SEO and ORM: The Connection Between Search Rankings and Online Reputation

Success or failure in today’s digital world pretty much depends upon how your business comes off on the search engines. Therefore, as an entrepreneur or a marketing person, you must have been through the two very important concepts: SEO and online reputation management. Though two main things, they are completely different from each other and serve different objectives in relation to each other.

Knowing how these intersect will additionally help you with competitive advantages and reputational management for your brand.

What is SEO?

SEO is the practice that improves a website’s visibility and ranking in an organic search engine result page, commonly referred to as SERP. What this really means is all efforts that one puts out to get your rankings as high up in relevant results as possible naturally, in ways of driving traffic to your site. This includes keyword research, on-page optimization, technical SEO, link building, and creating content.

Effective SEO marketing will significantly boost your website’s performance in terms of impressions, followers, and even better engagement. It has been reported in the industry that a business investing in search engine optimization can observe phenomenal growth in website traffic, say, by 500% more impressions and a rise in new followers by 60%.

What is ORM?

Online reputation management, on the other hand, involves caring for and improving one’s brand on web pages. The activities herein entail managing customer reviews, negative feedback, and tailoring positive content out there on the internet for propagation throughout. Unlike SEO, which usually handles the driving of more visitors to your website, ORM has to do with controlling a story about your brand.

This means that when any particular search is done regarding your business, ORM tries to ensure that potential customers find something positive—by shoving the negative further down in the search results and filling the first page with positive representations of your brand.

Relationship of SEO with ORM

SEO and ORM may seem like two separate beasts, but they are in fact dramatically intertwined. Here are a few items of note to review:

1. Rankings Affect Reputation: The search engine rankings strongly have a say in your website’s or brand’s reputation. Let’s assume that your website happens to rank in the lower positions of the SERPs for potential keywords; then, prospects might feel skeptical about your authority and trustworthiness within that respective niche. High-ranking websites are always perceived as trustworthy.

2. Positive Content as SEO Assets: Great positive content does double duty, serving both for great search engine optimization and brand reputation building. When topics are developed to speak to customer pain points or outline the benefits of a brand, one will begin reaping improved search rankings and reinforce a better online reputation.

3. SEO Strategies for ORM: Most of the ORM strategies implement SEO strategies to suppress negative content. By optimizing positive reviews and testimonials for search engines, it becomes rather easy to push down unfavorable information further down the search results. This is called Search Engine Reputation Management, and it is an essential part of maintaining a good online reputation.

4. Local SEO and Reputation: Any business that operates a physical location must find local SEO plays a major role. Customers seem to rely on online reviews and search for locations before deciding where to shop or eat. A good local SEO strategy, integrated with a robust ORM plan, can boost your credibility and increase footfall in a big way.

5. Monitoring and Analytics: Monitoring, with analytics, again plays a role in both SEO and ORM. You might regularly look at your website’s analytics to find weaknesses that you should improve upon, or there is an ORM tool that might track mentions of your brand, even customer sentiment.

Some SEO Tips for Improving ORM

Following are some basic SEO tips, which shall help you employ SEO in ORM:.

Keyword Research: Find out relevant keywords regarding your brand and service, and blend them naturally for an optimized and visible content.

Quality Content Creation: Developing engaging and relevant content that caters to customer needs is bound to boost trust and authority along with drastic improvements in SEO.

Optimize Reviews: Make your happy customers leave a review on relevant platforms. Then, make an optimization of those reviews by inserting relevant keywords.

Social Media Engagement: Use social media to post/engage positive-oriented content relevant to your customers. Good engagement will bring the visitors back to your website and positively impact the search rankings. Monitor your web footprint: Make use of reputation management tools to see what people are saying about your brand and address their feedback before it starts affecting your reputation.

Conclusion

SEO and ORM are a part of an online strategy with respect to one another. With an understanding of their relationship, you will be in a position to effectively use SEO to better your online reputation. If you are looking to increase search engine results or consumer thought management, then the combination of SEO and ORM in your strategy is a kick-start to your way to do just that.

Want to improve both your search rankings and online reputation? Contact us for a free consultation on building a strong SEO and ORM strategy that enhances visibility, builds trust, and protects your brand!