Have you ever googled yourself? For many people, you may find that you have the same name as someone else in the world, resulting in search results that don’t necessarily pertain to you.
But for most people, your social media handles will come up, or maybe a few pictures. Whether or not your social media accounts are made private, you may be surprised at what will pop up on google.
Unfortunately, negative news and search results usually circulate the internet much faster than positive results, leaving you in a bind if you’re caught with negative results under your name.
Building and sustaining a positive reputation is essential even for the everyday internet user. The things you post to social media or are circulated about you on the internet could affect your current and future career and damage your reputation.
With the popularity of Google and all things that infiltrate the internet, protecting yourself from harmful news exposure can be difficult. However, it’s not impossible.
There are a few different ways to get rid of negative news and search results on the internet, whether for your company or your personal brand.
This article will focus on a few different options for ridding negative search results. Although these options do not guarantee results, some are more affordable than others and can help you get your reputation back.
- Pushing down negative search results by generating positive content around yourself or your company.
- Attempt to manipulate the sites ranking to go below and boost them above the news sites.
- Spend time and money on an extensive public relations campaign.
- Respond to negative results
- Do nothing and hope and pray that the negative results will not show in the future, resolving themselves (unlikely, but it has happened).
- If the news or article is defamatory, use BRANDefenders to help deindex or remove the negative result.
Generating Positive Content Around Yourself Or Your Brand
The first option for suppressing negative news and search results from Google is to generate positive content to offset the negative.
What can you say about yourself that you want others to know about you online? Are you involved in charity work, or have some exciting or interesting things going on with your company?
Maybe you want to focus on what sets you apart from your competitors in your industry. From blogs to press releases, videos, and others, generating content can help you avoid circulating negative news for yourself and your company.
Each situation is unique, but sometimes you can use the positive press to suppress the negative and help those results no longer appear on the search results page.
SEO Strategies to Boost Positive News
The second option on the list of six ways to get rid of negative news on Google involves a blackhat SEO strategy where you help boost positive and neutral articles above the negative news to help suppress it.
This is a common SEO strategy that will help defend your brand and manage your reputation. BRANDefenders is happy to help you create a budget and plan to aid in your journey to getting rid of harmful content.
Creating a Public Relations Campaign
Big companies and corporations usually have a whole public relations team to help them maintain a positive reputation and clean up any negative mess when a crisis hits.
But having a public relations team calls for a big budget and many resources. This will help suppress the negatives and eliminate the negative news circulating, but it may also just break the bank for your personal brand or your small business.
At BRANDefenders, we help strategize ways to help you maintain positive search results and suppress negative ones. Unlike many public relations firms, we work with your budget, not the other way around.
Seeing a negative search result pop up under your name or company can be shocking, but defending your brand is our number one priority, and we want to help in any way that we can.
Responding to Negative Results
Responding to negative news online is a risky tactic for reputation management. Over the last few years, we have seen a surge of cancel culture, which is often a result of trying to respond to negativity circulating on social media and other online sources.
Responding to negativity usually creates more unwanted press and negativity around your personal brand or company’s reputation. This strategy may only work if you are 100% unapologetic for everything you say and respond to online.
It’s not the safest or most effortless way to get rid of negativity, but occasionally it may work. If you want to have better odds of success, you may want to focus on one of the other five strategies suggested for getting rid of negative news in this article.
Ignoring Negative News and Hoping For The Best
Although this is less risky than responding to negativity, there’s still a significant risk involved. In most instances, negative news won’t magically disappear. But there is an off chance that you may be one of the lucky ones.
Sometimes small papers or press websites shut down, and the articles are removed. More likely, other local news outlets pick up those articles and bad news stories, and they will continue to show on the search engines.
However, if you do not have the funds to defend your brand and focus on managing your online reputation, this might be your only option. It’s not the best strategy, but when money is tight, it might work.
Deindexing Or Removing Defamatory Content
No one likes to see harmful content around their name or for their company. It’s a big hit to your reputation and can take a lot of time and money to get rid of negative news.
Our team has been successful in helping many clients remove or deindex their private information from various bad articles and news stories.
Deindexing or removal is one of the more expensive tactics to attack negative news online, but the extra cost is worth improving your reputation and defending your brand.
Taking a hit to your reputation can be shocking, discouraging, and hard to navigate. It takes time and can be a long process, but with the right help, managing your reputation and getting rid of negative news is very doable.
Many people try to take on these tasks by themselves but get frustrated when they see little to no results. It is difficult to do it on your own because a particular process generates success, and no two cases are the same when it comes to getting rid of negative news.
At BRANDefenders, we work on a case-by-case basis with many different clients to help them suppress negative news results and help them take back control of their online reputation, whether it’s for themselves or their company.