Contact Us

US / Canada: 1-877-355-6410

International: 001-321-202-1308

United Kingdom (UK): 0-800-047-0900

European Union (EU / UK): 0-800-047-0900

Australia, Perth: 61-863654907

Email: admin@fairwindsweb.com

LIVE CHAT UNAVAILABLE

OUR MISSION
Our mission is to provide outstanding personalized service at competitive prices to all International Online Reputation Management clients. Our careful attention to detail, and courteous staff combine to set us apart from the competition. We ensure strict adherence to our unusually high quality assurance standards to assure complete customer satisfaction.

WHAT IS OUR CLIENT BASE LIKE?
We service a diverse International Search Engine Reputation Management customer composition from our Florida headquarters. In essence, no matter what the nature of your organization, or what industry you operate in, we have solutions to fit your International Reputation Management needs.

International Reputation Management

Phone: (321) 202-1308
Toll Free 1-877-355-6410

What can you do when negative information relating to your brand appears in search engines? Consider International Reputation Management.

International reputation management combines search engine marketing with search engine optimization. Unhappy consumers, political groups, competitors and disgruntled employees may have an interest in posting negative information about you and your company. We take control of search engine results employing optimization as well as marketing to manage and control damaged corporate identities and reputations on the internet.

Visibility and high search engine indexing with good publicity which displaces negative publicity is the goal. This results in a increase in positive web presence, helping you own top spots in search engine rankings. Online Reputation Management enables you to protect and manage your reputation becoming actively involved in the outcome of search engine results.

You work hard to build a reputation for your brand. International Reputation Management enables you to protect and manage reputations by being actively involved in search engine results.

In today’s world of push button publishing, any company can become the victim of an online attack from any disgruntled customer or competitor with a computer and an internet connection. Because of the nature of online search, negative blog posts, comments, and press can quickly tarnish a company’s reputation when potential customers find harsh criticisms when conducting a search for your company’s name.

These types of attacks can be extremely damaging to your reputation and profitability - especially when they appear on the first page of search results. However, there are ways to counter them using the same techniques applied by top Internet reputation management experts.

#1 Monitor Your Online Presence

A key component in any Internet reputation management campaign is to continuously monitor what others are saying about you online. When and if negative information is published about your company, you’ll want to be aware of it quickly in order to take action. The simplest way to do this is to set up a Google Alert for your name and your company name, as well as any other key terms associated with your line of business.

#2 Think Carefully Before You Retort

Unlike a conversation you may have with someone in person, a dialog carried out in the comments section of a blog or online forum will be recorded and leave a footprint online for years to come. If you learn that someone has posted a negative comment about you or your business, your first instinct may be to type out a heated retort. Instead of replying immediately, give yourself time to calm down and clearly think through your message before you reply.

Once you calm down, you will likely regret what you may have said in the heat of the moment and worse, possibly enabled the negative publicity to rise in search results.

#3 Ask Content Publishers to Remove Vicious Attacks

Internet reputation management experts will tell you that you can remove some blatantly slanderous results by contacting the content publishers where the comments are posted. This is usually only the case when the comments are overtly slanderous and unfounded. However, many content publishers will not remove material once it has been published. Once you’ve attempted to remove as much of the negative commentary as possible, your next plan of action should be to push the negative dialog as far back in the search engine results as possible. While quite time-consuming, it is a key component.

#4 Continuously Grow Your Presence on Search Engines

More relevant positive information, properly created, in the search engines related to you or your company will dilute the negative information and push it further back in the search engine results. The most effective way to accomplish this is by publishing more valuable content online through user-generated content sites or by building optimized profiles on various social media sites. Remember, the vast majority of people only search the first page of search results.

Companies and individuals may need to rely on Internet reputation management experts to push negative queries back from the first or second page of search results to a distant place where they will seldom if ever be seen. Professional internet reputation management experts use techniques that include building entire sites, massive article publication and distribution, press release generation and distribution, worldwide blogging and more. In addition, Internet reputation management experts are skilled in search engine optimization techniques and understand how and why search engines rank pages, thus making their efforts even more effective.

“A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” - Winston Churchill.

News traveled at a snail pace and methodically before the advent of Internet. The communication channels have radically transformed since then, Internet being the most conspicuous one. Internet has gained the distinction of becoming the most preferred platform for finding information and the same is provided at lightening speed. Internet has an abundance of consumer generated media (CGM) in the form of forums, blogs, review sites, opinion postings, and many more; on any topic imaginable. With a plethora of self publishing options available to users, nothing is inviolable, including online reputation.

Building reputation, both online and offline, demand years of hard work and millions of dollars. It would be justified to say that reputation management is critical to any organization. Your brand is not immune to comments (positive, neutral or negative) in the public domain. People enjoy the liberty to talk about whatever they want and wherever they want. A lot of these discussions involve brands, products and services. A vindictive content has the potential to start an avalanche that could sully your reputation forever and thus online reputation management becomes essential.

Researchers have found that negative comments always look credible, even if they are frivolous or unfounded. There are numerous sites such as Rip-off Reports, Epinions.com, etc. which helps people voice their concerns vociferously. Negative press, in the form of discussion pages from these websites can show in search results, worse make it to the top ten. For the same reason, reputation management that belonged to the PR (public relations) domain since time immemorial, is proliferating into the realm of search engine marketing.

The power of search engine optimization could be leveraged to counteract negative publicity. The strategy is simple – displace offending search engine listings by favorable listings. Easier said than done. An extensive analysis of keywords and brand terms would help in assessing the extent of damage done. Promoting company’s primary website in tandem with positive pages is a tried and tested technique and would delivery fruitful results. All these exercises (search engine optimization and social media optimization) could be coupled with efforts, to get the derogatory comments removed. Online reputation management companies also explore legal avenues or contact webmasters individually to accomplish this task.

‘Prevention is better than cure’ and preemptive online reputation management allows you to do it. Creating listening posts to track what is being said about your company, would help you in nipping trouble before it blows out of proportion. There are many online reputation monitoring tools which prove to be handy for doing this task and some of them are mentioned below:

1 Set up Google and Yahoo email alert for specified keywords.

2 Track message boards, forums and groups.

3 Use tools like Copernic tracker, Website Watchers, Watchthatpage.com to track changes made to particular web pages.

4 Create RSS feeds for designated keywords (Feedster, Technorati, Yahoo/Google news, MSN Spaces, Blogpulse, etc).

5 Use ‘MonitorThis’ that allows you to subscribe to results from 22 search engines and many more.

Companies should incorporate online reputation monitoring as a permanent function and not consider it as a counteractive measure only.

‘Online reputation management ethics’ is a widely debated topic. Is it ethical to help a business which is ‘guilty as charged’? Doing online reputation management for innocent people, whose names have been tarnished by disgruntled customers, unhappy (ex) employees, etc. is justified and not against business ethics. Unfortunately, many online reputation management companies don’t buy this argument and do business with anyone and everyone.

The first thing to ask is what exactly is online reputation management? Online reputation management comes down to your company managing their reputation. In essence, this means you have to manage the image of your company online. This means dealing with any negative comments that people are saying about you or your company.

To explain this a bit more, I am going to make use of an easy example. As I have recently moved into my new flat, I was shopping around looking for a couch. Something comfortable where I could de-stress after a hard day’s work. I found a shop with the perfect couch, but with an over-inflated price that I was not keen on playing.

Arriving home that evening, I wondered if it was worth buying the couch as it would set me back considerably. I decided to browse the Internet to see what people are saying about the shop where I wanted to buy the couch. If there were any complaints about the service and of course, any complaints about the quality of the products they sold in this shop.

I opened my favourite search engine and simply typed in the name of the company [let’s call it ‘XYZ’]. As soon as I pressed enter, I found the company website at the top and beneath that numerous websites which had information or rather comments about XYZ, their service, quality and more.

The first website opened was a blog where people wrote comments and stories regarding all manner of things. The first post I saw on this blog was about XYZ and it said: “There’s no reason to GIVE good service. They’ve received your deposit, so it’s unlikely you’ll back out, and the furniture is not sitting in the showroom, so it’s somebody else’s problem”.

After opening and reading more and more websites and blogs I realized that people were complaining about the same things. People posted information about things they liked about XYZ and things they did not like. But mostly, there were complaints about XYZ and its service regarding the quality of its products.

Needless to say, I immediately decided that XYZ was not the right place for me to buy the couch. I did not want what happened to the other customers to happen to me! Like one person commented on the blog “I want to order some couches from XYZ, but after reading all the above, I am scared stiff”.

The above example shows how a company’s reputation can be scarred online when customers complain about anything related to the company. Whether or not it’s the truth, when people read negative commentary about a company, it will influence their perception of the company and will most probably cost the company money as they will loose a potential sale.

Online Reputation Management is about managing the reputation of your company online. This means that if a company like XYZ managed their reputation proficiently on the Internet, they might not loose as many potential customers, or have so many upset customers.
So now the question is, how do you manage your online reputation? There are numerous techniques and applications you can use to manage your online reputation. Firstly, you need to know what exactly to look out for.

To manage the reputation of your company you need to track all information related to your company. That means your company name and of course product names. You can even check out names of your employees. When people complain about your company and specifically your service levels, they will mention the names of your employees. It’s best to know who is associated with your company name.

You can make use of online tools that are offered free online  to monitor if people are talking about your company. Tools such as:

Technorati.com – “Who’s saying what, right now!” Stay in the loop with Technorati. They track blogs (112.8 million of them) and social media.

Google News – You can stay up to date with news that interests you. Stick to news related to your industry and you will know exactly when your company gets mentioned.

Monitor This – choose a keyword, like your company’s name, and Monitor This will monitor that keyword via 22 different search engine feeds. You will know instantaneously if someone’s talking about your company.

Yahoo Alerts or Google Alerts – You can sign up for email alerts. Google and Yahoo will send you alerts on any topics that interests you.

It is impossible to list all the different tools that you can use to monitor your online reputation. In correlation with the above, you can also track message boards and / or forums like BoardReader.com and ForumFind.com, where you can track groups like Yahoo, AOL , MSN and Google.

I have merely touched the surface of Online Reputation Management, but it is evident that any company who takes pride in their business should know how to keep their image clean. More and more people now have access to the Internet and it only takes a quick search to find out what people are saying about any company online- any negative commentary can negatively influence your company! So be sure to know what is being said about your company and try and resolve as many complaints as possible and start managing your reputation today!

Over the past few articles I’ve brought you different tactics you can use to help build quality links to your site.

And while I am going to continue to bring you even more of these tactics I thought it would be good to step back and take a big picture look at why link building is important.

Further, I wanted to look at other things you should be considering when you are doing your link building: Namely managing your online reputation.

As the web evolves, reputation management becomes even more critical to your online business. This is because many people will form their opinion of your or your business based on the sites found around you.

An upset former customer can do a whole lot more damage to your reputation online that you may suspect. If they are a popular blogger, for example, and are able to call on their network of sites to help promote their negative view of you, it can have a detrimental impact on your search rankings.

This is because they can use a tactic called link bombing to rank higher than you for your name or the name of your company.

What do you mean links can be bad?

Just like how you need to build links to improve your link popularity and ultimately search engine rankings, links from other sites can work against you.

Let me give you a practical example:

If you do a search on Google for “miserable failure” or “failure” you will see that President George Bush’s White House bio is ranked number one. This is an example of many thousands of sites linking to the site’s bio page, with the anchor text “miserable failure” and “failure” in them. Google then counts these links as votes for the site for that phrase. Since the site receives the most votes it ranks the highest.

But this is just one example of using links to negatively influence search rankings. There is another where personal sites and blogs have used similar linking strategies to outrank corporate websites for negative terms.

I once talked to an attorney who was ranked #2 for his own name behind a blog site which went on about how terrible an attorney he was and how you shouldn’t hire him.

The blog site took advantage of the system by requesting links on the attorneys name from other bloggers, thus moving it ahead of the attorney’s own site.

It is this type of tactic which can be used against you because in this case, short of legal action, the attorney would have to build even more links to his site for his name than the negative blog.

In the mean time, however, the blogger continues receiving links as other sites which link to him now request the same links. It becomes a snowball effect. One link leads to three, which leads to ten, then a hundred, then 500 then 1,000 and so on.

That is the real power of blogging – the ability to quickly build links back to your site on virtually any phrase you chose to target.

And since bloggers have that much pull, they can (and in many cases do) use that ability against you.

But it doesn’t have to be just bloggers that do that. Any site that has the pull can post a derogatory page about you and flood the web with backlinks, through submissions to thousands of directories and other sites which don’t check for quality and will accept automated submissions.

And the kicker of this is, by the time you realize it has happened to you, it’s almost too late.

That’s because those links were submitted months ago and have passed Google’s aging policy. The only way you can combat this is to build a similar number of positive links and wait the same time until Google approves the links and adds them to your link inventory.

As you can imagine that can take some time so in the meantime your site suffers because of these negative tactics which were begun months ago.

So how you do combat negative links?

There is no real way to combat them. Once they are there they pretty much exist forever. The only real strategy is to ensure that you continue to build high quality relevant links to your site. Thus, you are essentially taking preventative action against those who may not have your best interests at heart.

That means using the tactics I’ve described in some of the recent articles, and continuing to monitor your link popularity.

It also doesn’t hurt to subscribe to services like Google Alerts. I use this to monitor a variety of keywords both in the news and in the organic rankings.

You could create an alert for your name and receive emails whenever there is a mention of your name – either through the news, or when a site begins to move in the organic rankings.

Then you can monitor a few sites to ensure that nothing magically appears ahead of you that is negative in nature.

And if you do find a negative site that appears on Google’s radar, at least you can take a somewhat proactive stance and begin building positive links at an increased rate, to keep them down in the rankings, and solidifying your position.

Summary

I don’t want to scare you with this. It’s not something that is rampant on the web. In fact, the average person has no idea how to “trash” you online, other than perhaps posting a negative comment on your website (if you allow commenting).

All I wanted to do with this article was to let you know that such individuals do exist. And they do have the power to supplant your positive online image with a negative review of you even if it is untrue.

But if you follow the rules of good link building you can help prevent such attacks from happening to you.

In this the internet age reputation management is not something that should be ignored. It is a vitally important and powerful part of your company’s online presence. Particular attention should be paid to the social media and it’s ability to enrich the profile of your company, and to direct the necessary traffic to website.

So, what exactly is social media? Well it is the platform that allows each one of us the freedom to say what you want through blogs, and message boards and the like. Through these mediums you are able to share your views and opinions with a lot of people from all over the world.

The point has been made quite clearly that the masses do indeed, rightly or wrongly trust much of what is posted on blogs and message boards. It is no big secret, people are talking and conversing online. These conversations are not just in written form either. Everyday more and more audio and video is uploaded for the consumption of anyone who may be interested in consuming it. What this means is that people are uploading pictures and videos and text base transcripts of any and all kinds of scenarios depicting bad customer services experiences. Companies should realize this is a good thing. Good because of the transparency that exists now through these mediums. Now people have the ability to see the naked truth in full color. For companies that do things right this is clearly a public relations dream. For companies skirting the edges, well let’s just say these companies may want to do some changing.

It’s certainly true companies cannot satisfy all of its customers all the time. Fortunately most people are reasonable and understand that sometimes mistakes happen or things just go wrong. In these instances it is your reputation that will either make or break you. Companies now should carefully monitor references to their brand online. This monitoring and tracking of blogs and message boards has become a crucial part of online reputation management. It is something that must be done diligently and smartly. It is simply one of the best methods for maintaining the companies brand.

Everything an individual or company does or produces contributes to its reputation. Reputation is an intangible asset, but a very important one. In some ways it is even better than having money in the bank, but not as easily quantified.

A good reputation is its own advertising and quality seal. It can engender loyalty in customers that can cross several generations and time zones. A good reputation can bring in more customers in the good times, and be a protective buffer in the bad times.

The author has delineated what he calls the, “18 Immutable Laws of Corporate Reputation.” This book holistically deals with the topic of reputation management in three parts: establishing a good reputation, keeping that good reputation and repairing a damaged reputation.

Law One: Maximize Your Most Powerful Asset

Reputation is an intangible asset yet it is arguably the most valuable asset to manage and maximize. A good reputation can attract and keep customers, investors, and employees. Because of this, a good reputation is like a reservoir of good will (towards the company) to help it weather bear markets, scandals, or natural crises. Conversely, a lost or damaged name can scar a company and provoke boycotts or drive off new capital.

Law Two: Know Thyself – Measure Your Reputation

Before you can manage your reputation you must first measure it and keep score. Measuring reputation is easily done through standard public opinion or market studies; but as each corporation has different stakeholders (target markets, shareholders, etc.) it is necessary to customize. Less than half of corporations have custom research programs. There are no clear methodologies so it is important to identify the stakeholders (from local to global) and the relevant attributes or quantities to be measured: the same company may rank differently in different surveys/studies.

Law Three: Learn to Play to Many Audiences

No company is an island. Everyone has opinion on everything. You can never please everybody. Stakeholders are everybody involved with the corporation. The group is as diverse as: customers, employees, investors, market analysts, shareholders, government, special interest groups, local communities, retirees, etc. Know who are important and play to them. It is helpful to think of stakeholders in terms of a hierarchy or, graphically, as a pyramid with the most influential at the peak and others following in descending order. However, it is important to keep in mind that stakeholder influence is a dynamic relationship and the same model or model is not necessarily applicable to other markets/locales.

Law Four: Live Your Values and Ethics

Studies of America’s largest companies show that a strong reputation for moral and ethical conduct performed better financially in terms of their returns on investment and equity, and their sales and profit growth. One study cites that on average the excess value beyond shareholders’ investments comes up to $10.6 billion more than companies without a clear code of ethics and supporting behavior.

Law Five: Be a Model Citizen

At Timberland, social responsibility is an integral part of the company’s identity and is a significant component of its reputation. Aside from activities like monitoring their contractor’s overseas facilities, improving energy efficiency at facilities, and minimizing chemical wastes; they encourage volunteering for community service by considering it as paid leave.

Law Six: Convey a Compelling Corporate Vision

What is this corporation trying to do? That is the question answered by the Corporate Vision and the guiding principle of its leaders and personified by the CEO. The vision and the leaders motivate the stakeholders, who in turn have enormous impact on reputation.

Law Seven: Create Emotional Appeal

Emotional appeal is difficult to quantify or define; but it is what engenders passionate customer loyalty and strengthens reputations. It is mostly shaped by the sum of people’s long-term interactions with the company’s employees, products, services, and even advertisements.

Establishing emotional appeal is more than just satisfying customers. It is also about getting the customer to identify happiness or contentment with the product. In the fast paced electronic world it is also helped by a personal touch or special treatment.

Law Eight: Recognize Your Shortcomings

Examine your reputation and assess if your current business practices still build that reputation. Only by first recognizing discrepancies and problems can you take steps to fix them. The sooner you come clean, the sooner you can fix them and do “damage control” before it reaches a crisis situation.

Law Nine: Stay Vigilant

Damages to reputation can happen suddenly and over time. Managers must be vigilant and act quickly on either instance because both can be equally damaging and have long-term effects. Someone should always be watching… and thinking. In the age of the Internet even local news can be known globally in minutes. But not all news is true news. A sudden or instinctive and unconsidered response (like an inadvertent admission of guilt with an apology) is just as potentially damaging as doing nothing in the hope a situation will abate.

Law Ten: Make Your Employees Your Reputation Champions

Employees are the first direct contact between a corporation and its customers. Naturally, employee behavior has a large impact on the company’s reputation both on and off the job, from how they service the customer to how they talk about the corporation with friends, relatives, etc.

Law Eleven: Control the Internet Before It Controls You

The World Wide Web is an extraordinary tool and can be a boon or bane to your reputation. The World Wide Web has no regulatory body to separate the truth from the lies. It is estimated over 730 million people are able to interact with each other – by 2006 it could be over 1 billion.

Surprisingly, a survey by Hill & Knowlton and Chief Executive Magazine found 16% of companies monitor the Internet closely, 39% check it periodically, and 43% don’t bother.

Law Twelve: Speak with a Single Voice

Corporations allocate major funding towards building their brand. As a corporation grows and diversifies its products, there is a tendency to stray from the corporate brand. The result of this is weakening of the corporate brand and weakening of their reputation. A startling example comes from IBM, which in 1993 had more than 800 different logos!

Law Thirteen: Beware the Dangers of Reputation Rub-off

There is a saying that goes, “Birds of the same feather flock together.” When two or more corporations enter into a partnership or work together; their reputations may be attributed to each other. Sometimes this is desirable and is intentional. It is important to keep in mind the intention doesn’t necessarily translate to the desired effect.

Law Fourteen: Manage Crises with Finesse

No one and no corporation is immune from crises. Crises can be in due to corporate transgressions, natural calamities, malicious intent, a private remark taken out of context, etc. The most critical period to reputation damage control happens in the first few days. It is the tendency of companies to go quiet. This is a mistake because critics will quickly use the time to give their worst-case scenario and put out a negative spin. The corporation should quickly gather all the facts then make a public statement. The first statements must be swift and sure. A mistake at this time will taint all other succeeding statements. Customers and/or the public need to be assured the right and responsible action is being taken.

Law Fifteen: Fix It Right the First Time

There are many ways a company can try to fix its reputation. Some companies may try put on a fresh image by reinventing themselves with a refocused vision or business restructuring. Other companies will try reworking an old formula. Others still will be working against their successful, dated reputation that actually holds them back from making a more contemporary image. But it is not enough to want the change. The leader is key. The leader has to be dynamic and focused to guide the company along the new way and against old habits or instincts.

Law Sixteen: Never Underestimate the Public’s Cynicism

People have become more wary of companies. Claims and statements are normally met with skepticism. Debacles like Enron have worsened the loss of confidence Better communications is key to improving relationships. One company’s standard “no comment” response affirmed the public’s belief of their guilt. A better relationship could mean winning concessions for the company’s interests with favorable legislature or more community support.

Law Seventeen: Remember – Being Defensive Is Offensive

People appreciate forthrightness and contrition. Being defensive is more likely to offend them. The public

needs to hear an apology and needs to know what is being done to end the crisis. Often the best way to diffuse a crisis is with a timely and sincere apology.

Law Eighteen: If All Else Fails, Change Your Name

Sometimes the best way to get rid of a bad reputation is to build a new one with a new name. But name changes shouldn’t be entered into lightly. The large expense aside, a name change is confusing and causes loss of brand equity. You could lose all the good, and you’re not guaranteed to be free of the bad. At the very least, a new name opens the possibility of people willing to hear a new message.