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As powerful as it is to get your brand or product on Google’s first search result page, the process of monitoring search results that are tied to your product, brand and the keywords associated with them are just as important, in some cases even more.

Via SEO reputation management, you can ensure that only positive results come up on Google, Yahoo, Bing or any of the other widely used search engines. Practicing SERM is paramount to protecting your brand’s identity and goodwill.

As a brand, your online reputation matters and search engines are the ones in control. But, you have the power to alter what people who search for your brand find. When someone types keywords related to your brand into a search engine in order to find you, you in no way would want to have anything written about you in a negative light to come up in the results, especially on the first page.

Monitoring

Monitoring your reputation online on an ongoing basis is imperative, as when news about your brand that is negative is returned in search results, you very well might be losing traffic and brand equity, which even more importantly translates into losing sales and customers. If you want solid traffic to your ecommerce, organizational, or informational site, monitoring it is not just something that is nice to do, but is a dire necessity.

How to Monitor

So, you ask, how do you monitor your reputation on the slew of search engines out there? A variety of tools are available to help you do this. Many of them are free and most of them can be automated. Just set them up and they will alert you based on your preferences when any mention of your brand appears online.

Tools

Below are several tools you can use, not only to monitor but also to respond to postings about your brand whether they are positive or negative, thus strengthening your online reputation, and increasing customer satisfaction and brand loyalty in the process.

• By setting up Google alerts to monitor various keywords regarding your brand, you can conduct a search on an “as it happens”, daily or weekly basis (I recommend as it happens) on anything related to your name, brand, product or various keywords that you are targeting. You can then check out the sources and deal with them.
• Using Google’s advanced search you can also conduct searches on the spot to identify any mentions of your brand.
• Using twitter’s search, search.twitter.com, you can also monitor anything mentioned on twitter about your brand. Another tool which is great for this task is TOPSY.
• Just as with Google alerts you can use twilert.com to create searches and be immediately notified when anything related to your brand is mentioned on twitter.

SERM Services

There are also search engine reputation management services that usually take a monthly retainer to do the work for you. Many of these services utilize sophisticated algorithms to strengthen your positive search results while minimizing any negative search results and moving them to page two and beyond.

Search Reputation Management Vs. Brand Management

So, how is Search Engine Reputation Management different from brand management software? Do you really need both? Well, honestly, even though they are related as far as strengthening your brand and minimizing risks to it, they are quite different.

To truly protect your brand online while enhancing your presence, if you have the budget for it, you should be implementing both SERM in conjunction with brand protection technology.

With the release of 1400 or so new gTLDs over the next year or so, practicing Search Engine Reputation Management will be a dire necessity as the domains you do not own that are even remotely connected to your brand might be tarnishing it. It will be important to increase the rankings of positive news about your brand on Google’s first page. This will need to be more of a proactive effort on your part in the context of strengthening the ranking of your brand’s authentic outlets.

Implementing a sound brand protection strategy on the other hand will be needed as the domains that cyber pirates will use to drive traffic to their illegitimate sites will increase exponentially. This approach will utilize sophisticated algorithms combined with tailored keywords to protect your brand round the clock and will alert you to possible infringing websites, while prioritizing them. The technology will also present you with a list of domains that will be able to strengthen your brand.

The Wild Wild Web

The WWW is an almost lawless place where cyber pirates, squatters and counterfeiters are out there to latch onto that good name of yours and divert traffic away from your site to theirs, leaving you with lost opportunities to cash in. And now, it is all the more imperative to implement some type of brand management tool to monitor the web for any attempts to dirty your name, steal traffic or both.