Dealing with Haters
It’s been a long time since I last wrote - all apologies to my faithful fan base - in a very literal sense you are “an army of one” 
Seriously, though, I have been doing some consulting for a client who has a serious problems with haters ranking on their brand so I thought it would be helpful to share some common techniques with you.
Most of the time when I have dealt with haters (aka “suck sites”) the people I have been helping have had the instinct to want to start a bunch of new sites and outrank their competitors - this isn’t necessarily a bad idea, but it does take a lot of time, work and patience. Probably the best strategy would be to pursue this approach along with a more immediate, easier approach: help your existing fans outrank the haters.
So if I own purplewidget.com and somebody does a search for “purple widgets,” I should rank #1. If I don’t I need to fire my SEO or marketing guy - or both. But if somebody in the 2′nd or 3′rd position in saying “Purple Widgets is the worst place to shop online” on google there is going to be damage to my bottom line which is very hard to quantify.
What I am proposing you do is go to the next review which is either positive (or neutral) in the rankings and give them some link love with your brand (ie, “purple widgets”) as the anchor text. Since they are already ranking well on this term it shouldn’t take too much time or work to outrank the haters (unless you happen to be working with an extremely popular brand - in this case you probably have the time and money to beat them anyway).
This really isn’t rocket science but it is definitely something to take seriously. Do a search for uhaul to see an example of brand damage on a popular keyword term - what you will end up finding is the Uhaul Boycott Page in the middle of the SERP’s - the sad thing is that this has been around for a while and they still haven’t buried it. Seriously, UHaul, give me a call and we’ll talk…
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I had the worst customer service experience of my life at Uhaul in Provo. We waited for our small truck (which was already paid for) all day while Uhaul completely ignored us. Uhaul had trucks available, but they weren’t the small size that we reserved. Instead of giving us one of these other slightly bigger trucks (which they had even agreed to do at one point, but changed their minds), they just kept us there waiting until 6 PM, refusing to give a refund, despite the fact that no service had been provided and the day was spent. Meanwhile everyone that we had gotten to help with the move obviously just went home.
Basically, Uhaul sucks, and they deserve the bad publicity they get. What I’m saying is that a lot companies focus on improving SEO, etc, (which is important), but no amount of SEO makes up for a sucky product.
Comment by Jordan Gunderson — July 13, 2006 @ 10:28 am
Good idea! You could also do this pretty gracefully by quoting your fans on your website. At the bottom of the quote, hit ‘em up with that link love. This helps you self-promote, and ranks your fans higher, like you said.
It could all be in a “what are people saying about us?” page.
That one’s free, the next one will cost you.
Comment by Sam — July 17, 2006 @ 6:46 pm
Jordan - I’ve had one particularly bad experience with Uhaul so I definitely agree with you. I still think they could improve their SEO but ultimately if they want repeat customers they need to change their business practices. I can help them with SEO - focusing on the customer is some other guy’s job
Sam - good suggestion. It sounds like a win-win for you and your customers.
Comment by admin — July 19, 2006 @ 8:28 am
[…] So the Goont (aka Lewis) finally got around to putting some content on his blog - I wrote a post a few months ago about dealing with hater sites - it sounds like the Goont has a legitimate reason to start his own hater site… […]
Pingback by The Preston Blog - An internet marketing blog for internet retailers » The Goont is finally blogging — October 2, 2006 @ 8:49 am
That is great advice. I almost feel like it was just for me. Being an up and coming opera singer, I well be dealing with haters on an every day basis. I have to remember to not let them get to me, and do what I do
Comment by john beck — November 7, 2006 @ 12:01 am
Really useful to make some very irritating clients understand the concept behind keeping their websites with less images, most of the clients gets happy to see their competitor websites in flash but don’t understand its negative impact on search engine and when as company we try to convince they feel that we are unable to do the work in flash hence making excuses, ultimately such people has be left till the time they their self realize the point.
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Comment by Smith — January 10, 2007 @ 11:46 am
I suspect that’s thereason general public want to read blog….Internet visitors generally create blogs to declare themselves or their secret views. Blog grant them same matter on the monitor screen what they specifically needed,so as the above stuffs declared it.
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