How to Remove Negative Search Results

This is a problem that can literally affect anyone. All it takes is a bad word in the wrong place and suddenly you find your name associated with negativity - not what anyone wants.

I have been handing Online Reputation Management for many years now and have a string of clients from celebrities through to business owners and individuals. I never know who the next client will be or what has happened but anyone who gets in touch is in the same boat and desperate to distance themselves from anything negative.

You must understand as well, that unless there are specific circumstances, you can not rely on Google to put this right for you. Do look and see if your issue qualifies for removal from the SERPs though because you might just have an issue that goes against Google's TOS and they can do something about it, such as DMCA takedown or the right to be forgotten.

What this isn't

These activities are not negative SEO against someone else. They are simply intended to give you a greater share of the search results for a given phrase that is causing you problems.

What this is

This is Online Reputation Management.

Reputation Management has been around a long time but since the introduction of the Internet, you now have to think about what is being said about you online and how quickly it can impact you.

Being Proactive

Not everyone likes to wait until 'after the event' and quite often take the proactive stance. Create your safety-net by following the activities below or if you are a business, consider looking at any complains and how these can be prevented in the future.

Prevention is much better than having to worry about negative search results.

What not to do

Someone has said something bad about you - where do you start?

As much as seeing something negative can be distressing, it is important to keep a cool, clear head and resist the urge to fight back immediately. It might be that direct contact is what's required, but often this can compound the issue and it might turn out that distancing yourself is the better option.

Remember that unless there is a legal reason, no-one has to remove anything that they post.

Never go in "all guns blazing". Assess the situation and take advice before making contact. If someone is very unhappy, they might even announce that you have asked for it to be taken down which might then put you in an even worse light!

Step 1: When all else fails

Until any issue arises, it is always difficult to know which is the best route, but let's assume that there is no simple way to deal with some negative press. What is the starting point for you and how can you begin burying those negative search results?

Assess the damage

This first step is a fact-finding exercise - this is where you want to find out all sites / articles that are related to the negative press and the search terms that would lead someone to see them.

This can be a personal name, business or product and it is important to know how far-reaching the impact of the damage.

Capture the findings

It helps to capture all of this information in a spreadsheet. I would advise using Google Sheets for sheer simplicity and the fact that as soon as you make a change, it is immediately saved. Never a worry of any lost work and very easy to share with others.

You will also need to know how difficult it will be to 'bury' these negative results, so you need to get an idea by using MOZ's Open Site Explorer, Ahrefs or Majestic. Each will give you a view on how strong the negative page is and depending on when when the negative page was last crawled, you might get information on the backlinks leading to it.

Capture all of this information in the spreadsheet. You will want to get an overall view of how much work is going to be required.

Step 2 - Start building positivity

This is where the real work begins and depending on what is found, you might be in for many weeks or months of activity. Be prepared to write (or have written) a lot of content because this is where the majority of your benefit will come from.

There are literally hundreds of sites that you can use that will all allow you to publish blogs, share photos or create profiles. You need to find as many of these as possible but here are a few to get you started.

• YouTube
• Blogger
• Wordpress
• Digg
• LinkedIn
• Reddit
• Flickr
• SlideShare
• Pinterest
• Instagram
• Twitter
• Facebook

What can you write about?

Literally anything - If you have had your own name personally used in a negative capacity, then why not create a number of fake personas with your name. Create someone who is a car nut and create lots of blog posts by "fake persona" (your name). Share these posts with car groups and on social media. Share photos, create videos and start Tweeting about what this persona is interested in.

Remember that the idea is to create as much noise as possible to drown out the negativity.

This is just one example - every circumstance will be different. Be creative in how you approach this.

If you are a business that has suffered at the hands of negative press, then you need to again be thinking about how to write interesting content that can be posted on other sites. Just posting everything on your own blog won't really do you much good as Google tends to only show a maximum of 2 URL's from any domain.

However, try to avoid writing just for the sake of it. You need to have something good that is going to gather some traction. Approach large interest sites and offer to write a guest blog or two and create a video that sells your product.

Every new entry in the SERPs is an opportunity to drive out the negative results.

Step 3 - Build Backlinks

This is something that you will need to do in most circumstances.

If you have written a really good article but it isn't naturally generating backlinks, then you need to give it a bit of a push. This step isn't always required for every article, but some might benefit from it.

Give it a little bit of time before starting this though because you want to see where your activities are going to rank naturally. There is no point in spending weeks building backlinks to articles that are naturally doing well.

However, be cautious how you acquire backlinks. If you take the quick and dirty route and buy a cheap service from someone, this might further work against you because you then have to think about removing bad links as well.

Hopefully this has given you some pointers on what to do in these situations but please feel free to ask questions in the comments below.