The online world opens up opportunities for many businesses, but it also brings the ability for new organizations, bloggers and other websites to publish negative information about you or your company. If you have found information online, that is not true and shows you in a negative way, you need to understand how you can get these articles removed. This isn’t an easy process, but in three steps, you can remove any negative article or comments published about you.
Contacting the Publisher
The first step you should always take when dealing with a negative article is to contact the publisher. Sending an email or actually calling the publisher may work, if you’re professional. However, when this doesn’t work, you want to send a certified letter because this gives you proof they received your request, which may come in handy later. Any information you can offer to prove the article contains false information can help get it removed.
Combatting Negative Content with the Truth
If you cannot convince the publisher to remove or correct the content, you may need to publish content to help offset the negative affect. By publishing the truth, you can direct readers to your content and take some heat off you from the negative articles published. Many writers can help you with putting the truth out there and the help of a search engine optimization service can help get your content listed above the negative articles in the search engine results.
Consult a Professional
When negative articles start to ruin your reputation and you don’t want to handle it on your own, you can hire an online reputation management company. This type of company uses many different internet reputation management tools to help give you the type of reputation you need for your business and for your personal life. Not only will they help you get the negative content removed, but they can also help ensure you maintain a positive reputation moving forward.
These three steps can help you when negative content takes over your life and can help you maintain a positive reputation. It’s important to save face whenever possible and since this process can be very time consuming, you may want to consider hiring a professional to manage your reputation. If you need to handle other tasks, a professional will help save you time and can also make sure your reputation remains positive.
