I’m into a serious problem and I have been working on it for the past months but nothing showedup. Coming to the point… there was negative feedback written about my company and when ever I search in Google with my company name it is getting listed in the first page. So could someone please let me know how to get rid of it.
PS. The blog in which the negative feedback was published is inactive for the past 1 year. I have no idea why it has come to first page all of a sudden.
You cannot simply remove the negative feedback from the site or remove it from the Google search results.
The only solution is to work the sites related to yours with positive feedbacks or offers and other related pages to rank in the Google search results for your company name.
If we do that…the post would remain active and will be in the same position…I don’t want that to happen…I want that post to be moved to 2nd page or so on…hope you understand.
You can’t change this. There is nothing to be done about this. You just have to change how you run your company so that you get positive feedback in the future.
Your request is common. The desire to remove or somehow hide the bad is common… but not reasonable. You will never stop all negative discussions, never get blogs or reviews or forum posts all removed and frankly, unless it’s an outright lie, you shouldn’t be trying.
What you should be doing is building the good. Not with sneaky SEO tactics to hide or push away bad articles but by encouraging reviews of all kinds to build commentary an, hopefully, a base of solid content. Get your army of customers mobilized: give them a place to share their own experience and you’ll find a better balance. Bring more social channels into the fold whether it’s facebook or twitter and use them, they’ll rank too. Stop trying to figure out how to get stuff gone and figure out how to add more perspective from authentic sources.
You do not control the perception of your brand, your customers do, leverage them to tell the story and it will be as good as you are.
If it is your blog or the property of your company, why not? You should also be able to edit blog comments and remove any that are troublesome (if they are on your blog)
Oh comeon GreenIrene…you must be kidding… there’s no company which got 100% client satisfaction…anyways can you just tell me how to push the negative feedback blog to 2nd page? Else plss :x Sorry…but you left no choice…thx
Nope it’s not our property…if it was our property there’s no point I’m here asking for a piece of advice. hope you understand my situation. I have to FIX this at any cost. anyways thx for ya support.
It seems like your issue isn’t the post, it’s your company’s attitude towards customer feedback. You’re dead right. No company is 100% positive. That’s exactly the point of reviews and why they are so valuable.
It’s been well studied, and proven, that 5 out of 5 is not the best ranking. Something closer to 4.5 - 4.7 is. Why? Because no one believes in perfection. People will seek out the negative to understand how a business or service may not be a fit. Embrace that fact, understand it and use it.
Do what you need to around the symptom but do it right. That doesn’t mean blackhatting your SEO rankings up or their page down. You’ll get caught or banned from google or end up helping the article. There’s no win in that method.
Instead start a social campaign to your customer base and start it today. Get 50 or 100 or 500 reviews published on your new community site [the one you’re going to build this afternoon]. Turn Twitter from an idea into something you actually use. None of them are going to rank overnight but that’s just reality – you can’t reverse a trend that took months or years to build in minutes just because the phone is ringing. With every request for feedback you risk more exposure but as you can see now, people are talking with or without you asking them to, your mistake has been not rallying them together to build to a critical mass in any one place… scattered blog posts are easily placed at an extreme.
Unfortunately it often takes it’s incidents like this to get companies to act on building their reputation but so be it. Without a group of advocates, a community of followers or at least a review history you are on the wrong side of the scale. The only solution is to balance it.
There will be more bad that comes out down the road, justified or just the 1 in 100 who has something go wrong. That’s the modern world. Stop being reactionary for a minute and think about how this moment will prepare you for all of those calls because they will come.
On a related note, be careful what you say out there: No matter how anonymous you may feel the internet has a way of creeping up and trying to mask a negative experience, or telling those who suggest you don’t do so to get lost, has a great way of coming back to bite you.
I agree with this only when the posts are clearly fake, inflammatory or vulgar. Editing reasonable negatives away is a great way to get people angered and on a tear across many other sites. Better to rally the troops to provide some balance, monitor the situation and decide if a response is appropriate first.
You are right. I guess I didn’t think that all the way through. Good catch!
To johnmarley@ If you can’t remove the negative, then make it a positive. Have any of your policies/practices changed since the time of that post or did any change result from the post? If so, face it head on and use it to your advantage.
No worries. There’s always 50 angles and as many valid opinions on these issues…
johnmarley -
FYI, my living is building awareness & reputation for mid-to-large business online whether primarily via social media so while it’s temping to shrug off advice on a forum, I’ve been in this spot more times than I can count, with people at all levels of management and importance screaming for a fix… [heck i’ve had projects that were nothing but these social crises].
It’s no fun and easy to grasp for any quick fix but really, think about the bigger picture for a second, it’s the best way to survive this with your sanity intact.
Unfortunately the only way to theoretically do this is to rank 20 unique pages above your competitor, which would be a crazy seo achievement far more work than is worth it.
Nobody gets 100% satisfaction, but that doesn’t sink their business. If people see 10 good reviews and 1 bad review they aren’t going to ignore your business.
If you really want to deal with this blog specifically, your best bet is to contact the blog or poster personally and try to discuss their problem and why you disagree/what you can do to fix it.
Even if you don’t get rid of the feedback, if people see you taking steps to ensure customer satisfaction then the impact of the criticism will be greatly reduced.
There are some similar advices about the negative comments. True enough that there is no way to remove the comment/blog if the blog is not your company property.
If you insist on removing it, contact the blog owner directly and come out a solution that you both agree.
This common problem faced by every company. Many a times competitor use this to destroy your online reputation.
If you are not wrong don’t worry.
Ask your customers for posting positive reviews. Post some positive points & reviews.