hiya! i'm working with a client to help him in his online reputation. he has two very stubborn search results that are about a negative topic about him, that can be found at the top of the first page. there was a third negative topic that i was able to push down to the second page (so far), with press releases, articles, a linkedin profile and blog entries. i'll knock that out to third page by next week. i have yet to optimize (on/off) his website yet, but i'm waiting for admin status; that will come soon. the issue is, the first two search results are page ranked n/a and they are residuals of pages from long ago (early 2000's) AND they are state government sites (i.e. .tx.us) - i don't know if that makes any difference. but they won't budge! any advice? moi
wow - that's a great question! is it possible to contact the website admin of .tx.us and have it edited by either removing the bad press, or offering new material that would suggest the company is under new management and/or has changed leadership and thus changing the way they do business? worst case: they do nothing, better: they remove the info, best case: they change the info. to reflect the new business practice and promote ya. Just an idea.
you're sooo on track! yes, i plan on contacting them, but my client's name is part of a larger document listing other names too. i'm not sure if they would take down those two pages. but, i'm still going to pursue that avenue. any other thoughts, in the meanwhile? why do you think it won't budge? could it be because it's a gov site?
true abt internet, u can't hide your mistake but u can do better in future and proof to other ..... create more positive feedback to over come the bad
Do you have a list of the links pointing to those 2 government pages? Can you work on removing any of those links? That's usually the technique to move ahead of a Wikipedia article, I wonder if it can be used there. Other then that, anchor text backlinks to both his side as well as a Facebook page, Twitter page etc etc should move those properties above the negative results.
even i am facing the same issue. I was working on a forum:- seo-forum.zeustek.com and many spammers put some bad content and keywords are ranking very high. I have removed those threads but dont know why still getting that unwanted traffic. any suggestion ?
Oh, man - you're going to slap your forehead (just don't hurt yourself). I'm a little new at this. how do you get a list of the links pointing to the 2 gov pages? How would you remove them? Interesting technique. I've done the backlinks to his facebook, and twitter, but it didn't budge the 2 gov pages, either, but it got high search results for about a day. That's why I'm a little stumped. Also, what did you mean about backlinks to "his side"?
hmm... sounds like a .gov site indexed from 2000 might be rather sticky in rankings ... sounds like your on the right track w/ other pages (blogs, linkedIn, profile pages, etc.) - now you'll just have to play the indexing game - which might just take a long time while google digests new info... or you might need more link juice? hard to say - but w/ some continued effort and work I think you can get it bumped down; unfortunately only time will tell. Have you done any study on how many inbound links the page has? That might give you an idea of what your up against. I wonder if linking to the .gov page w/ some OTHER worded links (as in creating links to the page for say "texas goverment") would do anything? - might be counter productive, and on second thought - not entirely productive for anyone (sorry - nix that thought). Best wishes... I think you can prevail w/ a little time... and really, who wants to read about texas gov't anyhow. ( ;
Use Yahoo Site Explorer and it should give you a pretty good idea of the backlinks that are there. If it doesn't work there are some other sites that can help. Side was a mis-type...should have been "site" I do also like the idea of contacting the owners of the government site about a sample or new ownership to try and get the entry removed. No telling if anyone even knows how to remove it though on their site.
thanks for confirming that i'm somewhat on the right track. i think you're right about the indexing game and perhaps link juice! also, time will tell - as you said. yeah! who wants to read about texas gov stuff. [snore]. i appreciate your input!!!
I think you should start off by talking nicely with them. Appeal to their conscience. Explain why it’s good for them to change the information and explain why hosting negative or defamatory info might reflect poorly on their own website. Don’t accuse them of bad journalism or insult them – respect the effort they took to make the content but urge them to consider an alternate headline, tone, etc. Ask if there’s anything you could do to help them out in exchange (write a review, give a link, do SEO for their site, send them a “thank you†gift, etc.). Or simply check if the site is buying or selling any paid links, keyword stuffing, hiding text, cloaking content, or doing anything else in direct violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. If you find anything spammy, report the site to Google or report paid links inside of Google Webmaster Tools console. Or try to offer a Cash Payment / Settlement
I believe that Reverse SEO can effect website ranking in positive manner also because when push down your website ranking to manage website reputation that Little bit mistake can effect your website ranking.
Is there such thing as reverse SEO? Effectively it is just SEO,but what you are trying to do is a large scale SEO job just like if i started 12 social networks and tried to get facebook of position 1 by listing all mine on page 1.
Reverse SEO is the process of removing websites other than your own from the first pages of Google. In an optimization problem we seek values of the variables that lead to an optimal value of the function that is to be optimized; to demote optimization and diversification of a search engine result.
Hi! That's actually an interesting point. It depends and it depends on the motive, and the strategies. There's something called Google bowling, which is unethical, when competitors use tactics to smear a company, to push them down in rankings. My purpose is not to suppress any competitors, but to improve the visibility of my client's personal name in the rankings (which was virtually non-existent before I came along, except for three negative mentions). These mentions are invalid today, because the court had dismissed the case three years later, but THAT was never published online by the state. Only what is visible is the prosecution against my client.
Also, SEO is all about getting your business onto the first page anyways - preferably to the top 5 results.