Beware easy solutions -- most of the time
Recently we had a revelation about people with online reputation problems. The ones who are truly innocent are not good prospects for us!
It's not because we can't help them. It's because they feel that because they are innocent that they should not have to pay to set things right.
We sympathize with those feelings. We understand totally why a good person with a good reputation would not want to shell out to move negative publicity out of the public's line of sight. Sometimes (and we've seen it happen) negative search results can be removed instantly for the cost of a phone call. But most of the time, people who don't want to pay for a solution end up continuing to be hurt -- even though they are blameless.
What makes this problem even worse is that neutralizing bad online publicity can be pricey. The process is labor intensive, involves customized work product and generally takes a long time to get results. Depending on the number of search terms you need to cover, reputation management can be expensive.
Which brings us to the point of this blog: If you have a reputation problem, talk to an expert, or even to two or three experts and then decide a course of action. The point is, do not make decisions on the basis of money alone.
There are companies that offer to solve your problem for a small monthly fee, others that say that they will get you fast results. You should know that there are ways of getting faster results. But generally speaking the fastest methods are not long lasting. Offending search results are not all the same, some like blogs or press releases are relatively short-lived, others, like newspaper articles or edu or gov domains last much longer. It's important that you consult with an expert to get a true measure of the amount of work required to restore your reputation. You don't want to hire a company that promises you low prices and fast results only to find that after the completion date, you have to either continue your efforts or those bad old results will come bobbing back to the top!
It's not because we can't help them. It's because they feel that because they are innocent that they should not have to pay to set things right.
We sympathize with those feelings. We understand totally why a good person with a good reputation would not want to shell out to move negative publicity out of the public's line of sight. Sometimes (and we've seen it happen) negative search results can be removed instantly for the cost of a phone call. But most of the time, people who don't want to pay for a solution end up continuing to be hurt -- even though they are blameless.
What makes this problem even worse is that neutralizing bad online publicity can be pricey. The process is labor intensive, involves customized work product and generally takes a long time to get results. Depending on the number of search terms you need to cover, reputation management can be expensive.
Which brings us to the point of this blog: If you have a reputation problem, talk to an expert, or even to two or three experts and then decide a course of action. The point is, do not make decisions on the basis of money alone.
There are companies that offer to solve your problem for a small monthly fee, others that say that they will get you fast results. You should know that there are ways of getting faster results. But generally speaking the fastest methods are not long lasting. Offending search results are not all the same, some like blogs or press releases are relatively short-lived, others, like newspaper articles or edu or gov domains last much longer. It's important that you consult with an expert to get a true measure of the amount of work required to restore your reputation. You don't want to hire a company that promises you low prices and fast results only to find that after the completion date, you have to either continue your efforts or those bad old results will come bobbing back to the top!
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