As everyone who works in SEO knows, Ripoffreport.com (ROR) is a monkey on the back of many companies large and small. My first experience in ROR damage control came from a company here in Summerlin, Nevada. The company manufactured a niche product that was experiencing tremendous growth, as it was related to home improvements during the real estate boom. This out of control growth as well as the death of the founder put the company into a downward spiral in regards to their reputation on the internet.
It all started with one customer who went to Ripoffreport (ROR) to complain about not receiving their product on time. After the initial report was filed there were a few other people who became paranoid and also filed similar ROR reports. As we all know, ROR is almost always on the first page if you do not tend to the problem. The ROR was turning away new customers which almost killed their company.
I was hired on as a damage control SEO consultant. After doing my homework I realized that the complaining customers had already received their products and had also offered to send a letter of recommendation for the company to combat the negative feedback they left on ROR. Even with the letters of recommendations the report is and will still be there, which means that the problem is not solved.
My next phase was to flood the search engines with articles containing positive but true information about my clients along with the customers letters of recommendation. Fortunately, it worked within 1 week and is still working.
I am under the assumption that if you have a complaint on ROR you might be better off not responding to the negativity directly on ROR. It seems to me that reports that have more responses tend to stick in the search results longer and higher than reports that just contain the original author’s complaint. Maybe it is just me, but I am observing this trend to see if there is some validity to this observation.
Until I completely understand this ROR thing I am not going to advise my clients to respond to the reports directly on the site, but instead to respond via other indexable methods. Of course, if the reports just keeps sticking regardless of our efforts, I will then advise my client to respond directly on the site.
Anyone else see this trend on ROR?
