u/Mallioni What is the best way to SEO my name? Alright. I am a writer. I had a competitor once who thought it would be fun to post hundreds of negative reviews about me online. It costs me thousands upon thousands of dollars and I have lost a lot of clients to it. Now when you Google my name, you will be greeted with Rip Off Report reviews which state: • I hack websites (I don't even have access to the websites of any of my clients) • I steal content and pass it off as my own (not true) • I party and write articles while high on cocaine (I barely even drink, let alone take cocaine) That is just the tip of the iceberg. These reviews also talk about poor quality content, how I threaten with violence if clients do not pay bills etc. None of it is true. However, my clients don't see that. I send them an email, they get in touch and say they do not want to work with me due to the reviews. Hell, 2 people who I was supposed to have gone on dates with Googled me and said that it is probably not good to be around me. I need to eradicate those reviews. Obviously, Rip Off Report don't remove reviews. I need some other method. I am not an SEO-expert. I write. Anybody have any tips? About the best I can do is a testimonial page on my own website. Some of my clients have left positive reviews in response to the negative ones, but it doesn't help. 38 💬🗨📰👈
newshew One thing you can do is set up LinkedIn, Facebook, about.me, Quora, Medium, Twitter, Flickr, vimeo, YouTube, et. al. all using your name. Add some boilerplate contact info to those pages. This doesn't make your problem go away, but hopefully creating those channels and having Google index them will help usurp the unsavory results and bring you closer TTT of Search Engine Result Page (SERP). Consider adding SCHEMA markup to your website for improved snippets. Do a trial run of Reputation'/Review Management Software as a Service (SaaS) and do as much damage control as possible in that time — many of them give you 30 days free. Good luck!
Mallioni ✍️ Thanks! I'll look into all of that! I just really need them off of the first page. The only thing I have been able to rank for on the first page (other than my own website) is a 'My Little Pony' comic review that I wrote for a client. It's a start, I guess.
newshew It's a start, I guess. Yes! Just remember that it takes time, so the sooner you activate and connect all these channels the better.
blueit22 I agree with everything here and I've personally found LinkedIn and YouTube the very very easiest to rank your name for. Also on the SCHEMA conversation I've seen someone create a Google My Business page for their PO Box location and then get reviews there. So if someone at least locally searches for you you appear in the knowledge panel on the right. You can then use those reviews as organization aggregrate review schema for your own site.
[deleted] That's a sweet idea lol bannerloo Yes, creating a business page is a great way to take up a nice space from the first page. I would suggest using a physical address though. Google is cracking down on PO boxes and post office addresses used. They don't allow them. blueit22 Correct, if you want to follow the straight line then use a business address if possible. I always suggest po box as an alternative, because who wants a pin on Google maps with your name on it pointing to your house.
morningsaystoidleon This is great advice, and I'd add this: don't address the negative reviews directly. Streisand effect and all of that. If you can prove that he wrote them, you might want to talk to a lawyer. Even if you can't litigate, you might be able to send letters to some of the sites to get the reviews taken down. Just spitballin' here. Reputation management is not my forte, but I think you should be able to regain position for your own front page relatively easily. Stijn Over the year I have noticed that LinkedIn can give you the highest position for your own name, if it is unique enough. Have a personal website, as well as social media profiles, my LinkedIn profile regularly ranks above my personal website. [deleted] This is the best advice. Make a website that connects with all of them, use your name in a few headings and paragraph text… About.me page as well, ask.fm, Tumblr, Yahoo Answers etc, write a few LinkedIn Pulse posts, StumbleUpon account, Google+ posts are money for pushing stuff down. I had a similar problem and the only option is to push the posts down. I even consulted a lawyer regarding defamation against the organization but it was a no go. Frustrating to say the least.
raptorman556 My suggestion: Create a website for yourself. Create social profiles on every network possible. Create a YouTube channel, get like 1 video made on Fiverr. Hell, even pay some money to write a couple articles on news sites (Huffington Post, etc,). See where all these rank. Then, send Private Blog Network (PBN) links to them one by one until they outrank it. It shouldn't be too hard. If you have some money, you can probably push it to Page 2 (making it virtually invisible). I can make some reccomendations as to where to buy PBN links if you like. EDIT: haha jesus, you guys make me want to sell PBN links . I might do just that. Ill try and get to everybody with where I've bought them. jricky What an asshole. • make sure your site is optimized for your name – so, make sure you have your name in the meta titles, etc. • link to your website from your other online profiles… LinkedIn for example. Make sure you're linking from there and any other sites. • contact all of your best clients or ones who have had great experiences with you. Ask them to leave you reviews on Google plus, yelp, or whatever other places you have listings, or have bad reviews. • if you haven't, it might be worth reaching out to the sites with poor reviews on them and informing them of the situation. May or may not work • lawyer up. This really is illegal, so you might get a lawyer involved… or at least research what they have for advice. This page recommends contacting the person who left the bad reviews, that way you have that correspondence on record when you contact the business to remove the reviews: http://www.traverselegal.com/blog/removing-defamatory-reviews-from-yelp-one-internet-lawyers-perspective/ Best of luck! Sorry people are such assholes. cap_the_marketer This sounds like slander to me. Sue him if you want. You could also use it as leverage to get either him to remove the content or reach out to all the site's hosting the reviews he posted and inform them of the slander they are hosting. They'll probably remove it quickly in attempts to avoid legal stuff.
Mallioni ✍️ He is in India. Difficult to sue, sadly. Also, Rip Off Report refuse to remove for any reason (well, they will charge you £3,000 a review).
fractalife If it's any consolation, I will never trust anything on Rip Off Report. Never heard of it before, but sounds like a scam to me. Mallioni ✍️ It is a massive scam. However, it has well over 2 million reviews, and since it has been kicking around since 1998, it has managed to pick up quite a few backlinks. It doesn't really help when the first 3 links in Google are: (My name): Massive Scam Steals money and never gives it back – my name Internet criminal my name
baker577 You should just take up a writing alias or use your middle name as first, if something like this is that bad, and start fresh . Kind of hard to believe he would do something like that if you were a perfect angel though – he really must hate you to write 100s of bad reviews. Writing competition is already extremely high Or make a website and explain the situation about the negative reviews and say they are false. (although i have an inkling you are BSing about something
Mallioni ✍️ He started it when he hired me to do a job for him. He paid $10 per 500-words or something. He did not get me to sign any sort of contract which would stop me from working with any client of his I did business with. The person who contracted him found me online. She then got in touch with me and said she would be willing to work with me for $15 per 500-words (she was paying him $20). This was $5 more than I was getting with the agreement I had with the previous guy, so I said yes. Suddenly, her $3000 p/m business was going to me instead of him. This was the only contract he relied on, so his company went through issues with payment of his staff. He went out of business shortly afterwards. So, I did not do anything wrong at all. He was just pissed that he lost that client to me. To date, I have never sought out a client directly. I respect the people that hire me to work for them. I know I could make a lot more money going to their client. I won't do that. It kills connections. If a person is going to approach me directly, I am not going to turn down that business. I would be mad to do that . She was clearly shopping around for a new company to work with anyway, so he would have lost it whether I was there or not. (I no longer work with her. He still posts a review or so every month, though)
baker577 Oh ok well that makes sense then. Honestly for business people who hire writers, does it really matter about their reviews? If I was hiring a content writer or copywriter for my site, I could care less about what you were doing to write the content, just as long as it was really good. writing is just words. Not sure how big of a name you are, but if you have your own site and your own samples and blog, and explain that your potential customers can guarantee to see similar quality, then it should all be fine. And that is the kind of stuff that earns links and helps with SEO if you do it right. But overall that does suck, best of luck. Always could use a pen name with a clean search history!
mitamies You can ask Google to de-index pages that come up with your name on them. Your case might be little trickier but worked for me great. They removed 3/3 requests in a week
Mallioni ✍️ I have had about 50% of the pages removed from the EU searches, but they still appear in US searches, sadly (that is where most of my business comes from)
alicialinda You can flow some steps, here i show • your own portfolio website 2.You must have most social media (Google+, LinkedIn, Facebook, about.me, Quora, Medium, Twitter, Flickr, vk, YouTube) account. You should link exchange to any other account. • which your own picture upload to your account they must be optimized.
