This time on Ask An SEO, we’re diving into a branding question from someone dealing with negative SERP results:
I have a client that recently had some financial issues and the SERP for their brand has many negative listings.
Do you have any ideas for a strategy that could help to remove those listings and improve their brand status?
There are two ways to approach this. There’s the practical things in your immediate control and there’s the wider brand relationship that needs mending. I’ve very much been here before.
Folks will tend to lean into the changes you can make that are in your immediate locus of control.
For example, start posting on X (Twitter), and you’ll get a carousel for your posts on the search engine results pages (SERPs). This carousel can push “negative” results off page one.
The problem with this sort of approach is that it’s not entirely effective.
For starters, it has limited reach (yes, your posts will appear in a carousel, but not on every SERP related to your brand).
Also, it doesn’t deal with the very top of the SERP, and who knows what actual result you’re pushing to page two – maybe it’s one that is favorable to your brand?
While I’m not saying you should not do whatever you can do in the immediate, I would caution you about getting too caught up in it.
What you need to be doing is thinking about how you repair your relationship with your niche.
Brands fail here all the time. I’ve seen it firsthand. So, I have a few pieces of key advice you need to follow if you want to fix your brand’s SERP for real.
1. You Have To Get Out Of Your Comfort Zone
The main reason brands fail at this is because it’s uncomfortable.
The biggest piece of advice I can offer you is to be ready and willing to get out of your comfort zone.
You’re going to have to eat crow in some way, shape, or form. You can’t wrong someone and then not apologize. You may feel you did nothing wrong or that it was out of your control or whatever.
I warn you not to get hung up on this. Your audience feels hurt – that is all that matters.
You need to somehow repair that hurt, and it’s going to mean eating some form of humble pie. And everyone loves pie, so it’s OK.
2. You Have To Diagnose The Root Cause Of The Negative Sentiment
Often, the knee-jerk reaction brands have is to “market their way” out of a problem. They launch campaigns or initiatives that aim to create new buzz and new chatter that is more positive. This doesn’t work.
You can’t do any of that until you diagnose the root cause. What you’re looking for here is (among other things):