I’ve done a handful of a dozen of these brand preservation campaigns since I started to publicly advertise that side of the business a couple months ago.

I guess you guys are a competitor in the strictest sense but there’s no shortage of this kind of business and I get most of it from referral so if you can benefit from what I’ve learned, I’m happy to do it. Especially since I have sucked down my fair share of bandwidth with WBP tools!

There are two distinct tiers of these campaigns: Big Guy and Little Guy. I helped one Fortune 100 company and all it really took was to cash. They ended up buying some sites listed in the SERPs around them and got some links to their subdomains or other sites under their management to push out the derogatory listing. Very easy and the crap was pushed to low page 2 in 30 days. They felt this probably saved them millions of $$$ in sales, so they were blank-checking the affair.

The Little Guy is where it gets tough. Especially a Little Guy with very little historical reputation in the SERPs. At that point you’re PPC’ing, buying 2nd or 3rd page SERP sites and trying to boost those to the front, buying directory listings, etc,. And with these you’re first goal should just be to get the negative SERP below the fold.

Brand Preservation campaigns are about as fun as it gets in SEO/SEM. You get the feeling you are holed up in the Alamo duking it out versus the long term kind of engagements we’ve all been doing for years.

Good luck!

You also bring up a great point when you say “Especially since it’s not illegal (or unethical) to write something negative about a company (as long as it’s not actionable). ”

I’d have to agree with you….I’m just showing options of a person who want a page “gone” by whatever means possible.

Jim,

That’s a pretty dirty move. Especially since it’s not illegal (or unethical) to write something negative about a company (as long as it’s not actionable).