10e20 Blog

Don’t think the rich and famous lose sleep at night after a Google vanity search returns unfavorable results? Think again.

A few months back, a particular celebrity called me, out of the blue, looking to hire someone to help him sleep better at night. Apparently a certain result for his name on a Google query, was causing him much distress. He felt that the search result, a blog post, attacked him in a way that was so malicious and unfair, and that his professional reputation was in jeopardy. He obtained my phone number through a friend of a friends, cousin, twice removed (a little exaggeration there) - who told him I might be able to help with this sort of stuff. He asked me if I could remove the malicious post - I told him I could not - but can possible bury it into the deep abyss of the Google index. He found favor in my solution, and so our journey began.

I cannot disclose the name of the celebrity, out of fear of violating our non-disclosure agreement, and opening myself to liability. But I will give you some clues to who the celebrity is. It’s only fair.

• He is a famous physician, a Dr. Ruth, Dr. Phil, Dr. Weil, type.
  
• He is a frequent guest on Larry King Live and the Oprah Winfrey Show.
  
• Hosts various programs on the Discovery Channel, Court TV, and other education television networks here in the USA.
  
• He is a distinguished scientist, and holds title of professor at two prestigious Universities.

Designing the search landscape

How would we like our top 20 Google results to look for our query? In order to design a search landscape, we needed to identify favorable pages - ones that we would like to appear for his single keyword - his name. (Am I glad this project doesn’t require keyword research! That saves us a lot of time). I told him to create a list of 50 URL’s in which he would like to rank well for. Within a day, he provided me a list. The list contains articles he wrote, biography pages, television transcripts, his university profile pages - most on highly authoritative news sites and university domains. A smile lit up on my face. Another big time saver. The goal is to push those pages to the top of the search engine result pages. The methodology is clear. Build links to pages. We have the content. Now we need the links.

Wikipedia

When grooming the reputation of a celebrity, the Wikipedia is destination numero uno. Is the celebrity’s profile up to par? Does it shed any negative light? Are there problems with accuracy? We can instantly take steps to improve the celebrity’s Wikipedia bio. By adding content (text, links, resources, photos) we are defining the page as an authority resource, and increasing the keyword density for the target search term. We also look for other relevant articles where we can internally link within the Wikipedia to his bio page. Rewire the Wikipedia so that many quality internal pages point to the celebrity bio.

We also built outbound links to various pages on the celebrity’s most desired web pages. The Wikipedia adds nofollow tags by default, and we can’t build link popularity directly from these pages. But we can drive traffic. And driving traffic to a page increases the likelihood that it will rank better. We hope other sites will use the recently edited Wikipedia pages’ external references as resources for themselves, inspiring natural link building.

The Celebrity’s Official Website

The single place where we maintain 100% control over the content written about Celebrity X (unlike the Wikipedia where we have limited control). And that place is the official web site and bio. These pages should rank at the top of the search engine results pages, and optimizing them is key. Fixing the title tags, header tags, and modifying text was enough to quickly get these pages where they need to be. On the site, we maintain a press room where we link out to pages, blogs, articles, and videos of our choice.

Social Networks

Social networks have much impact on the reputation of high profile figures. Take a look at the social network of bloggers that launch link bombs to boost the popularity of figures such as Stephen Colbert, and shat on unpopular politicians and a famous documentarian.

There is so much one can do with the social networking sites to improve rankings. This blog is filled with strategies and tactics for doing so. We know that getting exposure on a social media network can have a snowball effect with boosting link popularity. Our goal is to make sure that positive press is looming throughout the social media sites, and if negative press makes its way in - take action. The “bury” button on Digg is a perfect example of taking action, and actively crowding out the bad.

I consulted with Chris for this project on utilizing Digg, as he is admired as one of the leading gurus in the field. His expertise enabled him to position one of the articles we wanted to gain exposure for, to the #1 spot on the Digg homepage - within minutes. In less than a week, that article is currently occupying position 4 and 5 on Google for our query!

Moving along to the Myspace, Friendsters, Facebooks of the world. If appropriate, make sure your celebrity has his or her own page and URL. Be wary of who you approve as friends, and actively moderate comments on their pages. Just like the celebrity’s personal site, we have almost complete control of what goes on here. We do not have total control over what is going on off the page. Carefully monitor and effectively deal with activity that may shed negative light on the celebrity you were hired to protect. Pages on these domains tend to rank very well, so make good use of them!

Forums & the Blogosphere

People love to talk. Visit a popular site like Perez Hilton and you’ll find hundreds of comments on any single blog post about Paris Hilton, Brittany Spears, or the celeb du jour. Most of the dialogue is nonsense. People bored at work or school, shooting the shit. People want to get their voices heard. It’s natural. Sometimes people say nice things. Sometimes people like to say nasty things. This phenomena is difficult to control, but we make every attempt to. We are constantly monitoring the blogosphere and forums for libel that must be addressed. Often the publisher will remove it with a simple request. Often, we must carry a heavier stick to accomplish this. The reality is - that unless posts are clearly libelous, there is little we can do. If we must - we will interject ourselves into the dialogue of a forum or blog, to neutralize or debunk it. We can participate in conversations that allow us to link out to the pages we want to rank.

YouTube

Has your celebrity made any television appearances? Get them on YouTube. Title them and tag them with the celebrity name. YouTube videos make their way into Google Video - which pop into the search engine results ever so often.

In conclusion, this is an ongoing project

Search engine optimization is not always about ranking one site for many keywords. It can also encompass ranking many sites for one keyword. And that precisely is the goal for any reputation management project such as this one. While we can’t always remove a page from a search engine’s index, we can certainly take proactive steps to hide it.

I hope to use your feedback, as I anticipate writing part 2 of this post.