SEO or Search Engine Optimisation, is becoming more and more well known in website development and marketing circles here in the UK. Among the many things that combine to form a good SEO campaign is something called 'reputation management'.

Wherever you get companies advertised to the masses, you will get opinion. Whether these are customer opinions, news articles, written reports or case studies, they all have a bearing upon how the company is seen by the general public. The same can be said for the web, and it is even easier for those who have an opinion (good or bad) to show it, for the majority this is just 'freedom of speech'.

Blogs, social media accounts (Myspace, Facebook, Squidoo etc.), and personal homepages are more often these days free or relatively inexpensive to set up and become perfect breeding grounds for disgruntled customers. As someone once told me, good service is expected, bad service is punished. Reputation management/monitoring is something that SEO companies look at when working with their clients' brands.

Although for the most part, these negative impacting sites cannot be eradicated from the search results, there are certain things that either an SEO company or the targeted company can do. The main benefit is that companies are made aware of the negative sites surrounding their brand so that they can do something about it. Positive sites to counteract the negative impact that turn comments and arguments around, aiding the search engines to eradicate old or spammy sites from their indexes (in some cases, legal action can be taken).

Yet although consumer opinion is the larger part of the reputation management equation, there also has to be some emphasis on the company itself to produce good advertising that, when put to the test, provides positive feedback and is above all else, relevant. Some companies often find this more difficult than others due to their brand or the nature of the product/service they are offering. Think about 'Coke', 'Apple', 'Amazon' and 'Mars'. These big brands have developed themselves over time so that they are hitting the top results within search engines, yet market these terms wrongly and as far as a search engine is concerned, all you are talking about are drugs, fruit, a rainforest or river and a planet (although with Mars' latest product that might not be a bad thing!).

Companies ultimately need to start considering what impact and bad press within the search results has for them, and how to combat it. Produce positive to fight the negative and determine which searches they will appear on at the inception of an advertising campaign. Ensure the content is relevant to their product... not just their advertising. Try searching some of your own favourite brands and see what the search engines say about them...