One branch of the searchengineoptimization which has not quite arrived in Germany answers to the nice name of “Search Engine Reputation Management” which is abridged to “SERM”. The number of searchqueries for which the searcher is looking for information and opinions about brand names and products is growing constantly. This can be problematic for the trademark holder if the first resultspage is filled chiefly with negative opinions. Those who are quick to say “CompanyXY should just offer better service/products and stop treating their customers that way” should keep in mind that there is also disapproving competition and that the ratio between criticism and praise should be realistic. During the last month and years, this problem was aggravated through the growth of opinion-portals and bloghosters. When trying to beautify the SERPs you have to distinguish between two types of searchers.

The first type is looking for the company's or product's homepage. They will probably just click on the first result and not pay attention to the other sites. For this it is enough to have you site on position one for that keyword, something that should pose no problem for brand- and product-names.

The second type is more complicated. They are searching for informations and opinions, preferably from independent sources. This type can usually be found more often with experienced Internet users and the amount of them will naturally grow within the next few years. Registering more domains with company-content or using subdomains to push negative opinions out of the SERPs is not much help since it will usually not take long to determine which informations are authentic. In this case you should try and find positive opinion pieces on the best known portals and then push them with a few targeted links. These links can also be declared as customer opinions on the company-homepage which will also raise the authenticity of the site. Another nice method which has become popular during the last few month are PayPerPost-providers which pay bloggers to write a posting about a certain product or brand. Even though the blogers should theoretically be unrestricted in their decision-making and opinion which they blog about, but there are rumors that there can be some financial means of controlling the output.

The important thing is not to overdo it. When a SEO-agency from the Frankfurt-region registers dozens of domains to shove back negative opinions for the brandname, then these actions will quickly become unnatural which in turn will perplex veteran searchers. The importance is in finding a healthy middle ground – a negative opinion on the first page is no broken leg if there are 4 or 5 positive ones, too.