks." Googlebot determines that this page is the most relevant negative page, and it pushes it up onto the front page and locks it there until another, stronger semantically negative page comes along.

If a site displays sitelinks for a negative search phrase (i.e. "PayPal sucks") - it's a sign that Google recognizes and "trusts" the site:

Negative sites with sitelinks can be among the most difficult to suppress.

In June, I had the chance to ask Google search engineers about the diversity algorithm. In their non-committal "politician" way of answering things, they alluded that there is some kind of algorithmic tendency designed to serve up a wide range of results. They are aware it can have intense negative consequences on companies and individuals, so a Googler was looking at algorithmic ways to make some defamatory information rank less prominently. They stressed that these "softening" algorithms weren't yet in use at Google, but they "might someday" be.

Until then, here are some possible ideas on how you can deal with Google's diversity algorithm:

• Think outside the box. When conventional reputation management techniques aren't gonna work, get creative. Think beyond conventional internet marketing. Think about social engineering and psychology. Don't spend money on links or waste your time fighting a impossible battle. Instead... think of ways you can buy the site, pull the plug on the post, or pull some strings to awaken a change in the webmaster's heart.
• Make your own negative page first. If you are involved in a business venture that is bound to attract controversy, be sure and register you own "...sucks.com" - and do it under an anonymous name and host it on a different IP block than your main websites. (If you host and register it with the same info, Google will know it is yours.) You can use words link "scam," "sucks" and "anti-" in a tongue-in-cheek way. That way you own the first "negative" page - and you control it.
  

This is a "fake" negative page about MLM. It is actually designed to promote MLM and generate leads.

Hardcore, Bonus Tip:

Richard Zwicky's presentation in "The Best Kept Secrets in Search" at SES San Jose has some very hardcore tactics to frame negative domains and "hijack" them straight out of the search index. We don't use these kind of techniques, and if you do, you could run into legal problems or Google problems... so explore at your own risk!

Recently, the PR firm of a very famous and lavishly wealthy public figure called me. One of his projects had gotten a lot of bad press. They asked how much it would cost to remove the negative information from Google.

I looked at the search results: A hit piece in the New York Times. A municipal judgment document from the state supreme court. A world-famous blog (PageRank 7) with a post criticizing it. Negative forum backlash. A dedicated opposition website.

I told the PR firm that his situation couldn't be cured or "erased" - not even if I charged $5,000,000 up front and I were to hire an entire dedicated team of blackbelt SEOs and PR mavens. Even then, we might only be able to move the results it a little. It didn't matter how rich this person was - this instance of online negative publicity was virtually unfixable. Not even a presidential pardon could clear the search engines. You'd have to bribe a Google quality engineer or wait for a Y3K meltdown.  Way unlikely.

"Easy" Online Reputation Management Scenarios

• Copied or Stolen Information
If someone is stealing your copyrighted work, you have some legal leverage to try and force removal. Politely explain your legal case to the Webmaster. If that fails, you can file a DCMA takedown notice with the ISP - or with the search engines. If this fails, then you may have grounds to force removal in a court of law.


• One or Two Isolated Listings
A single blemish is much more manageable than an "outbreak" of bad information.


• Low Ranking Pages
An isolated listing at #7 might be fairly easy to push off. A #1 or #2 might need heavy social media marketing and SEO campaigns.


• Information is Hosted on a Third Party Site
You may be able to remove this by appealing to a moderator or citing a terms of service.


• Verifiably False & Deliberately Defamatory Information
Here you may have some legal leverage. Laws protect publishers who are reporting facts ("This person was arrested") and stating opinions ("I think this restaurant totally sucks"), but they often do not protect people who are deliberately defaming or making untrue accusations.

"Impossible" Online Reputation Management Scenarios

In my experience, situations where "true facts" are reported by multiple news sources and government agencies are the most difficult situations to erase.

• Multiple negative search results
If there is a whole swarm of negative listings, it can be very difficult to displace all of them.


• National News Incident "Picked up" by Dozens of Sources
This is an extremely difficult situation to cure. News sites tend to be hardy and difficult to "wash out."


• Deliberate Reputation "Assassination"
If a grudge-holding, SEO-savvy individual has gone out of their way to post negative information about you on multiple websites, and then intentionally optimized the sites and and built links to the nasty pages - it can be extremely difficult to ever wipe clean. Big companies and famous individuals with hundreds-of-thousands of search results for their same are often strong enough to protect against this. Small companies and individuals with little online presence are incredibly vulnerable.


• Government and Military Injunctions, Judgments, and Records
Just because you've cleared something up with the law doesn't mean that Google forgets about you. Google loves to index government sites and will often rank pages on them very highly - for years to come.


• Privately Published, Anonymously Registered "Smear" Sites
Sometimes Google seems to "lock in" on the most authoritative negative site and display it right near the top... keeping it cemented there despite all effort to improve your image with SEO. Google appears to have a "diversity algorithm" that will serve up weak but semantically critical or negative pages so that searchers can find the type of content they are looking for. I doubt this "PayPal sucks" site will ever leave the front page:

What Can Be Done in "Impossible" Situations

Even when the damage is deep  - there are things you can do to, at least, make the situation more bearable.

1. Optimize one "explanatory" page.





When it is impossible to outrank multiple pages, you can focus your efforts into getting just one "explanatory" page into the top of the search results. Make this page stand out with special text characters in the title tag - but keep it 65 characters or less so the whole thing will display. Put a well-crafted sentence or two in the meta description tag - the two black sentences that show up below the blue headline in the search results. Keep the meta description less than 175 characters or it will get chopped-off and replaced with a "...". On this SEO-optimized page you can tell your side of the story.  Then build quality links to it - SLOWLY. If you build low quality links or you add links to a new page too fast, it can get kicked out of the search results.


This won't "make it all go away," but it will let you have your say. And ranking just one page is usually attainable.



2. Change your company name.
If your online reputation is destroyed on multiple authority sites, it can be much easier to change the name of your business -- or even your own personal name -- than it would be to completely overtake negative pages in the search engines. This is dramatic and extremely unfortunate, but sadly, true in many severe cases. The amount of labor required to "make everything go away" runs in the $100,000 - $10,000,000 range and could easily take years - if one were able to assemble a competent enough "dream team" to do it. This is the cold, hard truth that inexperienced or disreputable "online reputation management firms" don't want you to know.

Sorry I've posted lightly this summer. I have been very busy tending to clients and projects. I've also been trying to get a little bit of sunshine and fresh air on the weekends. Your feedback, questions and insights are always welcome! -Brett

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Imagine that one day, you are shocked to find your business name listed on a pornographic / adult spam page. Or someone has posted as copy of your driver's license or social security number on a website for revenge. Or what if you search for something harmless in Google Images... and find a deeply disturbing, xxxx-rated picture?

Asking Google to Remove Negative Links

Google offers a little-known service called the Webpage Removal Request Tool.

This tool allows you to request the removal of certain types of pages from its search index. Anyone with a Gmail / Google account can request that an offensive or "dead" page be removed. Google says they will personally consider all requests, and they will notify you when (and if) a page is removed.

Google tries hard not to play judge or arbitrator; they give you the burden of trying to contact the webmaster and and asking her remove the negative information, first. If the Webmaster agrees to remove the offensive information (lucky you!), you can then follow up with Google's Webpage Removal Request Tool to make sure the cache of the old version gets wiped out of Google's index.

If you are unable to contact the Webmaster or get them to cooperate in taking the bad information down, Google lists 4 kinds of web pages that they will consider hand-editing right out of their index. Pages that contain:

• Your social security or government ID number
• Your bank account or credit card number
• An image of your signature
• Your full name or the name of your business appearing on an adult content site that's spamming Google's search results.

are all eligible to be manually deleted from Google's index.

Even though those are the explicit criteria Google asks for, it wouldn't hurt to ask for the removal of any very offensive or defamatory page using this tool. Google is unlikely to give you much free tech support for your online reputation, but at the very least someone with the power to take action is likely to take a look at it.

Explore this tool and let me know what you find out about it in the comments below!

Bonus: Hardcore Reputation Management Tactic According to Todd Friesen, if you find that a defamatory or negative page goes offline for ANY reason (such as server or DNS issues) - you can request that the page be deleted as a "dead or outdated" page with the Webpage Removal Request Tool. If it stays offline long enough while the request is reviewed, it will be removed from Google's index for 6 months.

If someone has registered their own domain and set up their own blog or webpage, they enjoy broad freedom to publish almost any personal opinions or true facts - no matter how extreme or unflattering.

However, if someone is posting content on a public social media site, hosted blog, forum, or wiki - there is a good chance it falls under a formal terms of service ("TOS") or terms of use that governs what kind of content is permitted.

If you discover a negative or objectionable blog post or thread about you, you can easily make a case that it goes against (the spirit of) the site's TOS - and ask the administrators to remove it.

Why TOS' Exist

TOS exist to protect the site's owners from lawsuits, and also serve to protect the site's community from harm and disruptive behavior. When a site or blog allows anonymous comments, the owners are not liable for them. But when a site requires registration and collects personal information and e-mail addresses, as most social sites do, they have more legal liability to police the content. Therefore, the TOS serves as a contract that you must accept before signing up using the site, giving the owner explicit guidelines and rights to censor content and revoke privileges.

Find the Person With the Power to Take Action

If you are concerned about negative or defamatory information posted on a forum or community, start by creating an account on the service and contact the "room" or section moderator. Humbly and politely state why you feel the negative information violates the spirit of the TOS (drop a link or excerpt for reference), and ask if they would kindly consider editing or removing it. I've had success doing this.

If you can't get a hold of any lower-level moderators, you can always appeal to the webmasters. The TOS will usually list an e-mail address for report trouble or abuse.

Sometimes, though, these accounts either 1.) get too many e-mails or 2.) get checked very infrequently - and you won't get any response. In this case, look up the WHOIS information, follow the trail of clues, and use the phone or fax until someone takes a look and responds.

Good luck!

Amazon.com is one of the oldest, most powerful, most trusted sites on the web. The domain was first registered in 1994 and it has 300 million+ inbound links - Google & Yahoo! generally seem to love it. Amazon also gives you multiple options to create user-generated profile and content pages; therefore, it's a great site to participate on you are interested in online reputation management.

Beware: Amazon has grown into a very complex "jungle" of a site and it can be usability nightmare at first. Hopefully this guide will help makes things a little easier for you.

A Real Identity is Required

Amazon takes precautions to know the real identity of the person content or reviews.

They have a "real name" feature where you can select from list of names and initials for your profiles and reviews, based on your credit card info. This protects people from anonymous defamation and impersonation. They also have an option for a "pen name" where you can post reviews and lists under a pseudonym in public (that is clearly marked as a "pen name"), but it is privately linked to your credit card so the admins know who you are. Note: if you enter in a pen name, your profiles and lists will automatically be switched over to it.

Working with your Amazon Profile

Click on the link that says "Your_Username's Amazon" in the upper left of the screen, and then click on the link in the upper right of the screen that says "Your Profile."

Your profile page has your name in the title tag and also in a nice, big H1 header - but URL customization is not available. You can upload a picture, add a followed link to any website of your choice, and also add content about yourself. Mention your full name once or twice in the text and it will be fairly well optimized or you name. The more reviews and lists you create - and the more friends you add - the more internal links you will create pointing back to your profile and the higher it will rank in the search results.

Creating a Listmania List

Amazon allows you to make a pages with lists of the products you like and recommend.

Go to your profile page, find the red "Listmania Lists" subheader, and click on "Create a Listmania List." It will ask you to name your list and you should put your name at the beginning of the list name - because it will show up in the URL and in the title tag of the list. Then add your name to the description of the list ("Hi, My name is Brett Borders and these are my favorite books...") to make the page better optimized. Then add some tags to make your list more findable. Finally, you can recommend any products in the Amazon catalog by clicking on the yellow "Add A Product" button and writing you reviews. When you're done, click the "Publish List" button at the bottom. You'll end up with a nice, optimized page on a powerful domain:

Working with "Key Phrase" Pages

Another page that can rank in the search engines are the "Key Phrase" pages.

These pages list all the books (out of those that are scanned and searchable online) that contain a given name or phrase. To see if there is a key phrase page for your name or brand, go to http:// www.amazon.com/phrase/ and then append your name or phrase to the end of it, separate by hyphens (ex. http://www.amazon.com/phrase/bob-smith/).

These key phrases pages can rank well with some external links pointing to them - but they can't accrue internal links as easily as your Listmania pages or profile page can.

As a general rule, if you don't participate much or add external links, the page is likely to get thrown into the supplemental index and not be visible in the search results.

A Few Useful Help Pages

Your Profile Help Page - http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=16465241

About Listmania Lists - http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?ie=UTF8&nodeId=14279651&qid=1212272973&sr=1-1

About Key Phrase Pages - http://www.amazon.com/gp/phrase/help/help.html/ref=sib_pdp_hlp

Participation Guidelines - http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=14279631

----

When negative or unflattering information about you or your company appears in the search engines, it's easy to panic. But before you rush to make a slew of new pages and profiles, you should be aware there is a more effective and natural-looking strategy: linking to existing pages about other people with the exact same name.

There are more people than names in the world. There's a few different guys with my not-so-common name. Same thing with company names... here are two company names I just made up: Matrix Marketing and Paradigm Plumbing. Google says there are multiple firms operating under these names

You can often find strong pages owned by people or companies with the same name as yours – and then build links to those pages to help camouflage the undesired search result. This usually works fast because the existing pages are old and already somewhat "trusted" by the search engines - and it looks extremely natural to human searchers, also.

The ideal page to "build up" has many of the following characteristics:

• It's on a strong trusted domain (.edu / .gov is great)
• Your name is in the title tag.
• Your name is used in an HTML headline.
• Your name is used several times in the body copy of the page.
• The page has some toolbar PageRank.
• The page ranks in the top 100 for your name.
• The page has few or no links pointing to it.

Why do you want a page with few links pointing to it? Because, most often, these "neglected" pages will rise in rank quickly with just a little bit of links.

How do you check if the page has any links pointing to it? Just go to Yahoo and type in "link:www.example.com/example.html" and see what it shows. Better yet, install the Firefox plugins SEOpen or SEO for Firefox.

Then you can use advanced Google queries to help you find pages that meet the rest of the criteria:

Find all pages with your full name listed anywhere:

"Bob Smith"

Find pages with your full name listed in the title tag:

allintitle: Bob Smith

Find pages on CNN.com with your full name listed anywhere:

"Bob Smith" site:cnn.com

Find pages on .EDU sites with your full name listed anywhere:

"Bob Smith" site:.edu

Find pages on .GOV sites with your full name listed anywhere:

"Bob Smith" site:.gov

Find pages on .MIL sites with your full name listed anywhere:

"Bob Smith" site:.mil

Find pages with your name in the title tag, on .EDU sites:

allintitle: Bob Smith site:.edu

Find a strong page that meets most of the criteria and make sure it looks like a permanent page that is unlikely to change. Don't choose a college senior quarterback's page that will get deleted in 6 months, or a wiki that can be edited by anyone - because the downside of this technique is that you don't have any control over the page.

Then, build a couple of good links to it –– slowly -- using variations of your name as the anchor text (Bob Smith, Mr. Smith, Bob).

If you choose well and link smartly, it can outrank negative information quickly and it will look more authentic than an obvious overload of Naymz and Rollyo profiles.

You've probably heard a workplace revenge story before... where an ex-employee pulls a stunt to inflict revenge on a former employer.

An interesting online reputation management issue is company "shadow" sites, where current employees of a company create an anonymous website to communicate on. They offer each other counsel and moral support, and they also try to expose their grievances against the company.

I recently came across a revenge site published by employees of a financial services firm. On the anonymous forum, they describe the operation as glorified telemarketing scam. They also accuse the management of using dramatic psychological terror tactics to keep them productive and afraid. (Sorry, but I can't link to revenge sites.)

It gets nasty: it spells out details of managerial sexual affairs and drug habits, as well as internal company business processes.

An IRS employee found the site and posted, saying she had sneaking suspicious about this company, and that the site confirmed what she thought.

The lesson: it's all transparent now. We have to be on our best behavior because anyone can leave "feedback" for the world to see. Lawsuits, coverups, payoffs, intimidation, and "no one will ever find out" thinking is quickly becoming a thing of the past, thanks to the open nature of the internet.

The scary thing about this new openness is there is no fact-checking or human editorial control, just cold algorithmic ranking and primitive semantic analysis done search engine computers.

Reputation Management Song

So, here's a little online reputation management song I just wrote. It's sung to the tune of "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town"

You better not scam,
You better not lie,
You better not steal - I'm telling you why:
Goo-gle bot is watchin' your brand.

He's making an index,
keeping it diverse
Gonna tell the world who "sucks" (or even worse)...
Goo-gle bot's defining, your brand!

He knows if there's been cheating,
He knows if you're a fake,
It's all out in the open now...
So be good for reputation's sake!

Soooo... You better not shaft,
You better not spy,
You better not fleece - I'm telling you why:
Goo-gle bot will tell the whole town!
Goo-gle bot will tell the whole town!

Online reputation management services require a very personalized touch.

A good provider must have intelligence, intuition, patience, stealth, and strong communications skills … plus successful, non-theoretical experience with public relations, SEO and social media marketing campaigns.

image: jcardnial18

It’s a complex, emerging skill set which relatively few people or agencies can smoothly deliver, yet. So before you trust someone else to manage your online reputation, you should be aware of some of the risks and pitfalls that could happen:

• They will hire unskilled, overseas workers to post random content and gibberish under your name. This won’t do anything except waste your money and make you look like a grade school dropout. Unfortunately, quite a few of the firms you’ll find in searches for “reputation management” specialize in this type of service.
• They’ll build spammy links that will cause your sites to get mistrusted by the search engines. Some providers don’t understand the importance of link building - they just make lots of profiles and hope for the best. Others will try to get you some links, but they’ll get quick, spammy links that will ultimately harm your website and profiles’ reputation in the search engines. The best firms have their own portfolio of high-quality web properties to get links from, and they work with smart, English (or native language) speaking SEOs to build the right links and keep it authentic.
• They’ll create hokey, praise-filled content - making it obvious you are trying to “cover up” something. I call this the “bad plastic surgery” effect. Some firms will awkwardly deny everything on your behalf, write cornball press releases, or commit other not-so-transparent blunders that will make people more curious and fixated on any negative information.
• They can monitor your reputation, but can’t really deliver effective solutions to any problems that arise. Monitoring your reputation is important. And responding to a negative comment or forum post is usually a good idea, but it’s not as effective as actually removing the post or thread. Skilled reputation managers can use SEO and social media marketing to make negative information less visible in the search engines - so people are less likely to even see it in the first place.
• They’ll upset your defamer, or unwittingly “tip them off” them to what you’re doing. If someone contacts people on your behalf in the wrong tone, or if it becomes obvious that you are awkwardly trying to “manage your reputation” (suppress their content) - it can get very ugly. Defamers can get even more vengeful.
• They’ll make profiles or content for you that will be discovered and publicized as a fake. If someone writes content for you that is discovered or called out as a forgery, it can make your online reputation exponentially worse. Wal-Mart was eaten alive for this, so was Jet Blue. Social media audiences are incredibly discerning as to what is “authentic” or not, and they love to dish out harsh vigilante justice on anything that smells fishy. You don’t want to be the target of this!
• They will provide you with few details of what they are doing. Be aware of operations that promise big results, but have no information listed on their own websites or blogs about what they actually do. “Proprietary” or “secret” processes oftentimes mean “questionable” or “non-existent.” Yes, there are things that should be confidential — like previous clients’ campaigns or identities — but you have every right to know what someone is going to do if you hire them.
• They will create sites or accounts for you and then hold them “hostage.” Some firms will register sites for you (like YourName.com) and create blogs and profiles, but then refuse give you access to them. They require you to keep paying their monthly retainer indefinitely or they threaten to pull the plug on any progress they have made. This is extortion. You should insist on registering all websites in your own name, you should demand a list with the logins and passwords to all accounts and profiles a firm creates, and all work they do should be “yours to keep” — forever — even after your contract with them is finished.
• They will take your money and do nothing. There are some greedy, slick-talking SEO and reputation management firms who will take anyone who calls - regardless if they have the time or expertise to deliver for you. In contrast, the best SEOs and reputation managers are in-demand and are less likely to be affordable or to have available time for your case. Therefore, it can be much easier to get signed up with a huckster than to hire a solid provider.

image : jarkel

Beware of online reputation management services for cheap or promises to repair your online reputation quickly. It may be very tempting to believe someone has a “magic bullet” that will quickly make your troubles go away overnight, but it’s unlikely to be true.

Doing online reputation management yourself will often yield the most authentic results, but it is a complex and time-intensive process that many people need help and guidance with. Just be aware of the possible risks, do your research, and pick a firm you’d feel comfortable to have representing your personality and brand in all types of online situations.