Find helpful SEO tips for reputation management that help your insurance agency or company fight negative publicity. Get reputation management tools and ideas to use now.
Manage your online reputation with a few easy-to-follow SEO tips. Whether it’s you personally who’s the victim of online slander, or your insurance agency or company that’s fighting negative publicity, there are some easy steps for damage control.
In the old days, insurance companies provided media training to public-facing board members and senior-level members of staff. Today, traditional media training continues, but with a twist: it’s focused on managing reputations and developing media training geared towards online customers using SEO (search engine optimization) reputation management tools.
Reputation management tools are useful if you’re fighting negative publicity for something that’s surfaced from your past or a current problem that’s receiving negative attention online or in the media. In the past, a story might be run on the news that negatively affected an insurance agent's reputation, then after a while the story died out, becoming yesterday’s news.
With the Internet, you need solid online media training and reputation management ideas to fight negative publicity, because the stories never really go away - they’re on the Web forever. SEO and reputation management tools help because they push the bad publicity back in Google results. Instead of the showing up on page one of Google results, negative press, negative comments in forums and customer complaints are moved to later pages in Google. And, studies show that most people only look at page one results, few people click through to page two results, and even fewer people click through to page three search engine results or beyond.
Don’t get into an online war of words with someone who’s trying to make trouble for you. It makes you look bad, and worse, it makes you look guilty. You know there will always be unhappy claimants - disappointing people is the downside of working in insurance. Ignore online comments in forums or on websites, or file them away for when you go to work with a reputation management agency.
Don’t panic if you see negative publicity about your insurance agency or insurance company online; you have options for fighting back with reputation management tools. And, it’s inevitable that something negative will be printed about you at some point in time. Accept it, and decide if you need SEO reputation management to correct the damage that’s been done.
Build up your website to fight negative publicity. Reputation management tools often include creating additional websites in your name, to give you even more rankings in Google.
Insurance agents and companies looking for ideas to manage their reputation online should consider blogging a powerful tool. However, a blog is only useful for SEO and reputation management if you update it frequently. Have a dedicated reputation management / SEO professional prepared to post dozens - or hundreds - of blogs to make an impact online.
Online reputation management tools often include public relations. Press releases sent out to fight negative publicity for your insurance agency work but only if used appropriately. Sending out a press release for every new hire or every website update won’t get you noticed, and won’t affect your insurance agency’s Google rankings. A qualified online media training professional can help you unearth creative ideas that amp up your insurance agency’s SEO efforts.
It will take a month or longer for your reputation management tools of choice to start working. Have patience - with professional advice, and making reputation management a priority for your insurance agency or company, you’ll get there.
Learn more about SEO ideas for your insurance company or agency including starting a blog, generating internet sales leads with Google Tools and business website development.
Talk back with a writer - tell Lisa Nichols about your experiences using SEO reputation management ideas for your insurance agency or company.