Controlling the Narrative: A B2B Brand Reputation & SEO Suppression Strategy
Client: A B2B SaaS company in the competitive “project management” software space.
Challenges We Faced
The client’s sales team was struggling because a negative, out-of-date “competitor” review blog was ranking on page 1 for their brand name:
Negative Search Results
A negative, 2-year-old “review” (a hit piece) was “stuck” at position #3 for their brand name.
Losing Sales
The sales team reported that 30% of warm leads “went cold” after Googling their brand name, directly referencing the article.
No Positive Assets
The client had no “brand fortress.” Their homepage was their only positive result on page 1.
Low Brand Trust
A Comprehensive Reputation Audit showed their branded search sentiment was highly negative.
No SERP Control Strategy
There was no proactive effort to publish, optimize, and rank positive owned assets (PR pages, reviews, thought leadership) to push down the negative result and reclaim page-one real estate.
Protect Your Brand’s Reputation
“Is a negative search result costing you sales? Our Negative Content Suppression services can help you control the narrative.”
Our Approach – How We Solved These Challenges
Strategic Removal Plan
We first attempted a Direct Removal & Takedown, but the webmaster was unresponsive. We determined the article was “legal” (opinion) and shifted our strategy to SEO Suppression (Reverse SEO).
Positive Content Creation
This was the core of our negative content removal services. We built a “fortress” of new, positive web properties to outrank the negative link:
A new, high-quality “company news” blog.
A new microsite: “[BrandName]Reviews.com” featuring positive testimonials.
On-Page SEO for Positive Assets
We optimized all these new “positive assets” to rank for the brand name and related keywords, using Organization Schema Markup Implementation.
Off-Page SEO (Link Building)
This was the critical step. We ran a 9-month, high-authority link-building campaign to the new positive assets (the blog, the microsite) to give them the SEO power to outrank the negative article.
Results
| Metric | Before | After | Growth |
|---|---|---|---|
| Negative Results (Page 1 for Brand) | 1 (Position #3) | 0 (Pushed to Page 2) | -100% |
| Positive-Controlled Results (Page 1) | 2 (Homepage, LinkedIn) | 8 (Homepage, LinkedIn, Blog, Microsite, 4 new positive articles) | +300% |
| Qualified “Demo Request” Leads (MQLs) | 25/mo (Leaking) | 60/mo (Leak Plugged) | +140% |
Free Reputation Audit
“Not sure what your customers see? Claim a Free Reputation Audit and let our negative content removal company find your vulnerabilities!”
Advice for Marketers & Brand Owners
- You can’t always remove negative internet content, but you can bury it. This is the core of SEO Suppression (Reverse SEO).
- Build your “fortress” before you need it. Positive Content Creation (blogs, social profiles) is the best defense.
- Off-Page SEO (link building) to your positive assets is the only way to make them outrank a strong negative link.
Extra Factors That Made It Work
- The Off-Page SEO (Link Building) campaign was the real driver; it gave our new, positive pages the “authority” to rank.
- The new microsite was a fast way to get a new asset ranking.
- Using Brand Monitoring Tools (like Ahrefs) to track the SERP rankings in real-time.
