Restoring a C-Suite Brand: An Executive Reputation Repair Strategy
Client: A C-suite executive at a national tech company.
Challenges We Faced
The client made a public misstep (a controversial tweet) that led to a major PR crisis, threatening their career:
Page 1 Dominated by Negative News
3 negative news articles and 2 angry blog posts dominated the top 5 results for their name.
Damaged Credibility
Investor and board member confidence was shaken.
Vandalized Wikipedia
Their Wikipedia & Knowledge Panel were updated to focus only on the negative event.
No Personal Control
They had no “personal brand” assets (like a personal website) to counter the narrative.
No Narrative Reclamation Strategy
There was no coordinated effort across SEO, PR, and owned media to correct Wikipedia, reinforce authoritative sources, and push a balanced, factual narrative back into the SERPs.
Control Your Personal Brand
“Is a public crisis hurting your career? Our Executive Reputation Repair services can help you take back control of your narrative.”
Our Approach – How We Solved These Challenges
Comprehensive Reputation Audit
We mapped the entire Page 1 damage and used Social Listening Tools (like Brandwatch) to track sentiment.
Strategic Removal Plan
We determined the news articles were factual and could not be removed. The strategy had to be Negative Content Suppression.
Executive Reputation Repair
This was the core of our crisis reputation repair strategy. We built a “fortress” of new, high-authority personal assets:
A professional personal website (“https://www.google.com/search?q=ExecutiveName.com”).
A new “thought leadership” blog on the personal site.
Off-Page SEO (Link Building)
We ran a 12-month editorial outreach campaign to get the executive quoted as an expert in new, positive articles on tech and business sites.
We built links to their new personal site to give it ranking power.
Results
| Metric | Before | After | Growth |
|---|---|---|---|
| Negative Articles (Page 1 for Name) | 5 | 1 (Pushed to #9) | -80% |
| Positive-Controlled Results (Page 1) | 1 (LinkedIn) | 7 (Personal Site, LinkedIn, Twitter, 4 positive interviews/articles) | +600% |
| Branded Search Sentiment (Brandwatch) | 90% Negative | 20% Negative | +70% (Positive Shift) |
Free Personal SERP Analysis
“Google your name. Don’t like what you see? Book a Free, Confidential Consultation with our crisis reputation repair experts!”
Advice for Marketers & Brand Owners
- Control your name. If you don’t own the search results for your name, someone else will.
- Build a Positive Content Creation “fortress” (a personal site, social profiles) to control your own search results.
- In a crisis, you must create new, positive news. Our Off-Page SEO (Link Building) and PR outreach built new, positive assets to rank.
- Fixing Wikipedia is about balance, not deletion. You must add new, positive, 3rd-party citations to justify any edits.
Extra Factors That Made It Work
- The Off-Page SEO campaign was the key to empowering the new positive assets.
- The new Executive Reputation Repair strategy focused on building a new, positive narrative, not just hiding the old one.
- Our SEO & Backlink Tools (Ahrefs) were critical for tracking the SERP rankings.
