This is a quick tutorial that will show you some simple steps you can take to make major aesthetic improvements to your branding sites.

Let’s take a quick look at a branding site we published in about 20 seconds. This is a basic site with a post that search engines will rank within a few weeks under the individual or company name.

(http://joename.corpfly.com/ – Click image for full size)

To do this we,

1) Click > Branding Sites > Launch SItes
2) Entered joename in the Corpfly.com box > Click Publish
3) Click > Control Center > Add Post > Publish

Now in this example we took the exact same site and spent about 10 minutes making some aesthetic improvements. In this branding site there are no spammy advertisements and it comes across clean, informative, and professional.

(http://joename.corpfly.com/ – Click image for full size)

So, how did we do it? It’s actually pretty easy. Check out the step by step instructions below,

#1 We decided to switch out the theme of Corpfly.com to something a little more bright and clean.

Click Branding Sites > Launch/View Sites > Current Sites > Blue Mountain Icon

Select theme and click Activate

#2 We decided to include an Executive Photo and Bio in the sidebar.

Click Branding Sites > Launch/View Sites > Current Sites > Executive Photo Icon

Select the Branding Site to at top, upload photo, and enter bio info and links to your social media accounts.

#3 We decided to add a few links in the sidebar to positive press about Joe Name. 

Click Link Boost > Add Links > Enter Web Site Title and URL to link.

#4 We decided to add a a picture of Joes’ Office in the post

Click the Add Image Icon in the Post Box. Upload Photo and Insert into Post.

That’s It! 

Premium Users can now download 6 Month Reputation Management Campaign Templates to track their progress each month.

In the Control Center Click Results/Tracking >> Campaign Templates

Concierge Clients can login to their Premium Account and see the work plan for their 6 Month Reputation Management Campaign. Here you can view the new sites that are created each month and double check to make sure we are on schedule, but we always are 🙂

In the Control Center Click Results/Tracking >> Track Work

A major part of the reputation management process is building a network of web sites about you or your company. Typically the average entity will have 10-20 sites they want to rank throughout their top 30. This can suppress unwanted web sites and protect the person or company from any future unwanted web sites appearing high in their Google results.

Building the site network is easy, especially with tools like Repumatic. You can launch a 20 site branding network in less than 5 minutes, throw in your twitter, linkedin, facebook, dot com, and you pretty much have your entire reputation management infrastructure built. That’s great, but it does leave you with a large task – keeping that 20+ network of sites updated with unique content.

How should we update the sites?
How often do we update?
What kind of updates?
How long should they be?
Who should write the updates?

These are the five main questions most people have. We will address each one below that should provide a general guideline to your updating process.

How should we update the sites?

Use Repumatic! The software is designed to streamline the updating process. In your Control Center simply click the drop down arrow and it will instantly show your branding sites and the last date they were posted to. Select the site that you want to post to, enter title and description, click publish. You never have to leave the front page of the Repumatic dashboard to update your branding sites.

For other sites like Facebook, Linkedin, etc simply click “Other Sites” in your Control Center and and you can remotely publish to your account on leading social media and blog sites.

You can also autopost to your branding sites in Repumatic. One idea here is to have yourself or a freelance writer create 100 snippets (3-5 sentence updates) and have Repumatic autopost those to your branding sites once a month for xx months.

How often do we update?

This depends on the content. If you have something unique to say that people will find interesting then weekly is great. If the update is biographical in nature and not that interesting and similar to the previous updates on the specific site then once every 3-6 months is fine. Search engines like Google have all sorts of algorithms. One of them is known as QDF meaning Quarry Deserves Freshness. You get the idea. They want to see sites in their index that are kept updated – Fresh.

What kind of updates?

No matter what, the content has to be unique in grammatical structure. Copying one post and adding it to multiple sites is a big no no! Search engines have duplicate content algorithms. The best updates you can provide would be unique and engaging content for the reader. But let’s face it, sometimes that just isn’t practical. In that case just make sure the update isn’t a clone of previous updates. Mix it up as much as possible! Think content diversity in your posts. Do you already have a ton of biographical posts about your company on your site networks? Then for the next round create some posts on the nonprofit you have teamed up with or the new software that will improve your client’s performance etc.

How long should the updates be?

A 20 word update is better than no update, but a 200 word update is better than a 20 word update. 500 word + updates we find to be unnecessary and of little help in ranking.

Who should write the updates?

This is a tough question. For the content to be unique and engaging it probably has to be written by you. Nobody knows you or your company better than you do., etc. The problem of course is that you have other things to do. So one option is to engage freelance writers on sites like www.textbroker.com  Typically you pay around $5-10 for a 200-300 word article. If you are writing about your company then it may make sense to have a member of your staff take over this task. If you are writing about yourself then you might want to keep the updates short and sweet and limited to every 3-6 months per site.

To sum it all up. Updates are good. Search engines like updates. Just do the best you can with the time and resources available to you.

1)      Unique Content

Any site that you would like to rank high under the name of a client will need unique content. The site should have a minimum of 100 words, ideally more, that have not been copied from another web site that is already published. Search engines like Google have duplicate content algorithms. This means that if you launch 10 sites and post the same article to all 10 sites, only 1 will rank well. The other 9 will get flagged in the duplicate content algorithms and never rank, regardless of any other positive SEO factors the 9 sites may have. As a rule of thumb, you want to use human writers over article spinning software. There are a variety of services like TextBroker, where you can quickly connect with writers. A 250-300 word article from a professional, English speaking writer will usually cost around $10.

2)      Keyword Usage

The name of your client should be listed in the Site URL, Site Title, and several times within the content of the site. If you would like a particular site to rank high for “Tridant Financial” but only list the keyword “Trident Financial” once on the page, not in the title or URL, the site will have a very difficult time ranking high under “Tridant Financial”. Here is an example of good keyword usage,

Site Title – Tridant Financial News and Information

URL – www.tridantfinancial.incpro.com

Tridant Financial used 3-10x in the article or post.

3)      Backlinks

Gone are the days of purchasing high quality backlinks and watching your sites shoot up in Google. In a Reputation Management campaign, you are trying to rank sites that are approved by the client under their name, not under a keyword, such as “Viagra”. Therefore, it’s generally much easier to rank new content under a client name than in a highly competitive niche where hundreds of competitors are running SEO campaigns. However, a Reputation Management company has the burden of ranking multiple sites in the top 10, and crowding out the unwanted content under the client’s name. In a Reputation Management campaign, backlinks serve mainly these three purposes:

–          Get search engines to index the site faster.

–          Show search engines this is valuable content.

–          Get search engines to index the site updates faster.

You will need a manual backlinking program in your Reputation Management campaigns. You can use the Speed Ranker service from Repumatic or a variety of other backlinking services.

4)      Updated Content

For most clients you will be building a network of positive sites plus backlinking their current positive press. It’s important to keep their site network updated. This shows search engines like Google that these sites are fresh. A rule of thumb is to weekly, monthly, or bimonthly add a snippet to each site. A snippet is a quick update, usually 2-5 sentences and, of course, contains unique content. In Repumatic, we will soon be launching Autoposting capabilities. This will enable you to upload your snippets and command Repumatic to post to your clients’ sites at unique intervals, i.e. 7 days, 40 days, etc.

5)      Using catchy Meta Tags

Meta tags are what people see in Google before deciding to visit the actual site. If possible, it’s a good idea to use a Meta Title and Description that will encourage someone to follow the link. It’s no secret that search engines tend to lean more and more heavily on usage data to determine rankings. This is exactly how negative content can make it quickly to the top by using sensationalistic keywords like Scam, Ripoff, etc. If people are Googling the client and clicking on the link, it will likely rise in the search results. This isn’t something that can be manipulated, but it’s important information you can use to your advantage when creating sites for clients. For more information on this please click here.

One project we are working on is making branding/review sites that members can customize. We are excited to show you our first customizable branding site available to Repumatic Business Users. We started with a Repumatic Review Site in the Hospitality industry – www.vacationreview.net  Initially the top banner showed palm trees and the words “Vacation Review” scrolled across the center.  That design however made the review site too niche focused. It would make sense for a bed and breakfast in Key West but not a Ski Resort in Breckeridge, CO.

So, if you activate this review site in Repumatic you will notice a new customization icon next to the branding site.

Click the custimization icon and you are given multiple options for the background header such as; palm trees, mountains, cityscape, and custom. With the custom option you can upload any image you choose to the header.

This is our first step toward branding/review site customization. We will be taking giant leaps in the near future. Stay tuned!