What are the best online reputation management companies? Our expert breakdown

This article is part of our extensive series on Reputation Management. If you haven’t read our Complete Guide to Reputation Management, we suggest you start here. Enjoy!

If you’re trying to build your brand’s presence online, you’ve certainly heard about the importance of managing your brand’s reputation. But as you’ve likely discovered, it’s a complicated business.

Sometimes, attempts to control a brand’s reputation have the opposite effect of what you want, a dangerous phenomenon known as the “Streisand Effect.” So then how can you easily manage your online reputation?

It’s not easy, which is why today’s top brands rely on reputation management companies to handle online reputation management. However, depending on your brand strategy and your company’s needs, different companies might be a better fit than others.

What are the top reputation management companies out there, and which is best for your individual situation? We’ve put together this guide comparing three of the top reputation management companies, so you can see for yourself how experts make this difficult decision.

1. Go Fish Digital’s reputation management services

Go Fish Digital is a well-established marketing company that’s been around since 2005. They offer a few different services, but one of the pillars of their business is online reputation management. Within that area, they offer a few primary services:

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Review improvement
• Autocomplete cleanup
• Message targeting
  
  

Among these, the most unique are probably their review improvement and autocomplete cleanup services. SEO is perhaps the most common service offered by reputation management companies, and that’s because it’s one of the most versatile and valuable.

On the other hand, message targeting can be specific to an industry or medium, so the best company for this service will depend on your exact needs.

Review improvement

Review improvement is another specialized field. Sites like Yelp are essential for certain industries like restaurants, so good reviews can make a significant difference in your bottom line.

However, reviews are less critical for other businesses. Before investing in review improvement, you should first make sure that your target audience looks at reviews and check which sites they trust the most.

Autocomplete cleanup

Autocomplete cleanup can be an important part of a brand’s reputation, but it’s highly situational. For example, if you find that Google’s autocomplete shows negative suggestions related to your brand, you might want to clean it up.

But not all consumers use the same search engine, and many don’t even use the search engine’s homepage where autocomplete shows up. Carefully review your brand’s needs before investing in this strategy.

Overall, Go Fish Digital is a great choice if you’re looking to improve your Yelp reviews or move some autocomplete suggestions out of the top results for certain keywords related to your brand. 

2. SEO Image for online reputation management

SEO Image is an SEO and reputation management company with good industry-specific uses. If your business falls into one of their specific niches, you should look at them for your online reputation management needs. Specifically, they work best for law firms and doctors that want to improve their brand’s presence and reputation.

Reputation management for doctors & lawyers

Doctors working in private practice need to work hard to establish trust with their audience. Doctors tend to underestimate how willing their patients are to switch to a new physician, meaning they often have blindspots that reputation management can cover.

A good reputation can help keep current customers and even attract new patients from doctors whose reputations are suffering.

Like doctors, lawyers work on a relationship of trust with their clients. Because of the high cost of hiring a lawyer, someone looking to hire one needs to feel confident that their lawyer has earned a positive reputation.

That means that paying for professional reputation management can earn you significant dividends in the long run. Lawyers looking to manage their reputations online should look to companies like SEO Image that specialize in their industry.

Reputation management for professionals like doctors and lawyers is delicate and requires specialized skills. If you’re hoping to improve your private practice or law firm’s online reputation, you should take a closer look at SEO Image’s services.

3. Soar’s unique online reputation management strategy

Soar is a specialized reputation management company with three pillars of online reputation services:

• SEO
• Reddit traffic
• Quora lead generation

Soar SEO

As mentioned above, search engine optimization is one of the most important aspects of brand management online. Soar differentiates its offering with a comprehensive, foundational SEO service.

It creates a three-month plan for getting your website the organic traffic it needs through backlinks, content marketing, link outreach, and an SEO audit. It also offers each of those services a la carte, depending on your business’s needs.

Reddit traffic

One of Soar’s specialties is creating Reddit traffic through targeted messaging. Soar can help you launch your community on Reddit and promote posts that direct traffic to your site.

It can also manage your reputation by identifying and addressing negative PR that competitors may be bringing to the site and finding leads discussing their need for your product in relevant communities. 

Quora lead generation

Some brands spend thousands on building reputations as “thought leaders” or experts in their industry. But when regular people look for answers, they increasingly ask on sites like Quora rather than corporate websites.

That’s why Soar boosts online reputations through expert answers on Quora answers. These answers drive organic traffic from the person asking the original question and everyone asking the same question and looking at Quora for the answer.

 

Soar isn’t the largest or oldest online reputation management company. Instead, it’s a younger company that incorporates new tactics like Reddit and Quora lead generation into an SEO strategy.

For companies looking to boost their brand recognition or improve their online reputation, Soar offers uniquely valuable techniques.

Our recommendations

• If you’re looking for Yelp review or Google autocomplete improvement, Go Fish Digital is a great option
• Doctors and lawyers interested in online reputation management should look at SEO Image as specialists in their industries
• Brands that want to drive traffic to their sites and improve their reputations through Quora, Reddit, and modern SEO techniques should reach out to Soar, the leaders in those areas