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Sphinn Home » SEM
Dealing With “Impossible” Online Reputation Challenges
SEM News Source: http://copybrighter.com
Published: Aug 19, 2008 - 03:09 pm
Story Found By: ViperChill 1734 Days ago
Category: SEM
Recently, the PR firm of a very famous and lavishly wealthy public figure called me. One of his projects had gotten a lot of bad press. They asked how much it would cost to remove the negative information from Google.
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from Gab 1733 Days ago #
Votes: 0

I like the idea of optimizing an explanatory page - news to me. You could expand that with press release distribution, and hit up friendly bloggers who get G news distribution. That said, this is nonsense: " I told the PR firm that his situation couldn’t be cured or "erased" - not even if I charged $5,000,000 up front and I were to hire an entire dedicated team of blackbelt SEOs and PR mavens."Know how many sites and links $5M buys? Hell, even 500K could cover even the nastiest crap. And most folks won’t change their personal names, so one of the solutions is for businesses only...

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from BrettBorders 1732 Days ago #
Votes: 1

Gab,It’s really tough to wash out 3 solid pages of bad coverage from strong, trusted sites (.gov, NY Times) - about a household name celebrity’s project. I turned down this project because  I didn’t want to dedicate the next 3 years of my life to it - and I thought the chance of failure was high.Assuming you could assemble a team (or do it yourself)  and pull it off, what would your timeline and budget look like?Also, I HAVE spoken with some individuals in very dire straights who have considered changing their personal names. They are people who can’t begin to afford or personally understake the work necessary to repair their online reputation. People desperately need help and I think in some situations - reputation repair is "impossible" - (in quotes)... meaning practically impossible  (for them to afford or do).-Brett

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from everett 1732 Days ago #
Votes: 3

A refreshing blog post that doesn’t just repeat the same old crap about reputation management. If only it had a Sphinn button that we could easily find it would probably be on the home page already.

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from BrettBorders 1732 Days ago #
Votes: 0

Saurav,For every "scumbag" or scammer trying to cover their tracks, it seems like I speak with two or three who appear to be normal, ethical people or businesses afflicted by a reputation problem that they don’t quite deserve. For instance: a young female professional who was born with the same exact name that an adult film starlet recently chose as her screen name. Since they looked somewhat similar (they were both attractive, had same race.. hair color and body type)... it created a lot of embarrassment and confusion for the professional.I’ve spoken with people who were being visciously attacked online by ex-husbands and disgruntled former employees.I have also spoken with business owners who were apparently being defamed for extortion purposes, trashed by their direct competitors. Others were victims of spam bots. Anyone can make "dirty linen’ for anyone.

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from Mindy 1732 Days ago #
Votes: 0

@saurav, you also can’t underestimate the issue of competitors using online reviews and sites that allow users to post content to attack good businesses - I’ve seen it happen. You can also run into particularly surly or unreasonable customers with a vendetta - I’ve seen businesses contending with this as well.Also, sometimes new owners of a small business such as a B&B or a restaurant may find that despite fixing all the problems left by previous owners and making really positive changes to a business, legacy content - consumer reviews, old newspaper articles, etc., - hangs around in the SERPS.

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from seobro 1731 Days ago #
Votes: 0

You did the right thing, because I was helping a friend do SEO. His top seller item was position three on Google (for the main high traffic keyword) and after an extensive SEO campaign, I got him up to position two. He went from making $50,000/mo profit to making $300,000/mo in profit. He had to double his warehouse space and quadruple his workforce. I charged him $65,000 and he only paid me $53,000. He was mad "cuz he ain’t on position one."He said "Why don’t ya call google up? Yeah, tell them we need to be on position one!" :)

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