Getting a negative listing on sites like Ripoff Report can happen to anyone, including upstanding companies and individuals. On most of these complaint sites, users can post complaints claiming they have been ripped off by any company or person, for any reason, all while remaining completely anonymous. Even if you are able to prove that listed allegations are incorrect, most of these sites will still decline to take down posted complaints.
Seeing an unfair negative listing about you sitting on the first page of Google is like being punched in the gut. As they are posted anonymously, you have no idea from where (or whom) the complaint has come from. Is it from a customer, an employee, or maybe even a competitor? The natural instinct is to fight back and respond to these allegations directly on their forums. However, in most cases, a response is the worst thing you can do. Here is why.
By responding to the post you are increasing the amount of user-generated content and activity on the complaint. Search engines like Google then notice this increased activity and interpret it to mean the post is both relevant and important, thus listing the complaint even higher. Moreover, there is then the chance the other party will respond to your rebuttal, further increasing the complaint’s activity, and moving the ranking higher still. This back and forth can sometimes go several rounds with the end result being an entrenched ranking that’s close to impossible to get rid of.

How to remove a Ripoff Report?

Once a complaint has been posted on Ripoff Report, you will not be able to take it off the site. Not even the person who wrote the complaint, should they have a change of heart, is able to remove the listing after the fact. Some of these complaint sites will even add your inquiry to remove a listing to the complaint itself, which for reasons detailed above, is also problematic.

Okay, so if I can’t remove a Ripoff Report, what can I do?

Despite the above challenges, it is still possible to remove a Ripoff Report from the top pages of Google, Yahoo and Bing. We do this by implementing a two-step process.

Step 1: As part of an Online Reputation Management campaign, we will develop a large list of positive listings for you. Those listings come in the form of micro-sites, business profiles, article syndications and press releases, all designed to occupy the top pages on search engines and, as such, outrank the Ripoff Report. However, in almost every case, this strategy by itself is not sufficient in removing a Ripoff Report from the first page of a search engine. As such, beyond just creating these positive listings, we then also heavily promote them in order to outrank, and thus push down, the Ripoff Report.

Step 2: After, on average, eight weeks or so, most of these newly created profiles should start to appear on the top pages of search engines. A few of them, hopefully, will have already surpassed the Ripoff Report and therefore already have started the process of pushing the negative listing down. However, more work will still be necessary. As such, in order to remove the Ripoff Report from the first page of Google completely, we then start to promote listings that are just below the Ripoff Report. As these listings then start to outrank the Ripoff Report, we target a new set of positive URLs that are not yet above the Ripoff Report.  This process is then repeated until we have a completely clean first page.

More info on how to Remove Ripoff Reports

In order to improve a website’s search engine rankings, a site’s owner will need to understand the basic principles of search engine optimization, more commonly referred to as SEO. The philosophy behind improving a site’s search engine ranking is simple: the higher a website ranks on a search engine, the more visitors it will receive, the more business it will then have.

It’s not quite so easy, of course. Even after a cursory foray into the world of SEO, one will find that to improve search engine rankings takes quite a bit more than simply following a few basic steps. After all, while ranking high with search engines is a goal of almost every online businesses, and plenty of SEO tutorials already stud the online landscape, only a select few actually manage to find those elusive high search engine rankings on a consistent basis.

Companies operating these select few sites know how to both find high-traffic search terms and then how to incorporate them into their site’s page makeup. They are also able to improve search engine rankings by developing keyword-rich content and optimizing their site to make it easy for search engines to index — and thus rank. In addition, these successful websites have also developed inbound links in an effort to build site relevance and improved rankings.

However, optimizing a website, as well as developing the links necessary to improve search engine rankings, is a labor-intensive process that can needlessly interfere with the day-to-day activities of an entrepreneur or business owner, whose primary focus is on building and running a business, not figuring out the intricacies of SEO. It is close to impossible, after all, to successfully and efficiently combine both activities for any prolonged period of time — there are only 24 hours in each day. This is why working with an SEO Service company, that understands the SEO business, and who knows how to improve search engine rankings, is such a good idea. It not only saves you time -– and money -– but it also provides you the potential to considerably increase the bottom line of your business.

Interested in the kind of difference a pro in the business can make for your website? Contact us today and we will evaluate your current situation, analyze your website, and give you a free estimate and proposal on how to best improve your company’s search engine rankings.

A news article in today’s Los Angeles Times reports on a new reputation management nightmare: Unvarnished.com. I am skeptical, however. As an experienced Online Reputation Management professional, I deal with this subject a lot. And while this new site is interesting, it is a far cry from the reputation management nightmares that currently exist. That is, “review” sites like Ripoffreport.com and Scam.com.

On both aforementioned sites, users can freely and anonymously post unfounded and unreviewed negative attacks on any person or company without having to provide any evidence of wrongdoing. As such, these sites have become breeding grounds for sniper attacks from competitors, disgruntled employees and customers who would rather post a negative comment than try to resolve their issues with the company directly. Granted, quite a few of these complaints are for good reason, but with such lax rules on who can complain and for what reason, it can get very difficult to discern which complaints are real and which are not. There’s no accountability.

On Unvarnished.com, however, a user can only access the site via their Facebook account. This step helps verify who is making a complaint and, as such, bringing user accountability to the table. According to the LA Times article, you also have to be invited by a current user to participate. These two steps alone provide Unvarnished.com with much-needed integrity, making it a friend within the world of online reputation, not a nightmare.

Even if it was a nightmare though, Unvarnished.com still wouldn’t be a big threat to anyone, at least not for the foreseeable future. This is because the site does not rank! The number one online reputation management issue is when negative listings are out ranking positive listings, particularly on the first page of search engine results. At this point in time, though, Unvarnished.com isn’t outranking anyone.

Christian Neeser joins us today as a new Client Account Director. He’s been running his own web design and SEO firm, Stray Dog Productions, and is the co-founder of MP3Running.com, a unique website that sells MP3 audio downloads for runners and joggers. We’re very excited to have him!

Additional SEO Articles From Christian Neeser:

http://www.articlesnatch.com/topic/Christian+Neeser

http://www.slideshare.net/christianneeser/seo-package-example

Finding the right SEO company for your project

http://www.jigsaw.com/scid16118440/christian_neeser.xhtml

On Monday Google announced that it will no longer censor its search results in China. The announcement came after months of speculation that Google would close its China operations all together. As of Monday, Chinese visitors will will routed to a uncensored version of Google China via data centers in Hong Kong. Early reports on Monday suggested that the Chinese government already started censoring Google search results in mainland China.

We are proud to announce the development of our free keyword research tool designed to work particularly well for geo-specific keyword research. The keyword research tool retrieves monthly and daily keyword search volume on Google, suggests related keywords and combines the search data with geo-specific locations.

This is particularly useful for local businesses. For example, let’s say you are a dentist practicing in Burbank, California, and you want to find out what people search for on Google to find a dentist in your area. Here is how you would use this tool:

1. Visit our keyword research tool
.

2. In the “Locations” field, type in the various cities, towns and counties in your area. I have found Google Maps works well to identify relevant cities. Start your search with the biggest city in the area and then write down every smaller cities in a 30 mile radius. In the case of Burbank, you would probably want to start with a Google Map search for “Los Angeles.” Once you have your list, enter your entries into the “Locations” field.

3. In the “Base Keyword” field, type in every relevant keyword within your industry.

The keyword research tool will then combine these two metrics to give you daily and monthly search volume numbers for relevant, geo-specific keywords.

A note on keyword research as it relates to content development for your site:

Keyword research is a vital part of any SEO or PPC campaign as it provides direct insight into the online search behavior of your customers. With this information on hand, it becomes very easy to develop keyword-based content for your website, an important component of SEO. One strategy for making sure you’re focusing on relevant keywords when developing content for your site is to set up an Excel spreadsheet as follows:

1. First column, list your relevant keywords.

2. Second column, list Word documents of your now-developed, keyword-targeted content.

3. Third column, list the URLs on your site that already target a specific keyword.

FalkenTire.com, manufacturer of high-performance tires and wheels is now ranking in the #3 spot on Google for the highly competitive keyword ‘Tire’. This puts Falkentire.com ahead of major competitors such as Goodyear and Michelin. Besides benefiting from a substantial increase in traffic (this keyword produces 13,600,000 Google searches per month), having a first page ranking for such a prestigious keyword helps establish this company in this market and greatly helps develop brand awareness.

FalkenTire.com First Page Rankings

DoneSEO client – Closetworld.com – has reached first page rankings on Google for the keywords ‘closet‘, ‘closets‘ and ‘custom closets‘. All 3 keywords are highly competitive and yield significant Google search volume:

Keyword: Closet
Google Monthly Search Volume: 5,000,000

Keyword: Closets
Google Monthly Search Volume: 368,000

Keyword: Custom Closets
Google Monthly Search Volume: 22,200

DoneSEO’s efforts helped leading fitness trainer and author increase organic traffic by over 800%. At the beginning of the campaign, the site’s organic Google traffic hovered around 3000 organic visits per month. By optimizing the site and implementing a comprehensive link building strategy we where able to achieve over30,000 plus organic visits per month on Google ! The site currently rank on the first page for a large list of keywords including the high search volume keyword ‘Fat Loss’ . This keyword alone generates over 1 million searches on Google every month!

The longer I use Wordpress for our blog and other sites I build the more and more I love it’s flexibility and ease of use. From complicated ecommerce sites to simple 10 pages sites for non-techie clients Wordpress’s simplicity makes it easy to teach people how to use and even modify their site without being dependent on anyone.

Here are my favorite plugins that make Wordpress great!

All in One SEO Pack

Provides all your SEO abilities in one easy to use plug-in.

AJAX Comments

Lets users add comments without having to refresh the page using Web 2.0 AJAX goodness.

Askimet

This comes packaged by default with Wordpress but it’s vital you get an API key and activate this plug in, that is unless you want to help spammers sell viagra.

Dofollow

Why let Google outsource it’s quality control to you?? Add the dofollow plugin to remove the “rel=”nofollow” attribute from comments on your site.

Google XML Sitemaps

This tool is great for easily adding an XML Sitemap to your site so Google can better index you, especially if your entire site is built in Wordpress.

Sociable

Automatically adds links to the bottom of every post/page (at your discretion) that allows your users to easily submit and up-vote (hopefully) your content.

Wordpress Back Up Tool

Great tool for people who can’t handle phpMyAdmin for pulling a database backup. (back up early and often!!)

Wordpress Automatic Upgrade

This tool makes it easy to upgrade your site to the latest version of Wordpress without having to play with FTP. Just make sure you back up your site first and navigate to http://www.yoursite.com/wp-admin/update.php after running this to make sure you update your database.

Know any other cool plugins?? Please leave links in the comments.