Desperate Client

[iqbal]

Hi there,

A client of mine, a property developer in dubai, is having a tussle with an ex-employee who has posted youtubes and blogspots against him....and whenever someone types the company name more of crap comes up instead of genuine material....

The client wants me to develop static sites for each of his developed/developing project that amounts to almost 35-40 in number. He wants me to book 2-3 domains for each project with different names and seo them individually with links to each other and to the company site as well. The project also includes creating blogspots and youtubes for him highlighting his firm and its achievements......

the reason he wants me to do this is so that all the crap should be left behind and only his projects and his site shud show up in the first 2 pages so as to restore his image of being a genuine property dealer.

I am concerned bout this method for using content duplication. Are there any other concerns associated with them????

and is there a better way to approach and tackle this situation.????

Thanks and Regards
Iqbal

[GP200]

Jaan recently had an excellent article on his blog showing exactly how to deal with such an "attack":

http://www.jaankanellis.com/online-r...-the-easy-way/

[MeanSEO]

For your own protection I would make it clear and in writing with your client that although you will do everything possible using best practices there is no guarantee that you will be able to crush the negative sites completely.

What I have seen some very bad companies do is start to create a lot of indexed pages for their own site with a positive spin through SEO and articles preemptively for keywords such as "scam", "ripoff", "problems" etc because they know they are going to generate problems. I would never do such business with such people but I am amazed how they know enough to cover their tracks for future problems they are expecting. I guess they had experience with screwing people and then having to clean up the mess.

If it is false information against your client you have other avenues as well.

If it is true what the ex employee is saying online and it is real bad showing they are dishonest you may want to consider who you take on as a client. I turn away more clients than I take on even though I can always use more. My clients know they can contact me 7 days week and I jump, wouldn't do that for someone I dislike or don't trust and experience has shown me people who screw others will eventually screw you - no matter how close you are to them

[Loft Conversions]

If there are existing pages related to the company you could try promoting them so they raise up above the offending sites. This will save you having to create new content and maintain and SEO multiple new sites. I owuld of thought that given time the ex employee will lose interest and move onto other things. Certainly make it clear to your client that there are no guarentees that it will work.

Have they tried contacting the ex employee to see if they can come to an agreement? This could be a low cost solution to the problem, maybe cheaper than spending a fortune on SEO.

[Big Juice]

Before engaging in a reputation mamagement contract you might want to do a little research to find out if the claims made against prospective client are true or not. If the claims are true then you wouldn't want to remove the warnings against this person or company would you?

[jomariet]

Why use duplicate content? If they are 30 unique building projects they could each stand to have a website of their own. This costs more but considering the profits in real estate it's certainly worth it. In fact for big enough developments they SHOULD have their own websites.

JM

[cbosleeds]

Originally Posted by jomariet

Why use duplicate content? If they are 30 unique building projects they could each stand to have a website of their own. This costs more but considering the profits in real estate it's certainly worth it. In fact for big enough developments they SHOULD have their own websites.

JM

I have to agree here - if its important enough to get all these websites up then its important enough to ensure all content is unqiue - it could be an almost equally time consuming task re-writing content if many of your pages end up not ranking due to a duplication signature.

If what this guy has put up is genuinely false then I'd almost be tempted to find myself a black hat who could bring him down a peg or two - then no need for putting up all the new sites. Or you could take the straight forward approach and report him to Google, YouTube etc, if the inaccuracy of his claims can be substantiated.

[inertia]

I used to work for a company who had this exact problem. They solved it by doing exactly what you suggest. They also hired an in house PR guy who rang (and formed working relationships with) the people hosting the offending pages. He managed to get quite a bit of stuff removed but it involved compromising with the people writing the bad content, which the content hosters then acknowledged and removed the pages.

[Crawdad]

You can knock it down a peg or two, and should. But understand that new customers often will go to page ten looking for "the dirt" on a company they are considering doing business with.

I had this happen to my company a couple of years back and I still have a few of these pages floating around. Nothing big, but my clients do in fact find them from time to time.

The cool thing is this. They ask me about it. And I tell them what happened. They can then make their decision however they choose.

But good business will always shine through. Tell your client to prepare for these questions and continue doing business. Work on the reputation management and move on.

It's not the first time it has happened and it might not be the last. But if he learns to keep on keeping on, it will all come out in the wash.

good luck, whatever road you choose.

(by the way, that link posted by GP200 covers the bases. Follow what's there and those pages will drop from the radar)

[jglogau]

This is what we deal with every day

Internet Reputation Management

[zbatia]

I completely agree with suesheboy and others. The thorough research is necessary as you can get into he trouble the same way as the guy who used Youtube for complains.
Protect yourself with an Agreement that even if you do whatever the company owner wants you to do, don't guarantee two pages in the search engine results only with your new web sites links. Your argument should be the statement that you do not manage Google or Yahoo search engines and the technology is evolving every day, so different changes to the way how the search engines work could occur while you are in the design stage or right after it. At least, you will have the paycheck, no matter what. Make sure that the company in Dubai is under some kind of law that will protect you in a case they refuse to pay for whatever reason.

It's a big job, so proceed carefully. Best of luck!

[iqbal]

yea there will be unique content for all the different projects.....but each project will have 2-3 domains and i dont have instructions from my firm to re-direct....only change in template but same matter.......so although all the projects will have specific matter, but having them repeated in the 2-3 domains was a point of concern for me...

as for the claims by the ex-emp, i have done my homework on this and the issue was even taken up in the local press (i cant name the concerned due to legal issues).....but we all know ppl forget news and this firm has possible clients googling for them from all over.......

thanks all for ur gr8 help......will put together things and start mission 'quite possible'

[iqbal]

Originally Posted by GP200

Jaan recently had an excellent article on his blog showing exactly how to deal with such an "attack":

http://www.jaankanellis.com/online-r...-the-easy-way/

THanks GP200....

[olatokunbo]

I had a problem once when i advertised something on my site through craigslist,and all the avoid scams stuff you get when you list on craigslist kept showing up on the search engines making it look like,i was trying to scam,eventually when the craigslist ads ran their course,it stopped showing up on the search engines,Maybe your client should settle his diffrences with this person,get them to stop and eventually the negatives will stop showing up on the search engines and if he can,t do that or doesn,t want to and you feel you can help him without compromising your own integrity,then go ahead and good luck.

[TechEvangelist]

Originally Posted by iqbal

yea there will be unique content for all the different projects.....but each project will have 2-3 domains and i dont have instructions from my firm to re-direct....only change in template but same matter.......so although all the projects will have specific matter, but having them repeated in the 2-3 domains was a point of concern for me...

If I understand this correctly, you will have unique content for each project, but each project will be duplicated across multiple domains with duplicate content. Duplicate content is still duplicate content. It sounds like you are talking about creating 2 or 3 mirror sites for each project. If this is the case, I very strongly advise against doing it this way. Every page in every domain should ideally have unique content. Duplicate sites and duplicate content pages will eventually get filtered out and you will not meet your goals.

[iqbal]

Originally Posted by TechEvangelist

If I understand this correctly, you will have unique content for each project, but each project will be duplicated across multiple domains with duplicate content. Duplicate content is still duplicate content. It sounds like you are talking about creating 2 or 3 mirror sites for each project. If this is the case, I very strongly advise against doing it this way. Every page in every domain should ideally have unique content. Duplicate sites and duplicate content pages will eventually get filtered out and you will not meet your goals.

thanks TechEvangelist..........this is wat i wanted to know as i din want to presume things from my own......i am now working on altering each site content to some extent so that i doesnt luk like a mirror of another...