How to Deal With Negative Blog Comments Online

When you type your company name into Google, what do the results look like?

Are they all positive or neutral, or are there a number of negative results appearing. It is important to have a reputation management plan for your company, especially when you find negative comments appearing.

You should concentrate your efforts on removing any negative content, such as negative blog comments, from the first page of Google. If you don’t find any negative content, then that’s no reason to relax. Keeping on top of your internet reputation now can help to prevent negative comments cropping up easily at a later date, and means you are on the ball to push them back down if they do appear.

If you set up a blog, try to aim to set it up as either a separate website or as a subdomain. This will allow it to rank separately in the Google search results, which can help with your online reputation management. When setting up a separate blog, where possible, try to ensure that the domain name for your blog is either similar to, or reflects your company name or brand.

When you have set up a blog, the next thing to consider is content. Ideally, you want to be uploading at least one or two articles per week for your blog. This needs to be original, quality content, and you need to try and include one or two keywords within the text, so that search engines can pick it up as relevant to that keyword. But never overstuff with keywords, not only will that negatively affect the blog ranking, but it will also put off any visitors to the blog who will find the blog posts difficult to read.

Of course, it is likely that your blog will allow comments to be made on posts or pages. Whilst this can be good for the blog, as it will allow discussion on particular subjects or ideas, it may also mean that negative comments will be left.

There are a couple of ways to deal with negative blog comments, and you must consider which is the most appropriate for the situation:

• Ignoring the comment

Sometimes, a negative comment is best left ignored, but more so if you find it on an external blog without good ranking, or traffic. In this case, responding may help to rank the comment, which you obviously do not want, so leaving it alone will mean it is more likely to remain obscure.

• Respond to the comment

In most cases, and especially on your own blog, it would be a better idea to respond to the comment as appropriate. If someone is having issues with your company, or if they’re in disagreement with anything, try to take the time to help resolve the issue with them.

• Remove the comment

Not all comments made are by genuine customers or consumers, some may be spiteful or malicious in nature, from competitors for example. In cases like this, if you have the option to remove the comment completely, it may be better to do so. If it is on an external blog, you could send a message to the blog admin, quickly explaining why you think the comment should be removed.