Search Engine Reputation Management (SERM)
Search engine reputation management is the practice of optimizing a business’s brand or product reputation in online search engines.
SERM is often used to ensure that a company’s products or services are:
- Visible higher up in the search engine results
- Mentioned favorably for when search engine users discover them
So, SERM is about building a good reputation or repairing a reputation that has been damaged.
Any SERM efforts aim to foster unique, positive reputations with search engines and their users.
Think about Google’s auto-suggest results or the first-page results of a product or company search. If you start typing “is xyzCorp” and the first suggestions are “…a scam” or “overrated,” that company’s search engine reputation is poor. Likewise, if the first-page results include negative reviews or news stories, that’s a serious problem.
Online Reputation Management or SERM?
Search engine reputation management falls under the umbrella of Online Reputation Management (ORM). SERM is the subset of ORM that focuses specifically on the search results for specific:
ORM is a higher-level practice that includes search engines and all the other facets of a company’s online reputation. Businesses often use professional software or hire ORM teams as part of their digital marketing strategy.
How Search Engine Reputation Management Works
Search engine reputation management involves discovering opportunities for businesses and websites to improve their reputations on search engines. Search engine reputation is both a subjective and objective concept, including:
- Subjective analyses of how a business and its products are covered.
- Objective analyses of the positivity or negativity of online reviews.
Think With Google Consumer Insights reports that 53% of shoppers always do online research before making a purchase. Other studies demonstrate a wider range, with half of customers in one industry doing online research first and over 90% in some industries.
Basically, you need to assume that potential customers are researching your brand online. Have a quick look at what comes up when you make searches including your brand name. If a lot of negativity follows clicking “Search”, you can be certain it’s costing you customers.
This is where search engine reputation management comes in. What if there were a way to ensure more positive results come up when your brand name is searched for online?
Direct Removal or Altering of SERPs
Some SERM strategies involve using SEO strategies to directly add or remove search engine results.
For example, you can manually cleanse a negative autocomplete suggestion by Google by reporting a prediction to them. In some cases, you can also ask Google to remove something from their SERPs if it violates their policies.
These methods focus on removing online content that negatively impacts your reputation. Of course, this is not the ideal option. You should take these actions if there is content about your business that:
- Is offensive or unethical
- Constitutes defamation
- Violates the privacy of employees, clients, partners, investors, or customers
Creating & Boosting Positive Content
The more feasible and positive way to manage your business search engine reputation is creating positive content that appears high in the SERPs for relevant searches. Search engines, especially Google, reward businesses that create content that is:
- Relevant
- Useful
- Original
- Created by people with EEATs:
- Experience
- Expertise
- Authority
- Trust
There are several ways to create positive content that shows up early in relevant SERPs for your business. However, some methods are more impactful than others. Also, some overly manipulative methods are actually penalized, particularly by Google.
You can publish content under your business name and website with SEO practices to improve your search engine reputation. Some great ways to improve your search results include:
- Informative articles relevant to your industry.
- Video tutorials or demonstrations.
- Educational images and infographics.
- Guides, how-tos, and other educational content.
- Relevant and accurate information about your business.
- Authoritative opinion pieces or other news articles.
By creating content like this and ensuring it ranks high for relevant keywords, you can foster a better search engine reputation.
User-Generated Content
At the top of the list, Google looks at positive user-generated content especially favorably. Google defines user-generated content as any content that users contribute that isn’t a paid ad. For example, user-generated content can include:
- Text or video reviews
- Images
- Videos involving your products
- Profiles
- Usernames
- Online reviews
- Votes
Having user-generated content on your site or mentions of your site from users on other platforms can support a very healthy search engine reputation.
Search Engine Reputation Management Practices
To reap the best benefits from the three aspects of SERM we just discussed, you need a thorough approach. A SERM plan has a few steps that you can’t afford to miss.
Analysis
Search engines are very difficult battlegrounds where real estate doesn’t come (or stay) easy. A strong reputation must be coupled with analysis to get the top spaces in the search results.
In SERM, the first subject of analysis is SWOT:
- Strengths
- Weaknesses
- Opportunities
- Threats
The first two have simple meanings; you need to know where you stand. Specifically, you need to know what aspects of your search engine presence are helping or hindering your business. Analysis tools include reputation management, SEO marketing, and CRM tools.
Normally, SERM analysis is conducted under the umbrella of online marketing research. It’s just a specific area finding out what terms your business or mentions of it rank for, and how positive or negative those listings and mentions are.
Strategy
Next, there’s the strategy phase, which is the part where you make a plan for improving your reputation on search engines.
Cleaning and displacement
A SERM strategy includes a list of the data you need and a list of actions for displacing negativity or promoting positivity. So, let’s start with a list of the potential SERM negatives:
- Bad reviews
- Poor press coverage or hit pieces
- Negative video reviews or blog entries
- Unfavorable forum discussions
Each of the above should be listed so you can respond effectively to each instance. For example, negative reviews about one of your products could be remedied by positive reviews, articles, blogs, or marketing campaigns for that product. This approach would be called cleaning and displacement.
You can clean and then displace negative content about your brand on the search engines. Clearing and displacing is a deliberate and careful approach that will require your business to:
- Accurately target negative space on search engines
- Create positive native content that detracts from the negative content for the same keywords
- Positive review generation strategy
- Interactive online activities such as forums and discussions
- Possibly, contacting detractors with outrageously and aggressively negative content
- Active action against blatant disinformation
Playing up positives
Your analysis should also have provided your current strengths. You should know what search engine spaces are currently serving you well. You can leverage positive coverage of your brand or products with further marketing content or ads. When your SERM is going well with certain products or areas of your business, it’s sensible to drive the benefits home with:
- Better SEO efforts to make the positivity more visible
- Ads targeted at potential buyers of your most positive products
- Content that highlights your positive reviews and other testimonials
- Collaboration with other publications or influencers
- Organic social media content
- Paid social media campaigns
- A strong review response system
The grey zone: arising opportunities and threats
The opportunities and threats your analysis discovers are especially important. If your product or service offers any unique benefits whatsoever, it’s important to highlight them. But more crucially, for the SERM strategy, users should leave great reviews highlighting them!
