Best way to defeat negative press?

[MikeQ-BACC]

Hi there, One big reason my non profit hired me to tackle SEO for our site is that there is currently a lot of negative stuff out there right now about us. There was a lot of stuff that went down in the past, and currently Googling different names of our org's members, or typing in variations of our name, brings up several sites that are negative and inflammatory. They have been up since the early 2000's, so they have that advantage over us. It's interesting because I'm sort of in a position where I'm doing SEO for the sake of doing SEO, which is sort of cool because I get to learn a lot. We don't really have conversion KPIs or anything, but I'm sure that will come in time. I suppose my question is, what is the best way to tackle this? I mean I know that overall doing great SEO will help, but I'm wondering if there's a specific practice I should be focusing on to defeat a ton of negative stuff that has age over us. I'm also concerned that even if we get our site listed #1 for various searches, there will still be the negative stuff on page 1, just lower ranked. Any thoughts? Thanks for your time!

[MikeQ-BACC]

Thanks Ryan, this is really helpful. We have our Social properties in place, we just need to come up with a comprehensive plan to keep it updated. Any recommendations on readings on how to get a plan together for social media? That is probably another Q/A...right now our struggle is getting daily posts, and finding the right people to follow.

I am doubting that we will be able to afford a consultant. I took a pretty hefty paycut to take this position...it's a non-profit that I feel passionate about, which is the only reason they could afford me. Not that I'm SEO expert, by any means...I'll actually be doing a lot of different things for the org on the administrative side.

Out of curiosity, any idea on a price range I can expect to see for an SEO consult?

[GCSMasone]

I think Ryan hit it on the head. One place commonly forgot about but important is the Better Business Bureau. It is a paid listing that does provide tremendous benefit in ranking for Brand and giving clients comfort for your service.

Local listing sites would also be great places to look to make sure to take ownership of your property.

[CraigAddyman]

Hey Mike

As already suggested set up lots of social sites and spend some time on them i.e don't just set up a twitter account actually use it and it will rank very highly.

Another great way is to find all the good stuff out there on the web and link to it!

Doing this will help give it a push in the serps hopefully pushing up the good and clearing the bad.

Hope that helps

[RikkiD22]

I have never really looked at doing this sort of stuff in the past but I always assumed the key would be to get lots of positive external content which would lower the negative external content.

I guess the place to start is social networks, press release sites, review sites, Google Places etc..

[USHoleInOne]

Is the brand name affected? Id make sure that you rank #1 for your brand name, because Google is giving those site large site links that almost go down to the fold before the #2 listing.

Also, I would grab as many social media profiles that you can, so if a user searches for you then your twitter, facebook, etc... accounts should show up on that first SERP page.

I'm sure there are a lot of different ways of getting rid of bad press(you'll find a ton of ideas here), and hopefully your company doesn't assume you'll create good press for them, that's up to them to change the ways they currently do business for the future.

[RyanKent]

Mike,

Clearing search engine results from a single well-ranking negative article requires a combination of a tremendous amount of focus, effort and money. My recommendation would be to hire an experienced SEO to consult with on this issue. Have the SEO create a plan, which you will then execute.

On a high level, by far the most effective means of resolving the issue is contacting the sites who are providing the negative pages and make every effort to work things out. If that is not possible, then your next steps are to create web pages which will outrank the negative pages.

As a non-profit you should have a twitter account, facebook page, LinkedIn and other social pages. Each of these pages, if properly promoted, have the ability to outrank the negative publicity. That would be a good start. The good thing is all of your efforts will have value for your organization outside of simply cleaning up the current mess.