REVERSE SEO: WHAT IS IT AND HOW TO USE IT February 16, 2016 Joe Chierotti Off SEO
If you want to suppress negative results that appear on Google when your name or the name of your company is searched, what you’re looking for is known as Reverse SEO. Reverse SEO is commonly used in online reputation management to suppress or bury unwanted results in the SERPs of Google, Bing and other major search engines. What is Reverse SEO?
What Reverse SEO involves is the performance of normal, whit-hat SEO practices on web pages ranking (directly) underneath a negative search result. By performing whitehat SEO on the web pages ranking underneath the negative result will improve the search rankings of those web pages, causing them to move above the negative result and thereby displacing the negative item from the first page and suppressing it far back on SERPs so it won’t be seen. How to Suppress Search Results with Reverse SEO?
If you want to bury negative links about your company on web search results using Reverse SEO, here’s what you’ll need to do to get started. Create New Online Assets that You Control and Can Use to Improve Your Online Reputation
In addition to promoting the web pages directly underneath the negative result, you’ll want to create new online assets that you can promote with SEO in an attempt to rank them above the negative search result. Because you own the new online assets you’ll be creating, you can link from them to existing web pages that rank below the negative asset. Social Media/Web 2.0
Create accounts on the leading Web 2.0 sites. Try to stay active on these sites by posting regular updates with fresh content. Also, it’s important to optimize your social media profiles for the name of your company (or for the search term for which you want to suppress negative results).
Blogging
Create a few blogs on authoritative blogging platforms that tend to rank well on search engine results. I recommend Wordpress, Medium, Blogger and Tumblr, in that order. You’ll want to create a few separate blogs so try all the above mentioned out, or if you’re familiar with other blogging platforms, use those. Link Building
Build links to the to the web 2.0 profiles and blogs you created, as well as to the existing search results that appear underneath the negative result. Link the web 2.0 profiles and blogs to each other and to the existing non-negative search results. Press Release Submission
Submit a press release or two about the person or business for which you want to bury negative search results. When submitting a press release for reputation management purposes keep the following in mind. •
Keyword Use – Make sure to include the name of the person or business in the title, description and body of the press release.
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Linking – Link from the press release to web pages that rank under the negative result in SERPs. Use some version of the keyword or phrase as the anchor text.
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Press Release Distribution – The press release distribution service you use is important. You want to use a PR distribution service that is both credible and SEOFriendly. PRNewswire.com, PRWeb, BusinessWire.com and MarketWired.com are all good press release distribution services to use for this purpose because they’re credible and SEOfriendly news services. Guest Blogging
Submitting guest blog posts to authoritative sites is great for Reverse SEO. Simply find authoritative blogs in your industry that accept guest posts and apply to be a contributor.
Most authoritative blogs won’t let you use a person or businesses name in the title of a guest blog post, especially if the guest blogger is associated with that person or business. Try to use the name of the person or business for which you want to bury negative search results in the body of the guest post. If you’re doing Reverse SEO for a person, use that person’s name as the author of the post. If you’re doing it for a business, have an employee of that business author the post. A good author bio is important when submitting guest blog posts for SEO or Reverse SEO. Write a detailed author bio that is unique and includes the keyword phrase you’re targeting – i.e. the name of the person or business for which you wish to suppress a negative result in SERPs. Link from the author bio to assets that rank under the negative search result you’re trying to suppress. Hopefully this post helps you better understand what Reverse SEO is and how it can be used to suppress results in SERPs.