According to research, over 95% of customers share negative experiences with others, and about 88% trust online reviews as much as they trust their loved ones. A positive online image is an essential part of any business, be it a world-famous online casino or a local flower store. So, to get into the top 10 search results, you need to monitor and improve your company’s reputation. Keep reading to find out about SERM and measures for building and maintaining a positive brand image.
What SERM Is
SERM stands for Search Engine Reputation Management. This marketing direction is related to reputation management in search engines. The main goal of SERM is to form a positive opinion of the company on the web. When promoting a product, specialists look at:
- Brand perception.
- The audience’s opinion of the company.
- The reputation of the business as an employer.
- Demand for new or unpopular products.
- The presence of unscrupulous competitors.
Projects are different, and it’s impossible to say unambiguously what SERM tools will be needed in this or that case. It can be one-time work with reviews or a multi-year process to manage search results. Moreover, the concept of “reputation management” is deep and includes various directions.
Differences Between SERM and ORM
ORM (Online Reputation Management) is a more extensive form of online reputation management and includes work on all platforms: forums, thematic sites, social media, resources for writing reviews, job search platforms, and so on.
SERM is part of ORM and is a separate industry. Its buy real instagram views responsibility is limited to search engine optimization, even though the SERM approach involves content from other resources. The focus remains on SEO promotion, where specialists use relevant content about the company with keywords.
Main Channels of Reputation Building in SERM
Social Media
Social media is a powerful reputation management tool and a logical extension of SERM promotion. Having a social media page allows you to increase communication with customers and increase brand loyalty through the instant processing of negative or positive comments from users. SMM can also be used to attract additional traffic, study the target audience’s pains, and broadcast the company’s values through published content.
SEO
SEO, just like SERM, works with a brand’s online presence and its reputation in search engines. A company’s credibility affects the evaluation of a website by search engine algorithms, and hence its position in the rankings. Google, for example, has an E-E-A-T ranking factor, which, among other things, takes into account the expertise and credibility of the site.
SERM and SEO are also similar tools: here, high-quality content is important, on the basis of which promotion strategies are built, and the effectiveness of the monitoring of specific results is tracked. However, the studied indicators are usually different: the SERM approach works with the online reputation index, and SEO specialists more often study positions, traffic, and leads.
Content Marketing
This tool allows you to create a common goal for which, within the sales funnel, a variety of content for social networks, blogs, lead magnets, media, and so on will be created. In the long term, content marketing increases website traffic and improves search engine rankings, as well as helping the audience learn about the company and build brand loyalty.
How SERM works
SERM implementation includes the following stages:
- Collection and analysis of initial data. The specialist checks the brand search results and evaluates the SERM index Ex, a numerical indicator of the company’s online reputation. It represents the probability of forming a positive or negative image of the brand in a random user. To calculate its value, the content found about the company is divided into three groups (positive, negative, and neutral). In the SERM approach, positive references are publications that don’t just talk about the company but describe it in a positive way. Next, the expert examines the authority of sources, the reliability of information, and its impact on the image of the company, as well as drawing conclusions about the positioning of the brand, its strengths and weaknesses, and its relationships with the audience.
- Strategy selection. Based on the information obtained, SERM goals, KPIs, and their planned indicators are determined. A list of topics related to brand advantages and platforms where they will be covered is compiled. You can also choose as communication channels those that were previously used to disseminate negative reviews.
- Posting positive content. The positive content of a marketing campaign can be in various formats: reviews, news, contextual advertising, or responses to comments. Content should include SEO keys through which users can find information about the company.
- Result optimization. The results of the SERM strategy are evaluated after 2-4 months. If the planned indicators are achieved, there is no need to change the strategy. And if the activity hasn’t brought positive results or worsened the situation, the action plan should be reconsidered.
- Monitoring the output. Search results should be checked regularly to promptly correct the rating, influence your reputation, and promote the site in the search results.
SERM Strategies
The choice of a particular SERM strategy depends on the results of the search engine results check.
Positive Reputation
In this case, you can exhale and praise your team, but it is not recommended to relax. Search output has the property to change: competitors will work on SEO, algorithms will change, or the site with positive content will cease to exist, and your company will no longer be at the top. So, you should maintain this result and constantly work to increase it.
Negative Reputation
Here the marketer enters the “game.” First, it’s necessary to find the cause of negativity and work off negative reviews. Try to solve customer problems, respond to comments, react to complaints, and so on. If the check reveals that most of the reviews aren’t justified, the motive may be black PR from competitors. In this case, it’s enough to remove negative comments from their sites and contact the administrators of third-party resources with an explanation of the situation. After that, you can continue to work on creating and posting positive materials.
Neutral Reputation
Sometimes positive and negative reviews are in an equal ratio. Then you should strengthen the formation of a positive opinion about the brand through the publication of content with favorable context about the company. User-generated content (UGC) can help with this. This is native content that includes customer reviews of your products and services, comments on articles, and posts on social media. There are several ways to get UGC content: ask the audience directly, start cooperating with bloggers, reward customer reviews with gifts from the company, and make reposts of mentions on your own sites.
