Recently I attended a luncheon where the keynote speaker was discussing public relations. At the conclusion of the luncheon I introduced myself to the speaker and stated how much I enjoyed the presentation and will incorporate several ideas into future services.

I explained to the speaker that I am the director of SEO for WebMetro and our company helps client’s remove negative press in the search engines with search engine optimization. The speaker was intrigued and asked how can an SEO service help with public relations and I shared a real life example.

We have a client that has delivered on its service promises for more than 10 years. About a year ago a claim emerged in the search engine results suggesting the company has unreliable service. In this specific situation, a person sent an unflattering letter to another website and that website published the letter. Unfortunately the claim about the unreliable service cannot be substantiated as our client was never contacted about the alleged service problem. I state alleged because the posted letter does not contain any customer specific information form which my client can validate the claim. Although my client has contacted the website that published the letter, the website will not provide information to my client about the specific event and will not remove the letter.

Worse yet, if a person performs a search on Google for the clients name, the website with the alleged claim often appears in the top 5 positions, which not only blemishes the company brand but likely results in lost revenue.

To help clients with such public relations problems WebMetro has been offering a unique SEO campaign called Reputation Management SEO Service. Usually the negative press cannot be removed, so the goal of reputation management service is to have the top 10 listing appear with positive listings that outrank the negative press.

The campaign begins like any other search engine optimization campaign. We begin with research and analysis on the negative listing. We determine how much content and linking popularity the negative listing has and then design and develop a strategy to produce positive listings.

Often our strategies involve developing external blogs, social media sites, paid links and Web 2.0 techniques. Many campaigns also leverage existing newspaper articles about a client in which we develop inbound links to outrank the negative press.

Just like a traditional public relations campaign, reputation management is an investment in your brand. If a prospect finds negative press about your company in the search engines many prospects will not elect your products or services – on your website or even in a physical store, leading to immeasurable revenue losses for your company. As a result, it is critically important that once negative press occurs, your company should immediately implement a reputation management campaign in order to mitigate the resulting loss of sales and revenue.