I wasn’t originally planning on participating in HAPPO from the job seeker perspective, but after seeing all of the amazing tweets and posts today, I was inspired to join in.
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