Hiring An Online Reputation Manager
We often have clients coming and saying that they hired some ORM firm or ORM expert. The firm charged thousands of dollars without and satisfactory results. While this is bad experience for the buyer, it is also a slap on the other good firms or experts out there. The reason why the buyer burned huge sum of money without any results is mainly because they hired a wrong agency. That said, it becomes crucial for an individual or a business to follow a process when hiring an expert.
The very reason for wrong hiring also lies in the mindset with which you hire an ORM firm. Many a times buyer approaches a firm, not asking for the strategy, instead telling that they want several websites and other online assets created and promoted. This mindset clearly dictates that the mindset is quantity not quality. Majority of providers also work the same way which leads to zero results.
Google algos are ever improving and the search giant is very good at identifying manipulative actions or webpages being created only for the sake of suppressing negative results. This is an outdated approach to online reputation management or SEO. It requires smart thinking and execution strategy to deliver tangible results. Right way to hire an online reputation management agency is to understand analyze their work. This can be done by asking questions.
Some of the important questions you should ask an ORM expert are –
- What is online reputation management?
- What are some of the ORM strategies?
- Can you permanently remove the negative information from SERPs?
- How do you start an online reputation management project?
- What will be the deliverables?
- Ask for samples of previous work and before and after results
- Ask for reporting structure and schedule
All the questions above are very important in order to understand the approach to the project and quality measures. Below are the answers that should be expected from the agency or orm expert you are interviewing –
What is online reputation management?
It is an important exercise to keep the online reputation in check. It requires continuous monitoring of SERPs for all possible brand terms and well as social media chatter about the brand and review monitoring. Content strategy plays major role on all the channels. Bad online reputation can break a established business. So it should be taken very seriously and monitored on a regular basis.
Know more about the importance of online reputation management
What are some of the ORM strategies?
This is an important question and the answer to this question is enough to move further or reject the provider. There are thousands of professionals claiming that they are expert but there are only few that really know how it works.
Online reputation management is more or less search engine optimization when it comes to SERPs. The SEO knowledge of the person should be strong enough to be able to rank new content pieces in good positions and replace the bad ones. ORM needs a much smarter approach because here the person needs to work on multiple web pages and properties at the same time.
Most of the newbies or inexperienced ORM service providers give unjustifiable project timeline without even checking the difficulty level of the project and fail in delivering. Other talk about quantity telling that they will create hundreds of pages on free domains, web 2.0, social sites and that will help replace the negative results.
The right person will give the right time frame with reasons and will come up with a content and SEO strategy to push down the negative results and at the same time building up the brand image with right content strategy.
Can you permanently remove the negative information from SERPs?
Some of them will claim that they can remove the negative information permanently but this is not always possible. There are instances where the webmaster can be reached out and requested for removal of info from website and gradually from SERPs. It depends solely on the website owner if they want to remove or not. There are no such internet laws that can force a webmaster or website owner to remove the negative info until and unless there are significant reasons for removal.
Some of the major review websites agree to remove the inappropriate information. It requires reading their content policies thoroughly and then making cases and submitting to them for review. The review portal will review and remove the unwanted info.
80% of the times it is not possible to remove the information. It can only be pushed down with strong content and SEO strategy.
How do you start an online reputation management project?
The ORM expert should pay attention to detail by asking for as much information as possible. After collecting the information they must do their own research and find out all the keywords and phrases that return negative results. This is the foundation stone for right content strategy.
What will be the deliverables?
There should be milestones set for different phases of the project. These phases can be broken into –
- Research and content strategy (Content calendar and content type for various online properties)
- Websites and social profiles, web 2.0 setup
- Link Building and Outreach strategy and execution
- Expected timelines to see the movement in search results
- Timeline of pushing negative information back to page 2, 3, 4 etc
Note – It may take 3 months, 6 months, a year or more depending on the difficulty level of the project
Previous work samples and before and after results
Previous works samples help evaluate quality of work. A good work sample can be anything containing links to content created, its rankings on targeted keywords and backlinks to the content that were created.
Before and after results generally contain ranking reports of negative information pre-start and after the project is complete.
Ask for reporting structure and schedule
The reporting structure should contain —
- Benchmark ranking report and monthly progress report
- Weekly or Bi-weekly activity reports
- Challenges and Accomplishment
There should be a maintenance agreement also post job completion. This is needed in order to keep track of business reputation and to take action when needed.
Buyer, beware of the of the so called firms and experts who indulge in grey or black hat SEO tactics to deliver fast results. Such manipulative malpractices can not only break your trust in Google’s eye but also impact your business rankings in long term.
A strategy which is in conjunction with businesses online image and search presence will help build up the reputation as well as rankings over a period of time
