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Case Study | APX Alarm

By: David Bailey

"Apx Alarm" Negative Press Search Results

After years of upstanding business practice Apx Alarm finds itself in the search engine path of several negative product reviews and blogs. The most prominent, appearing above the first fold on the first page of Google is:

http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/0/238/RipOff0238269.htm

To understand how this happened and how negative press get to the top of search engines. Some people believe that Google just promotes negative phrases more than positive, this is not true. Both negative and positive press are governed by the same basic rules.

First, search engines today value links very highly. On the web, they're analogous to word-of-mouth recommendations. If someone posts a compelling negative article, they can easily get their friends and co-workers to link to it, which increases the search engine's valuation of the article when it's queried for your company.

Second, many search engines value some links more heavily than others. A single link from a long-established, trusted, quality site, will often outweigh dozens of links from unknown sites. Some of the major "consumer affairs" sites like Ripoff Report have already achieved these coveted positions, so if someone's article appears on these sites, then it has a built-in a competitive advantage.

Finally, in all media, sensationalism draws. It is easier to attract attention, and therefore links, for the horror stories and once-in-a-lifetime accomplishments, than for everyday integrity and success.

When it comes to the Internet, information is a constantly flowing stream, and it flows fast. The only real news is what's up at the top of the search page, so use something that you know works to manage, control and shape those messages that you care about. SEO has a pivotal role in reputation management, as it can remove negatives and enhance positives on the first page of results, which is usually the only page that matters.

Cleaning up the search results for your company is a matter of harnessing the same principles that have left it muddy. A quality SEO service will be able to build links to positive information about your firm, and piggyback your message on trusted resources.

The following report shows proof that no one has ever attempted to manage or control positive or negative press from the search engines prospective. Without an effort to control your search engine presentation, there is a very real risk that your company name could be buried under negative reviews, or outright hijacked by a competitor who builds a site perceived as more relevant to your name than your own.

Inbound Link Optimizer Report

Report Overview

This report will help us to understand the status of the web page on Ripoff Report and why it is getting such a high ranking for the search term "apx alarm".

No analysis can ever be 100% complete because no search engine reveals all web pages that link to a site. However, it can show trends that are important for high rankings on Google.com

Analyzed Search Terms

apx alarm
apx
alarm

Search Engine Analyzed

Google.com

Number Of Inbound Links

Link popularity measures how many web pages link to your site. The number of pages that link to your site is not as important as the quality of web pages that link to your site.

All major search engines take the quality and context of links into account. Search engines assume that your web page offers relevant content if many quality sites link to it.

Number of inbound links indexed by Google.com for www.apxalarm.com (29)

For a company of this size to only have 29 links is very dangerous. Your name can at this point be easily owned or degraded without much effort.

As a reference point, www.mesawasteservices.com, a one year old site, has 647 inbound Google accepted links. www.securityco-op.com has 261 Google accepted links. Together they have over 26,000 recognized links in Yahoo.

Links from .gov and .edu sites can be beneficial for your search engine ranking. The site www.apxalarm.com has none of these links.
Being ranked within DMOZ.org is important for search engine ranking. www.apxalarm.com is not listed.
You are listed in yahoo.com but so is your competition. But it is good to be listed here.

Number of inbound links indexed for

http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/0/238/RipOff0238269.htm (0)

Since no web page from a different domain has been found that links to this site. Getting at least one quality link to a competitive domain would probably beat this URL in a short period of time.

Conclusion

Since nearly every inbound link to your site comes form negative reports articles or blogs it is quite obvious that very little if any effort has been put into the positive promotion of the site www.apxalarm.com. This is a severe oversight by a company of this size. Not only would it be possible for people to negatively promote your site on line but it could also be quite profitable with the correct strategy. Most notably, a competitor could easily "skim off" people searching for your services, by building a page that ranks well for your name.

Examples

Krank Golf (www.krankgolf.com) is a company that has had bad reviews, reports and blogs about their product. We now completely dominate the internet with positive reports and articles.

Page one search for "krank golf":

http://www.google.com/search?q=krank+golf&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

Page three search for "krank golf":

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&hs=rG9&q=krank+golf&start=20&sa=N

Page ten search for "krank golf":

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&hs=W3T&q=krank+golf&start=90&sa=N

Page twenty search for "krank golf":

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&hs=z3T&q=krank+golf&start=180&sa=N

In comparison, a search for "apx alarm" is about 20% negative from beginning to end.