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]

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