A Winning Formula For Online Reputation Management

As mar­keters, we’re ensur­ing that the per­cep­tion, and there­fore the online rep­u­ta­tion, of a brand and its prod­ucts is as pos­i­tive as pos­si­ble. Is your brand doing its best on all fronts to influ­ence as many con­sumers as pos­si­ble to pur­chase...

Matt Roberts By Matt Roberts from Linkdex. Join the discussion » 0 comments

As mar­keters, we’re ensur­ing that the per­cep­tion, and there­fore the online rep­u­ta­tion, of a brand and its prod­ucts is as pos­i­tive as pos­si­ble. Is your brand doing its best on all fronts to influ­ence as many con­sumers as pos­si­ble to pur­chase a prod­uct?


I stum­bled across a TED talk by John Wood­en, a famous U.S. bas­ket­ball coach who is regard­ed by many as the best coach of all time. His talk was full of some great and often mov­ing poems and lessons you know it takes a life­time to learn.

One of the pearls of wis­dom Wood­en shared made me press pause and reach for the key­board. It was:

Your rep­u­ta­tion is what you’re per­ceived to be. Your char­ac­ter is what you real­ly are.”

My team at Linkdex are doing work with brands around the globe to mea­sure how their online rep­u­ta­tion is play­ing out inside the Google search ecosys­tem. Our objec­tive is to help brands bench­mark and improve prod­uct sales through the pos­i­tive enhance­ment of brand and prod­uct rep­u­ta­tion amongst the search engine rank­ings.

How we’ve approached these chal­lenges is for anoth­er day. The inter­est­ing thing for me, in Wood­en speak, is in the fact that what we’re try­ing to do is opti­mize the per­cep­tion of a brand and its prod­ucts. Ensur­ing that the per­cep­tion, and there­fore the rep­u­ta­tion is as pos­i­tive as pos­si­ble, in order to influ­ence as many con­sumers as pos­si­ble to pur­chase a prod­uct. Real lead­ing edge momen­tol­ogy.

What we don’t have con­trol of is the ‘char­ac­ter’ of the prod­uct or ser­vice itself.

  • Is it actu­al­ly any good?
  • Is it best in class?
  • Is the com­pa­ny and its cus­tomer ser­vice amaz­ing?
  • Is there real brand and prod­uct affin­i­ty?

It’s in the prod­uct that the pri­ma­ry bat­tle­ground of dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing is being fought. Then there’s mar­ket­ing. The sec­ond wave.

Be Found

  • Can you build the aware­ness, cre­ate a need now, or leave suf­fi­cient cog­ni­tive foot­print to be recalled in that moment of need?
  • Can you come off best when con­sumers are search­ing for infor­ma­tion to inform key pur­chase deci­sions? Do your fea­tures com­pare favourably? Is the price right?
  • Is your rep­u­ta­tion­al foot­print bad, neu­tral, pos­i­tive?
  • Can you make it easy for them to buy from you and close the deal?

If they do what many con­sumers do and go last minute deal shop­ping, where will they end up? Do you still make the sale? Under­stand­ing the answers to these ques­tions is pos­si­ble. Very pos­si­ble – it just requires brands to want to know and try. To try their best on all fronts.

When was the last time you tried search­ing for your own prod­ucts through a typ­i­cal pur­chase jour­ney like a con­sumer would? How does your online rep­u­ta­tion rep­re­sent your char­ac­ter at all the dif­fer­ent moments a con­sumer might meet your brand?

It is a great place to share anoth­er Wood­en pearl. He said:

I coined my own def­i­n­i­tion of suc­cess, which is: peace of mind attained only through self-sat­is­fac­tion in know­ing you made the effort to do the best of which you’re capa­ble. I believe that’s true. If you make the effort to do the best of which you’re capa­ble, to try and improve the sit­u­a­tion that exists for you, I think that’s suc­cess.”


What’s your def­i­n­i­tion of suc­cess when it comes to man­ag­ing your brand and prod­ucts inside Google?

Matt Roberts

Written by Matt Roberts

Chief Strategy Officer, Linkdex

Matt has worked in marketing for over 20 years with SEO being his focus for nearly a decade. As Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer, he is the driving force behind the Linkdex platform. Matt works with clients across the globe to discover opportunities to use data, insights, and processes to grow organic traffic and revenue – and give our clients an unfair advantage. Matt cycles and with a growing collection of road bikes, he is fast becoming a cycling geek.

Inked is published by Linkdex, the SEO platform of choice for professional marketers.

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