While most companies would love to show up higher in search-engines, can you imagine a situation where showing up first on Google is a bad thing?

This blog has an interesting article about a client that had this exact issue. Google was suggesting the company’s brand name + the word ’scam’ in their suggested results.

How would you feel about a company if when you typed in their name, the word ’scam’ was added to the brand name and suggested by Google?

While this function of Google is certainly useful for finding companies that truly ARE scams (and avoiding them), what happens when Google gets it wrong? Or more importantly: why is Google getting it wrong in the first place?

Let’s get this out of the way first: no one has a definitive answer about why Google gets it wrong sometimes. Google is very secretive about the algorithms and methods it employs to serve up search results, as well as suggested searches. However, there are two ideas floating about among search-intellectuals that may provide some insight:

1. There aren’t that many people searching for “brand name + scam” at first- but maybe just enough are searching for that term to make it appear low in the suggested results. Once it appears, people’s curiosity gets the better of them and they click just to see what’s out there. The user thinks “If Google is suggesting it’s a scam, I should at least check it out.”
2. Another, much-less fleshed-out hypothesis, is that Google is simply biased to serve up “scam”-related suggestions.

Neither of these seem to fully explain what’s going on, but that’s okay, because there is a simple solution.

While you can’t do much to remove any negative content on the web about your brand, you can make sure there’s plenty of positive content that is easily found by search engines. In fact, Google recommends this method for dealing with negative search results about a brand. It may not be immediate, but publishing positive content about your brand across the web, and then using SEO best-practices is a great way to push the negative search results further down the list, and keep your new positive article at the top of the list (and the top of your customers’ minds).

Consider implementing an online reputation management strategy, or at least a basic content strategy for your brand. Even if you aren’t experiencing any negative press or search-engine-woes, consistently publishing well-written, positive, and relevant content to the web is a great way to improve your off-page SEO. And if Google ever does suggest a negative term related to your brand, you’ll be ready!

But the answer isn’t what you might think.

In the previous post, we cited a study by Sysomos that revealed that only 4% of Facebook pages have 10,000 or more fans. That same study revealed that there is very little correlation between the frequency or subject matter of wall posts and number of fans. But, there is a strong correlation between the amount of other content like notes, photos, and videos, and number of fans.

So, if you want to grow and engage your fan base, thus leveraging Facebook users into actual paying customers, focus less on wall posts and more on posting videos, photos, and notes.

Remember, the key to success in any kind of content-based marketing is delivering valuable or relevant information to your audience. Focus on that, and the results will flow in.

Read on to find out why…

Many businesses make the mistake of focusing so hard on gathering more and more followers/fans, that they neglect the one thing that will turn the followers into paying customers: Content.

Now, we know you probably have heard the (old by now) adage “Content is King”, but there’s a reason it’s said so much. It’s because it absolutely is true! Spend one week focusing on putting out quality, relevant content on your Facebook page, and you will see more results!

Check back on Friday of this week for Part 2 of this series, where we’ll discuss exactly what kind of content you need to focus on to get more from your Facebook pages- the answer may surprise you!