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Yesterday I published a post on the Search Engine People site titled 50+ Sites to Help You Bury Negative Posts About You or Your Company!.

While the tactics mentioned may be enough to push some negative online mentions of you or your business to the second page of the search results or lower, in other cases they will not. The question then becomes; what else can you do when the initial tactics themselves aren’t enough, and you’ve got a negative piece about you ranking in the search results for an important phrase. Burying your head in the sand and hoping it goes away isn’t really a viable option. The answer … LOTS can be done!

Lets start with our goals … they’re progressive.

Progressive Goals:
Goal #1: First … bump the listing below the fold asap
then
Goal #2: Bump the listing off the first page of the search results for the given term(s)

With goals in hand, we can now consider tactics.

Tactics:
To Achieve Goal #1:

a. select the strongest 3-5 of those 50+ sites, where strong is a subjective assessment based on many factors. My personal assessment would be:

1. Digg
2. Twitter
3. Stumbleupon
4. MyBlogLog
5. Linkedin

b. establish a profile on each, where the profile name is the term/phrase the negative piece ranks for
c. get lots of friends on each of those sites … the more the better. It works best if you take an active role and participate. Each friend will result in an internal link back to your profile on that site, making it stronger.
d. within each site, you can see which profiles are the strongest in the offending engines’ eyes … the search engines themselves with rank them in order of importance given a simple search query (eg. site:twitter.com). Try to secure links from the strongest profiles first … they pass the most value.
e. join groups where possible too … often these will pass link power to your profile as well.
f. possibly create a social profiles menu on your site(s), and link to each of these profiles.

To Achieve Goal #2:

a. determine how far down you actually wish to push the piece. Beyond the first page will take a great deal of time and energy.
b. assuming you’ve already bumped the offending post below the fold, you need to select the number of sites you will need to use from the 50 + listed in the 50+ Sites to Help You Bury Negative Posts About You or Your Company! article.
c. follow the steps outlined above for each
d. within each (where possible) include links to all your other profiles on the other sites

Following these steps should be enough to push most negative mentions to the second page. If not, or if you don’t have the time and energy, do engage the services of a professional with experience in the space. Aside from the obvious value … its not a bad idea to take out profiles under your name anyway, just as a pre-emptive measure.

Please note … these tactics are by no means comprehensive or advanced. They’re just a relatively quick and efficient means for burying negative online mentions. Much more advanced tactics exist, which I will not delve into here.

Other great reference posts about reputation management include:
Glen Allsopp - What Is Online Reputation Management
Andy Beal - Free Online Reputation Management Beginner’s Guide
Todd Malicoat - Reputation Management Emancipation PRoclamation - 10 Ways to Own Yourself Online
Lee Odden - Basics of Online Reputation Management
Marty Weintraub - 9 Essential Tactics for Reputation Management in Social Media
Andy Beal - Buzz Monitoring: 26 Free Buzz Tracking Tools
David Wallace - Using Social Media to Help Manage Online Reputation

First of all, a tip of the cap to Drew Kerr over at Four Corners Communications for emailing me about a new post by Mark Glaser on the MediaShift weblog at PBS, which is entitled, “The Social Press Release: Multimedia, Two-Way, Direct to the Public.”

Mark interviews Laura Sturaitis, senior vice president of media services & product strategy for Business Wire, Andy Beal, a marketing consultant who writes the Marketing Pilgrim blog, and others about the evolution of press releases.

Mark also includes links to a number of articles on the topic, including: Is the Social Media Press Release a Meatball Sundae? and The 100th Birthday of the Press Release at Search Engine Watch at Search Engine Watch.

Mark’s post is a fair portrait of the social press release — warts and all.

Last week, Andy Beal released an online reputation management tool called Trackur. It was created for “individuals and companies concerned that they may be the subject of an online conversation, but don’t have the time or knowledge needed to set up their own online monitoring tools.”

It’s also aimed at PR firms that want to add online reputation monitoring to their existing “clipping” services.” Users can be up and running with Trackur in just 5 minutes, which Beal says “removes the hassle out of maintaining dozens of manual reputation searches.”

At first glance, Trackur appears to be a simple RSS aggregator of social media search queries. Indeed, a social media-savvy individual could likely replicate what Trackur does with a bit of time and effort. But not every business has the knowledge, or the desire, to know what they should be tracking. Trackur makes good business sense for those types of users, Beal says.

“We take the hard work out of monitoring social media. We monitor news, blog posts, images, videos – even Twitter! Users can set up multiple searches, use sophisticated filtering to remove items that are not relevant to them, bookmark items, share items, sort items, then subscribe by email or RSS – or just use our beautiful AJAX interface,” Beal says.

All of this sophistication comes at a price. Trackur offers plans from $88-$388 a month, or less than the cost of a venti latte at Starbucks a day. But for small businesses, Trackur is essentially reputation insurance. “A smear against the reputation of a small business can be more detrimental than one against a Fortune 500 firm. Small businesses live and die by referrals and word of mouth. Just a single blog post can hurt the business of a restaurant, attorney, or flower shop,“ says Beal.

Technology alone cannot manage a reputation, so a Google support group and consulting services are in place for those who need help acting on their results. Trackur offers a 14 day free trial of its Standard version so users can experiment with the tool before shelling out the monthly fee.

In the coming weeks, Beal says to expect new features such as trending reports to be rolled out with the tool.

Search Engine Strategies London has wrapped up Day Two and the 2,000 attendees have adjourned until this morning. Meanwhile, the bloggers, videographers and photographers covering SES London have posted another batch of blog posts, YouTube videos and Flickr photos. Here are the ones that I found this morning/evening (depending on the time zone you’re in):

SES London 2008: Day 2 Roundup Feb. 20, 2008. This YouTube video includes just some of my interviews with speakers at Search Engine Strategies London yesterday. (More to come over the next few days and weeks.) Andy Beal, Consultant, Blogger & Author, Marketing Pilgrim LLC, gives positive reviews (however ambivalent his accent) of his own sessions and those he sat in on for their direct applicability to increasing revenue and extensive use of case studies. Piers Stobbs, VP of Comscore Networks, previews his big-picture presentations on user trends in search with implications for search marketing, such as increases in frequency and familiarity/capability of individual searchers. Jim Sterne, Chairman of the Web Analytics Association, evangelizes on behalf of website testing, and breaks down in brief the web analytics players between free and paid packages and their various advantages in increasing ROI. And Jon Myers, Head of Search at MediaVest, provides some down-to-earth comments on dealing with click fraud.

Video: Interview with Adam Lasnik of Google by Lee Odden, who was able to catch up with the Google Search Evangelist to do a short (10 min) video on several topics important to web masters looking for better results on Google.

SES London 2008. More than 60 photos on Flickr provide an overview of the speakers, attendees and exhibitors at the Business Design Centre in Islington.

SES London Day Two Photos by Lee Odden. Additional pictures from Search Engine Strategies London capture the highlights of the event.

SES London 2008 - A Few Pictures by Mel Carson. Even more photos from the event.

SES London 08: The Changing World of Search, Keynote Roundtable by Li Evans, who covers the video from Nick Carr and panel discussion of Microsoft’s unsolicited bid for Yahoo.

SES London 08: News Search Optimisation by Li Evans, who covers the News Search SEO session.

SES London 08: Video & Podcast SEO by Li Evans, who covers the Video & Podcast SEO session.

SES London 2008 - Competitive Research by Simon Heseltine, who covers the Competitive Research session.

Ralph Wilson’s Introduction to Search Marketing at SES London by Amanda Watlington, who covers the Introduction to Search Marketing session.

Search Engine Strategies - London - Video & Podcast SEO by Mal Watlington, who also covers the Video & Podcast SEO session.

Nofollow, What a Load of Crap! by David Fairhurst, who covers the Organic Listings Forum.

SES Update #1 by Rick Bosch, who provides half a dozen observations from the event.

SES Update #2 by Rick Bosch, who covers the Search Engine Friendly Design session.

Collapsed Lungs & Micro-hoo: SES London Day 2, Part 1 by ciaran, who covers the keynote, News Search SEO session, and Search Term Research and Targeting session.

SES Audience: Pro-Merger by Andrew Goodman, who polled the audience: “From your standpoint as a marketer using these ad platforms: would you prefer that Yahoo remain an independent company, or that Microsoft and Yahoo merge to form a single #2 vendor in the space?”

Pilgrim’s Picks for February 20 - London Edition by Andy Beal, who links to the coverage of Search Engine Strategies London by Li Evans.

Off to London to Tempt Scottie and Simon by Jennifer Laycock, who is hopping a flight to London.

SES London Day Two Recap by Barry Schwartz, who provides a roundup of coverage.

What a Blackhat SEO Looks Like by Barry Schwartz, who comments on one of the photos from the show by Lee Odden.

SES London and SES New York by Jason, who will be going to the post-con party organized by LondonSEO.

Search Engine Strategy à Londres by Estelle Schomann, who provides a roundup of the coverage in French.

På vej til SES og SMX by Mikkel deMib Svendsen, who writes something in Danish that I’m sure is insightful, if I could read Danish.

SEO Headlines by Lisa Barone, who says she is being “ranty” today because she can’t be in London for SES.

When Search Engine Strategies London gets underway on Tuesday, Feb. 19, there will be more than a dozen chieftans of the SEM and SEO blogging community gathered at the Business Design Centre in Islington.

(I’d compare what will take place next week to a “gathering of the clans,” except it involves a big bunch of SEM bloggers, not a large group of related people wearing kilts. Plus, it’s taking place in England, not in Scotland. But, there may be some drinking of Scotch, so I think my analogy is not entirely off base.)

I’ve already mentioned a number of blog posts about SES London, including:
– “Fredrick Marckini iProspect Exclusive SEO Interview with Dan Horton;”
– Christine Churchill’s “A Chat with Analytics Guru Jim Sterne;”
– Simon Heseltine’s “SES London 2008 Interview - Piers Stobbs;”
– Massimo Burgio’s “Pre-SES London interviews: Piers Stobbs, comScore;”
– Lee Odden’s “SES London: News & Blog SEO, Reputation Management;” and
– Lisa Barone’s “Gearing up for SES London!.”

(Lisa will be missing the show, but the other prominent search engine marketing industry bloggers will be there.)

But wait! There’s more!

After watching a similar but different gathering of the clans on NESN, the New England Sports Network, this morning — which broadcast the first workout of Red Sox pitchers and catchers during spring training live from Fort Myers — I used Google Blog Search to discover more than a dozen other posts about Search Engine Strategies London.

This includes:

– SES London 2008 - 10 Reasons To Attend. Mel Carson was doing quite a bit of work this weekend to clear the decks so he can immerse himself in all the sessions, all the talking, and he says that he might be found with a beer in his hand (instead of a Scotch) on some, if not all, of the evenings.

– Andy Beal Speaking at SES London Feb 19-21. You’d think that being a British ex-pat, Andy Beal would have had many opportunities to speak at SES London in the past. Well, next week will actually be his first time speaking at the London event — joining his good friend Mike Grehan.

– SES London 2008. Pam Hoffman writes, “If you live and breathe search, or just want to know more about it, then Search Engine Strategies is for you. SES is a great show for anyone who wants to hear experts share their knowledge, find out about the latest developments and future technologies, and hone their search expertise.”

– Connectpoint to attend SES London 2008. Both Peter Young, Head of Online Marketing for Connectpoint, and Will Graham, the firm’s Online Marketing Manager, will be attending Search Engine Strategies London. Pater says, “It is the first time we at Connectpoint will be attending one of the UK SEO showcase events, and definitely not the last.”

– SES London 2008 Interview - Jon Myers. Simon Heseltine also interviewed Jon Myers of Mediavest, a Manchester, England based firm. Jon is actually involved with 5 different sessions at this conference, but this interview deals directly with the Auditing Paid Listings & Click Fraud Issues session on Tuesday Feb 19th at 11am.

– Reminder: Microsoft adCenter Team at SES London. Mel Carson also has another post that points out that quite a few of the members of the Microsoft adCenter Team are speaking at sessions throughout the conference.

– Meals for the Day - 2/15/08. Okay, so this one is a bit of a mish-mash. But Jennifer Laycock meant to make chicken, asparagus and maybe some pasta for dinner, but she’s been working for hours and hours on her PowerPoint for the training event after SES London and completely lost track of time.

– SES Paris 2008 – Interesting Observation… Technically, this isn’t about SES London. But, Mona Elesseily does say, “I can always get me some bangers and mash at SES London 2008 (starts on February 19 2008). (If you see Mona at the show, tell her she has “nice shoes.” Trust me on this.)

– SES London Preview. And, while this isn’t a blog post, check out this preview of the upcoming SES London show with Kevin Ryan, Vice President and Global Content Director of Search Engine Strategies and SES London Chair Mike Grehan.

– London to host search engine marketing event. Chris Bolwig of IceNews writes, “The event is seen as one of the most comprehensive SEM/SEO education opportunities in the UK or Europe and a number of highly-specialised sessions on search engine optimisation will be on offer. Search marketing guru Kristjan M. Hauksson, director of a growing Internet marketing company in Scandinavia, will deliver a session on ‘Dynamic Websites: Beyond the Basics’.”

– Search Engine Strategies sets agenda for London 2008. According to this news article, “This year’s conference will be hosted by search marketing specialist Mike Grehan. Mike is recognized as one of the foremost SEM experts. He was voted one of the UK’s top 100 influential people in Internet marketing in a poll of e-Consultancy’s 22,000 UK members.”

– Search Engine Strategies. In this forum post, Fintan aka Wannabe Geek asks, “Any one going to Search Engine Strategies London - 19-21 February 2008 - the intersection of search, marketing & commerce in London this month?” There are lots of replies.

– Anyone going to Search Engine Strategies 2008?. In another forum, Simon aka Figleaf asks, “Is anyone going to Search Engine Strategies in London 19-21 Feb? I think I will be going so if anyone fancies a meet up, drop me a line.”

Now, I should disclose that SES London is a client. But, that’s not so bad. While reading The Boston Globe this morning, I saw the most tortured disclosure statement that I’ve ever stumbled across. In his column, “It’s live - but not lively,” which is about NESN’s live broadcast from Fort Myers, Dan Shaughnessy wrote, “Disclaimer: the New York Times Co., which owns the Globe, owns 17 percent of the Red Sox, who own 80 percent of NESN.”

Now, that’s something that I can discuss with the SEM bloggers gathering at Search Engine Strategies London — over a Scotch, a beer, or some bangers and mash.

Next week offers one of the most significant opportunities for those in the search marketing world to up their knowledge, industry networks and have a great time doing it.
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