By Zack Devin
A single unpleasant review or piece of misinformation can have far-reaching repercussions on your business. Let’s take a look at the options at hand to remove negative links about your business from Google’s search results.
In an increasingly digitalized world, any kind of negative content about your business appearing on online search engine results can prove to be extremely damaging and costly. In fact, a single unpleasant review or piece of misinformation can have far-reaching repercussions on your business. Your professional reputation will take a hit and potentially lead to losses in revenue. So, the question is, is it possible to remove negative links about your business from Google’s search results? Let’s take a look at the options at hand.
Content Violating Google’s Terms of Service
Google may accept your request to remove the negative link in question under certain circumstances. These include a direct violation of Google’s terms of service. For example, if the content contains your personal information and was meant to be private but got leaked, the chances are that Google will take it down if you flag it.
Hacked, doxed, untrue, or explicit content with nudity or other violations makes other grounds for removal. If the negative link infringes on a copyright or intellectual property, you can report it on such an account too. You can take the help of a professional media PR agency that provides online reputation management (ORM) services to clean up online reputation from end to end.
However, reporting the negative link to Google can only remove it from its search results. For the most part, it is better to remove the negative content completely from the source. How can you do this?
To begin with, you can directly contact the owner of the site with the negative content and ask them to remove the page. If this does not work, you can try some other options to suppress negative search results.
You can create a strategy to bury negative links about your business so far down that they become irrelevant and do not appear in Google’s search results. For this, you’ll need to:
Optimize Existing Content
Examine all the content on the Internet surrounding your brand. These include blogs, reviews, websites, and social media content. You can use ‘reverse search engine optimization’ to identify more suitable content for Google search results and fine-tune them accordingly. You can also create high-quality content about your company or brand that is search engine friendly.
Promote Positive Content
You can identify which of the existing positive content about your brand you’d prefer to promote and use these to override the negative links and push them far down the search results. Promoting positive content around your brand can help to suppress the negative review or content and prevent it from showing up on Google’s search results.
Consult a Professional Media PR Agency
A simple alternative to removing negative content about your business by yourself is to hire an agency skilled at online reputation management. Such an agency will have the professional expertise to optimize your online presence quickly and meticulously. These agencies specialize in dealing with negative comments or links about their clients as and when they come. They can mitigate the consequences of a negative review and help you avoid a situation that can lead to colossal losses for your business. All in all, they can clean up your online reputation and manage it smoothly so that it serves to benefit your business rather than hurt it.
So, do your research thoroughly, and select an experienced media PR agency that can polish up your online image effectively. More often than not, the damage and loss caused by the spread of negative news or links that rank high up on Google’s search results far outweigh the cost of hiring a professional to take care of this aspect of your business. Therefore, it can be concluded that designating a professional to manage your business’s online reputation is a prudent move.
