Since the Internet went live some 20+ years ago, advertisers and merchants have been clamoring to rise above the noise and get the attention of their audiences. For years now, “search engine optimization” and “social media” have been the mating calls of marketing professionals. All this time, we have been waiting for the next big thing in online marketing to reveal itself. Well, that time is now, and the marketing buzzword of last week is reputation management.
To define online reputation, you might think of it as “public relations,” or PR, a type of preemptive branding. That is, when someone performs a Google search for a product or service that you provide, or if they Google your organization directly, reputation management is about controlling what they find before they find it. This is done, largely through SEO- which is a discipline all its own. But reputation management is done by positioning content and keywords to lead people to the things you want them to know about you.
Like SEO, reputation management is a full-time job best handled by marketing professionals. So, the question is, how to find a good reputation management company?
To check your online reputation, check your mylife reputation score. This is a good place to start.
Table of Contents
How To Find A Good Reputation Management Company
The good news is that reputation management and SEO are very intimately connected. That means the best SEO 2021 companies are well-positioned to provide the best reputation management services. You can bet, if you walked into an office and started talking about reputation management, only SEO professionals would know what you’re talking about. So let’s start there.
Look for SEO Management Referrals & Established Relationships
You want to work with a company that has earned a great reputation for SEO and online branding. They should have customer reviews and referrals ready to show to you with glowing statements of praise. In fact, if you get enough of these, you could call it a day and just hire them outright- because people who have received good SEO services know it- as their businesses have been flourishing since they hired their SEO pros.
Metrics
If they haven’t wowed you with their referrals but you’re still interested, you should ask to see their metrics. These are tracked records of things like online engagement, purchases, customer retention, and so on. If they can show you that they have boosted these numbers for their clients, then you need to find their dotted line and sign it.
As an aside, it’s possible for a firm to have good metrics and great reputation management chops and not have good referrals. This may be the case if they are have been in the game for some time, but are new to selling themselves as SEO or marketing pros.
SEO Process Knowledge
If you’re very lucky, you may encounter some kind of savant with no real experience who happens to be a marketing genius. In this case, you may be able to get a real bargain on your reputation management services. If they can show you that they understand the basics of SEO best practices, that is a good start.
