Online Reputation Management (ORM)\u00a0deals with everything about your company\u2019s brand in the online community. This community includes the entire web \u2013 search engines, forums, blogs, news sites, social networking sites, etc\u2026<\/p>\n

Online Reputation Management\u00a0is first being mindful of your company\u2019s online brand then building on that brand in the search engines (chances are this is where you are sought for the most) through social media and other websites that produce and disseminate content.<\/p>\n

As you\u2019re vetting ORM firms, there are key questions to ask\u00a0as well as\u00a0red flags to look out for. In this post, I\u2019ll guide you through them\u00a0so you can go forth confidently as you do your independent research, communicate with ORM firms, read sales materials\u00a0and review contracts.\u00a0Here\u2019s what you need to know.<\/p>\n

Conduct an online search.<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you\u2019re looking for an ORM firm, chances are you\u2019re going to search online to see what\u2019s out there. My suggestion? Stay away from the companies that spend a lot of money on advertising.<\/p>\n

The term online reputation management\u00a0gets searched in Google 8,100 times each month. That\u2019s a valuable keyword to rank for\u00a0so it\u2019s no surprise that ORM firms will want to advertise there.<\/p>\n

Communicate with ORM firms.<\/strong><\/h2>\n

After you\u2019ve done your research, you’ll choose a few firms to reach out to.\u00a0Here are\u00a0several warning signs of a bad firm.<\/p>\n

Beware of any guarantees about fixing search results.<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Some firms out there make\u00a0absurd claims –\u00a0bragging that they have been around longer than Google, as if this gives them some special super power. If the firm boasts a quick fix –\u00a0under six months —\u00a0guarantees it can achieve certain search results for you, or claims to have some sort of proprietary software that works against Google, you should run in the opposite direction.<\/p>\n

Beware of\u00a0black-hat\u00a0SEOs.<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Look out for terms, like keyword stuffing and link farming, or any other shady technique that is meant to try to trick\u00a0Google.<\/p>\n

In short, if the firm\u2019s reps feels confident that they\u2019re going to outsmart Google, it\u2019s not going to happen. When\u2019s the last time you did a Google search and saw something spammy on the first page? It rarely happens anymore because Google is extremely sophisticated today, and it continues to penalize those who try to outsmart it with black-hat SEO techniques.<\/p>\n

Pay attention to whether the firm boasts\u00a0quantity over quality.<\/strong><\/h3>\n

If they try to impress you with the number of websites and social properties they build for clients –\u00a0rather than the quality of the work they do on those web properties —\u00a0you should be skeptical. Remember: Google wants value, so you need to provide value in an ORM campaign –\u00a0not links to\u00a0hundreds of social media and bookmarking sites.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Online Reputation Management (ORM)\u00a0deals with everything about your company\u2019s brand in the online community. This community includes the entire web \u2013 search engines, forums, blogs, news sites, social networking sites, etc\u2026 Online Reputation Management\u00a0is first being mindful of your company\u2019s online brand then building on that brand in the search engines (chances are this is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[30,21,28,27,20],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.webigg.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.webigg.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.webigg.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.webigg.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.webigg.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=688"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.webigg.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":690,"href":"https:\/\/www.webigg.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688\/revisions\/690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.webigg.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.webigg.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.webigg.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}