Search Engine Tigers

As more and more companies become aware of the issues surrounding online reputation management, more and more are realizing that they need to do something about it. Reputation management issues can be caused by many different sources, such as disgruntled customers / former employees, bad press, self inflicted PR problems, and so on. When you detect that there’s a potential problem, then it can take time and effort to resolve it. So why oh why do some companies insist on muddying their own SERPs with junky results that don’t provide any benefit for anyone searching for their company / product?

Here’s an example. Searching for the Kansas power company WESTAR, I found the following result.

This result was showing up right above the fold, so it was immediately visible to all.  What they need to do to get this listing out of the results is either 301 this page to the new domain, or noindex it.  301′ing would be preferable, as it would move any link equity over to the new site.

How about IHOP?  Here’s the second result for a search for their site:

 Not really informative, but it displays as it’s the only text on the page…  maybe they should think about adding a more informative description tag, or putting some text on their home page?

These are just a couple of quick examples, but take a look at your SERPs and see what’s showing up for your brand and your products.  Is there anything that stands out?  Is it something on your site that you can easily fix?

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