What to doWhen Negative Results Show Up - Karan Bhalla PMO , Karan Bhalla Encompass

Sometimes, a well-optimized, basic online presence (as outlined above) is not enough to bury something off the first page. Depending on how high the unwanted results shows up and how credible it is, you may need to get as much high-ranking content on the first page as possible. Here are a few other creative ways you can quickly get content on the first page:

• Throw a party and put the event on MeetUp: Yes, we’re serious! As we mentioned earlier in the series, you should create a personal profile on MeetUp–a place where people create and attend events–because Google ranks these profiles very high. Most people don’t realize Google often ranks events on meetups even higher than your profile there. Throw a party and make sure you:

• Use your name in the event title “Patrick Ambron’s party for Boston Dog Lovers”.
• Take the time to actually create a party people will want to attend and invite all your friends to RSVP on the event page. It might be a little investment, but the more people who are attending and linking to the page, the higher it will show up, so it’s well worth it (plus, its a great excuse to throw a party.)

• Write a Press Release and release it on PR Newswires: Most people don’t realize they can use the same tools PR agencies use to automatically distribute press releases  across the web. There are a handful of free newswires, but if you are serious, I recommend shelling out $300 for PR NewsWire as it’s one of the most effecitve newswires on the web.

• You can write a press release about any life event–you graduated college, you started a new job, you just created a new website, anything. The point is you want any positive content to show up higher than those negative results. Tip: Remember to include links to other places the person can find you online.

• Comment on news articles: As you can imagine, any results coming from a domain like the NYTimes is considered highly credible by Google. Commenting on articles in places like these is an effective way to get a high ranking result. While they aren’t the best possible results about you, at least they aren’t negative. Make sure you link to your personal website, this way when someone finds it, you can direct them to more positive information.

• Create profiles on your schools website, or local gov’t website (like the library): As we highlighted in advanced tactics, search engines consider .gov and .edu the most credible on the web, and rank them accordingly. If you want to get content on the first page quickly you should create as many profiles on .gov or .edu sites as possible. Here are some places that you can create .gov or .edu content:

• Check Your Local Government: Browse every single website your local government offers, from townhall to the local library). There is a good chance there is some place that will allow you to create a profile, or comment on an article. For example, take a look at the website from this Library in Deleware
• Contact your alma matter: Check your college’s website to see if there is anywhere you can create a profile. Be creative. It might be in the intramurals section, or in some small on ampus group, like this space exportation club in Cornell. You’re just looking for anywhere you can create a profile or result
• Write a guest blog post for your local gov or local college: If all else fails, most government sites and college programs have blogs. Figure out an article you could write that would be relevant and reach out and offer to write it. For example, if a college has a program for your field, volunteer to write an advice piece

• Write an article for a major blog or news site: This is an easy way to get a result on the first page. Contact your local newspaper and offer to write a piece on your expertise. There are also blogs that allow people to blog for free as long as the content is quality such as the Huffingtonpost.com and Examiner.com

Option 3: Bump it off:

While entirely possible, it’s obvious that burying something off the first page requires a lot of time. There is a little known, but very valuable piece of information when you find yourself in this situation that could save you a lot of time: Google only likes to rank one result on the first page per domain.

What does that mean? Let’s pretend someone wrote an op-ed bashing you in the HuffingtonPost, and it shows up as your number one result. It’s going to be a lot of work and a lot of time to get ten other results to rank higher than the Huffington Post and push it off the first page.

It would be easier if you simply bumped it off by replacing another result on the Huffington Post in your top ten. While this may seem like a tall order, you’d be surprised how easy it is to create a well optimized result on almost any domain.You just need to figure out how you can publish something on the site.

For example, poking around the huffington post you would realize they allow you to create your own profile on the site (huffingtonpost.com/myname). All you need to do is create a profile that is more relevant to your name than the bad article. A few things to remember when making your profile:

• Include your full name: Make sure you use Your name in the profile. This will be included in the URL and the title-tags, which is must if you want to beat the article
• Fill it out with as much information as they let you: The more information you can include about yourself, the more relevant it will seem to Google. Remember, talk in the third person. You want Your Name everywhere.
• Link to as many other profiles as possible: As you’ve read in our SEO Basics (link), the more places that a profile links to about a certain keyword the higher it will rank. Link to other definitive sources about you – your website, your facebook, etc–and google will value it more. Remember, use your name in the link text.
• Keep that profile Active: Eventually the article will get old, which give your profile an edge. Keep commenting on article and doing anything else that keeps your profile updated
• Link to it and share it everywhere: If you’ve built a basic online presence (link), make sure you link to your profile from everywhere–personal website, facebook, Google+, etc. The more links this profile has, the better chance it will outrank the negative article. Share it on facebook and twitter. The more social traction it gets, the better your chances.

Tips For Fixing a Negative Search Result - Karan Bhalla PMO , Karan Bhalla Encompass

Emergency Tactics For Fixing a Negative Result

Even if you’ve gotten your Google diagnosis, set up your basic presence for Google and used our advanced  SEO techniques to raise them to the top , sometimes it’s just not enough. Sometimes, even if you do everything right, search engines make you their B*tch. This last part of the series is meant to provide effective tactics for people who have negative or unflattering content on the first page of results.

Bad Results Can Happen to Good People:

While this section may seem like it’s only relevant to politicians or criminals, negative content is something that can happen to anyone. All it takes is one bad blog post or status update from a pissed off ex, one disgruntled former client or employee, or one photo tagged in bad judgement after a night out with a friend. The point is, bad results can happen to good people, and this article is meant to walk you through the emergency tactics you can use to salvage your reputation.

Here’s what to do when negative results show up when you Google yourself:

Option 1: Get it Taken Down

This option is often the first step people take, however, there are a couple of issues with this route:

• The Person doesn’t have to take it down: Unless you own the content (what are you waiting for, go take it down!) this is highly unlikely and not as ideal as it sounds. For one, the web is like the Wild West, it is not governed by regulations and laws and it is very hard to have anything legally removed. Chances are there’s a reason the other person put it up in the first place, and they have no intention of removing it.
• The Result is Always Archived: Secondly, even if they do  remove it, that doesn’t necessarily remove it from search engines. Search engines archive (or cache) search results, meaning many times the result still shows up and people can read about the content right from the result page in Google. That being said, in some cases it is worth it to try and have the content removed, in which case: Submit a legal complaint to Google : Only do this if the content is clearly slanderous or illegal in some other way that can be proven in a court of law. For the vast majority of cases you’ll have to use our other tactics.

Option 2: Bury It

This is the whole idea we’ve been preaching in this series: raise positive content higher in search engines, essentially burying content farther down the page. While this doesn’t technically remove it from search engines, it does drastically decrease the chances someone searching for you finds it. In fact, 93% of people don’t even go past the first page, and even if they do, they’ve just gone through an entire page of positive content that lets them know who you really are. This means, you don’t only need one or two results on the first page, you need enough to bury the other content. Here are the best ways to create high ranking content that will bury the negative result:

Basic Tactics:

Make sure you have the basics covered before jumping to the more advanced tactics:

• Create a basic online presence: This includes buying your domain name, building a personal website, creating profiles like facebook, twitter and LinkedIn and joining online directories.

• Make sure that content is search engine optimized: There are certain things you can do with your content to make sure they are as search engine friendly as possible

How to push negative search results down - Karan Bhalla PMO , Karan Bhalla Encompass

In a perfect world, we’d be able to remove all the unfair, outdated, and negative search results about ourselves. In reality, most content is here to stay except in special circumstances. Remove what you can, but creating your own positive content to suppress the negatives is a great way to control your image and improve your search results.

Note that if you’re looking to disappear from the web, this isn’t the solution for you. You’ll be creating morecontent about you, but you’ll be tipping the balance from negative to positive.

Step 1:  Create and manage public profiles for yourself

Certain sites consistently appear high in the search results. By simply creating a profile on them with your name and a bit of identifying information, you can suppress negative results. Make sure that you set your privacy settings to be publicly viewed, and only post content that you’re absolutely sure you won’t regret later.  Here’s a list of sites to use:

If you can’t delete something bad, bury it with something good.

• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• MySpace
• Facebook
• Google+
• Formspring.me
• Foursquare
• About.Me
• Pinterest
• Blogger
• Tumblr
• Photobucket
• Quora
• StumbleUpon
• Reddit
• Digg
• Plixi
• Yahoo Pulse
• Flickr

Step 2:  Comment publicly in news articles, forums, and social media

Madonna reference: hey, hey, hey, hey.

You can also use your real name to register on news websites and comment on articles, although these types of posts don’t tend to rank as highly as those on the sites listed above.  If you’re prepared for a little self-censorship, posting under your real name can be a smart strategy for selling yourself.  Knowing that anything you say online may show up when someone Googles you, use your postings to your advantage:  post intelligent, grammatically-correct, spell-checked, well-reasoned content.  Express yourself in the field in which you want to become established.

Step 3:  Link Amongst your Various Sites

Link between your sites to make them all rank higher.

One of the ways that Google determines a site’s rank in search results is by analyzing how many times other sites link to it. You can get your content to rise by linking it to itself. For example, create a twitter account, connect that to your formspring account, connect both of those to your Facebook page, and link to all of them on your Blogger page. Of course, the more you use your accounts and interact with other people, the more likely they are to link to your content, which drives your results even higher.

Step 4:  Take back negative keywords

If a search for your name is generally positive, but including a particular keyword brings up negative or unwanted results, try to reclaim that term. Let’s say that a search for “John Doe” is positive, but “John Doe”+ “State College” brings up negative results. John Doe should start including the phrase “State College” in his positive content creation in order to associate it with his good reputation.

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Is there something online that haunts you or someone you know?  What do you think about search engines and the internet preventing us from wiping our slates clean?  Comment below and let us know your thoughts.