While my degree is in Public Relations, my career has led me down the SEO and Internet marketing route. Since 2004, I have worked in a variety of search engine optimization, pay per click, and online reputation management roles for corporations and agencies, eventually going full time as a freelancer/consultant in early 2009.

For the past year, I’ve solely focused on online reputation management jobs, working with PR firms and individual clients to manage negative press that appears online about companies, business people, and products. It can be a fairly controversial subject, but I help companies to push down negative results for specific keywords by optimizing positive and neutral results through SEO and link building tactics. I work through PR agencies that have already gone through the crisis management steps with a client, companies that have been cleared from lawsuits that still appear online in top ranking positions, and individuals that are haunted by negative comments left on a blog.

While most negative press cannot be removed and will always show up in top rankings for specific keyword searches, there are certain cases where an ORM campaign is crucial – a negative web site showing up as the #2 result for a company name, a negative article showing up about a person with a similar product/name/company that clients start associating with you, or a lawsuit that has since been settled yet still shows as negative.

While it’s beneficial for clients to work with PR firms to solve their overall reputation issues, I can assist with one part of that equation – the online portion. Through methods such as link building, web site creation, profile optimization, and positive online press, negative results can be pushed down to page 3+ for specific keywords, including company names.

I’m hoping that through this post, I can be of help to PR firms that would like to offer ORM as a service. The PR community has been extremely helpful to me in the past, so even if you’re not interested at this time, I am more than happy to answer questions about ORM for those who would like to understand it better or that have smaller clients and just need a quick answer.

rachelkuptz at gmail dot com

248-767-0534

Since I can’t find an office space I like, I’m redecorating an empty room in our house. Mike wants a “man cave” in the basement, so I’m calling this “my cave.” So far I’ve set it up with a few extra large monitors, a nice long desk, lots of white boards (covering a whole wall), a comfortable couch, and a leather ottoman. I picture lots of work being done and lots of wine being consumed in this space.

This month I’ve already signed up for a few new forums and membership sites online – something that I said that I would put a pause on. In the past few months, I had signed up for Shoemoney’s Tools, Perry Marshall’s AdWords training, Crazyegg, and Unique Article Wizard. I’ve cancelled the first two memberships already (not using them enough) and am on the fence about Crazyegg, but I do love Unique Article Wizard. It’s helped me to push down a few negative results for one of my online reputation management clients, and it saves me a lot of time when it comes to submitting articles. I’ve also found a great writer that I can outsource the article re-writing to, so that’s saved me a lot of time as well.

The membership site that I did sign up for this month was The Keyword Academy (TKA). I make most of my income from affiliate marketing and don’t depend on AdSense revenue, but I was intrigued by the claims of TKA and have been reading the owner’s blog for quite a few years now, so I trusted what he was saying. The mathematics that TKA suggest go into finding profitable keywords that will lead to Adsense revenue was interesting, to say the least; I’m testing out their methods on a few of my dormant sites, so it will be interesting to see how much revenue I can actually make from Adsense.

In other news, my ex-best friend, the one I don’t talk to, is now engaged. Great timing. The people that you decide to push out of your life, though, the ones that are a negative influence on your life, make you appreciate the people that are positive in your life.