What should you do when the top few search engine results for your company include one or more listings that are blatantly negative? Articles that are wrong, biased, misleading or worse?

One approach is to contact your lawyer. If the person behind the negative listing has lied or defamed you or your company, you may have a case for defamation. But litigation is costly. Moreover, the culprit in question may not necessarily have defamed you in the legal sense. They may have simply published an item of ‘free speech’ that is negative, but not strictly defamatory.

Another approach is to complain to the search engines. But they’re unlikely to do anything unless you can show them that the negative listing is unlawful or the result of ‘gaming’ the search engines.

A more practical approach is to beat the negative listing at their own game: use search engine optimization (SEO) techniques to push down their listing in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

Now, as with anything to do with SEO, you can take a ‘white hat’, ‘black hat’ or ‘grey hat’ approach. A ‘black hat’ approach is to try to game the search engines; a ‘white hat’ approach is to follow the ‘rules’ i.e. the rules of relevance and authority; and a ‘grey’ hat approach is somewhere in between the two.

The problem with black and grey approaches is that while you may be able to get rid of the negative listing in the short term… in the long term you run the risk of losing your own listing altogether and damaging your reputation among the search engines.

This is rarely a risk worth taking when dealing with your company and/or brand name and main website.

On that basis, a ‘white hat’ approach is the only approach I recommend for optimizing your main site AND for defending against threats to your search engine positioning and/or reputation.

And what if you actually rank highest for your company name anyway, and are simply trying to get rid of a negative listing that sits BELOW your listing? In that case, it’s not so much a matter of optimizing your main site or page any further… but to get other favorable listings to rise above, and push out, the negative listing.

One way to do that is to build and optimize alternative websites… but that’s likely to take a long time and a lot of effort on your part. This is because, among other things, the search engines tend to be slow to rank brand new domains highly in the SERPs.

Here’s a much easier - and more effective - way suggested by Aaron Shear: build a presence on various popular social media sites.

The search engines tend to rank the popular social media sites highly. Therefore, by establishing a page on all the major social media sites - Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter and so on - you’ll have a shot at getting those pages ranked… and ranked higher than the negative listing you’re trying to get off the first few pages of results.

The key, of course, is to put some unique, compelling content on those pages, and attract in-bound links to those pages from authoritative sites. But it may not be as difficult as you think. Placing videos on YouTube, for example, is something you might be interested in doing anyway, and will likely to have many benefits (in terms of traffic and conversions) other than ousting those negative sites from the top listings.

Indeed, building a presence on the popular social media sites is a recommended traffic and SEO strategy and, by including links to your main site, can also aid in achieving or maintaining a high ranking for your main site.

It’s certainly your best bet in terms of getting rid of those negative listings that just don’t seem to go away.

Source: Aaron Shear, “Maintaining Your Company’s Image in the SERPs”, Search Engine Watch, November 4, 2008

In their pre-StomperNet days, Andy Jenkins and Brad Fallon’s main claim to search engine optimization (SEO) fame was their DVD set, “Stomping the Search Engines”.

Four years later, and the guys - along with the StomperNet faculty - are releasing “Stomping the Search Engines 2.0″, along with a new monthly print journal called “The Net Effect”.

Do NOT get your wallet out. I’m getting a review copy of both, and will be going through them with a fine tooth comb. I will then tell you what I HONESTLY think about the products in this newsletter.

If the products are truly good, I’ll let you know. If I love them I’ll include an affiliate link.

But if they’re not up to par, I’ll also be saying so. And I won’t hold back. (I’m not about to sacrifice the reputation of this newsletter for a few commission payments, that’s for sure!)

Stay tuned…

A study of 49.3 million people (90 percent from the U.S.) by online reputation company Rapleaf reveals that the majority of social network users are women.

Women dominate the main social networks - MySpace, Facebook, Bebo and Hi5 - and only lag behind men in the 18-24 year old age group on the more business/professional oriented network, LinkedIn, and on a site called Perfspot.

For example, 60 percent of Facebook members are female, while 37 percent are male and 3 percent are unspecified (I can’t imagine what it’s like to be”unspecified” but anyway…). Meanwhile, on MySpace, 57 percent are female and 43 percent are male.

Sources: Richard MacManus, “Study: Women Outnumber Men on Most Social Networks”, Read Write Web, July 29, 2008

…how to sell, for one thing. Hey, I know - I worked in a big agency, and was the “client” for a few others!

Don’t get me wrong - I loved my experience as a copywriter working for one of the big, multinational agencies.

And I certainly learned a LOT.

But I can’t help but question some of the ideas that were drummed into me as a “big agency copywriter”… which I had to rapidly unlearn when I went into business for myself… and which are just plain DANGEROUS for YOU if you’re trying to make a buck online.

As I mentioned, they didn’t teach me how to sell - i.e. to write advertising copy that actually compels someone to rip open their wallet and buy the product or service.

They didn’t teach me that… and they won’t tell you that. Instead, they’ll probably tell you that if you want to build your online business, you must:

1. Be creative
2. Build your brand.

Hmmm… that doesn’t seem too bad does it? Well, it is. Because it conveys the WRONG set of priorities.

If you sell online - i.e. you sell products and services on your website - then the no. 1 job of YOUR advertising is to generate qualified leads (or, as we say, “traffic”) to your website.

It’s not to be “creative”. And it’s not to “build you brand”.

Sure, be creative - if it generates more TRAFFIC.

And please DO build your brand - as a RESULT of developing a reputation for satisfying customers with great products and services.

But don’t make either of these the PRIORITY in your advertising… because the result will probably be a creative, entertaining ad, with a big, fat graphic of your logo… that does NOT generate enough (or any) qualified traffic to your website!

So…

If you’re considering hiring an ad agency to prepare an ad campaign to generate traffic to your website - and for some, strange, illogical reason you don’t immediately call me (!) - take heed:

If they yabber on about how:

• creative they are…
• the purpose of advertising is to build your brand…
• every ad has to have a “big idea”…
• they’ve won lots of awards,

… jump out of your chair immediately, pick up your briefcase and RUN!

And in case you’re wondering what they DID teach me that could help YOUR online marketing… be sure to read the next issue of Kikabink News!

Here are six (6) tips for helping your email messages fly through the spam filters.

1. Regularly check your blacklist status. Visit these sites for blacklist updates: http://www.dnstuff.com; http://www.barracudacentral.com/ and http://www.Senderbase.org.

2. Use a dedicated IP address for sending email, perhaps different IPs for transactional and promotional types of email.

3. Get whitelisted. Request whitelist status from your ISP, get accredited by email reputation service companies such as Habeas (http://www.habeas.com) and Goodmail (http://www.goodmailsystems.com), and ask subscribers to whitelist your email address.

4. Test confirmed optin versus single optin.

A single optin approach can lead to a much bigger list - and greater sales - but can also lead to fake submissions, people erroneously or maliciously subscribing others and, consequently, more complaints.

Confirmed optin - where subscribers must respond to an email (by clicking a link) to confirm their subscription avoids these problems to a greater degree… but can lead to a smaller list. I suspect that confirmed optin may be the safer way to go if you share an IP range (e.g. if you use an email service provider) and/or “force” people to opt-in to view your content (e.g. if you use a name squeeze page). Single optin may be better if you use a dedicated IP address for sending email and you make opting-in completely optional and available after visitors have had a chance to see what you offer. However, as always, ya gotta test!

5. Manage your list. Provide an easy way for people to unsubscribe and make sure the email management software or service you use to facilitate “unsubscribing” works! Further, clean your list daily – get rid of spam rejections and bounces.

6. Avoid spammy content. Use an application such as SpamArrest to detect content that may trigger the filters.

Source: Mitch Eisen, “Use These Tips To Get Past Spam Filters,” SIPAlert Newsletter, June 23, 2008