Negative Results Course: Third Party Articles and Blogs
Script from the lesson The Negative Results Course
Jason Barnard speaking: Dealing with problematic articles or blogs. What’s the situation? A third party is ranking on your Brand SERP with an article that reflects badly on your brand. The blue link and description are unhelpful, inaccurate, or outright negative, or maybe they have given you a bad rating and the yellow star looks bad.
Jason Barnard speaking: What can you do to deal with this problem? You have two choices. Number one is to drown it with better content, push it down the rankings off page one and out of sight. Number two is to start a dialogue and try to get it changed. I recommend that you do both. Since you have no control over the content, if you want any changes to be made to this article, you’re going to have to ask them to change it directly and to do that, you need to build a relationship, and building a relationship takes time.
Jason Barnard speaking: So, ideally you start a dialogue with them with the aim of convincing them to at least change what shows in the SERP. And at the same time, you start to leapfrog a campaign to push the article down. Why bother doing both? You could just drown it and that moves it out of view for most of your audience, but people will still see the article in other contexts and reducing its negative impact in every context is a good thing from a business point of view.
Jason Barnard speaking: And reducing negativity is also important from an SEO point of view. Google has ranked this content on your Brand SERP. It therefore thinks that the content is pertinent. Google believes what this person is saying, and that damages the trust part of your expertise, authority, and trust in Google’s eyes. If you can, get the author to soften their point of view and that sends a very positive E-A-T signal to Google.
Jason Barnard speaking: Even better, the work you do on controlled and semi controlled content such as your social media accounts, review sites, informational sites, and so on will help your E-A-T and that will help with your efforts to manage and improve your Brand SERP and also your wider SEO strategy. Now, a quick warning, actually getting someone who’s written a scathing article or given a very bad review to change what they’ve written about you is very tough. They don’t appreciate you or your products and you’re asking for a big turnaround. It’s worth a try, but it doesn’t succeed very often. Importantly, don’t push it. If your initial attempt to connect with them and contact them don’t work, then you should stop because you could well make things worse and spark another negative article.
Jason Barnard speaking: Use your good judgment. If the article is simply unconvincing, they simply didn’t see the amazing benefits of your product. In that case, an enthusiastic presentation might just get some positive changes for you. If the content is fine and it’s just the title and description that are uninspiring, then getting a change might prove pretty easy.
Jason Barnard speaking: They’ll probably want to improve their appearance in the SERPs, both on your Brand SERP, but more importantly for them on other SERPs where that article appears. There are all sorts of different cases of suboptimal and negative third-party content and I can’t cover them all. This lesson is the description of an approach that I found to be successful.
Jason Barnard speaking: You’ll need to adapt it to your specific case. Also, I suggest you watch the lesson about Improving The Results You do not Control in the Fundamentals course. The ideas and approach here are very similar to that. So, both will be useful and give you ideas about how to approach your particular problem. Starting a relationship with the person is the absolute fundamental part of everything that follows. The best way to start this relationship is through a mutual acquaintance.
Jason Barnard speaking: Look at your list of contacts and see if you know someone in common. LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook all allow you to see your connections or followers that you have in common and that’s a great way to start. If you do both know someone and you know them well enough, then ask for an introduction from that person.
Jason Barnard speaking: The entire task usually comes much simple as you can imagine. If you can’t get that introduction, then try to connect with them on social media, LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook once again. Connect on one or two platforms to be sure you get your name on their horizon. Now, they wrote an article about your brand or your product, and like you, they probably haven’t thought much about the people behind it. With that, you’re showing them a name and a face of a person, and that may start to change their attitudes to the brand. If they do connect, then you can start to dialogue. If they don’t connect or react, don’t necessarily give up, they might just be busy and have missed your connection request. You might well want to move on to the next step anyway, but be wary and be very tactful.
Jason Barnard speaking: If the article is very critical, you could well make things worse and spark another negative article. In that case, just stick to leapfrogging. Use your good judgment once again. Once they’ve seen you, you become a person to them. You can probably message them or send them an email if you have their address and you can start building that relationship, but don’t rush it.
Jason Barnard speaking: This isn’t like link building where you might shoot off 30 emails to people and hope that a couple of reply. There’s only one person here and that person is sitting on your Brand SERP and they’re the only person who can help you. If you rush it and get it wrong, the game is over. It’s vitally important not to approach this from the point of view of asking for what you want. Stop and think about how they feel, what they’re looking for. Put yourself in their shoes and try to see what value you can bring to them. Clearly, if you start the dialogue with I, me, mine, then you have almost zero chance of getting any changes made. But if you start the dialogue with some demonstrable benefit to them, then you have a chance of getting a point where you can ask for changes. It’s not easy to do and it requires empathy and tact.
Jason Barnard speaking: Here are some ideas for value that you can bring to them. If they’ve misunderstood the functionality, or if you’ve updated your product since the article was written, then accuracy is a possible angle. They’ll want to be accurate and honest with their audience. If the metas are uninspiring, then improving their presence in the SERPs is a good angle.
Jason Barnard speaking: If the article is good but uninspiring, you could approach this with the idea that you were building a page linking to articles about your brand or product, and their article could be included in that page. That may inspire them to do a rewrite. If the article is clearly inaccurate, then tactfully pointing them to a resource about E-A-T might work. Inaccurate information in an article attached to their name will damage the expertise element of their expertise, authority, and trust.
Jason Barnard speaking: If you know SEO, then helping them with the SEO of that page might be a quid pro quo that could interest them. Stating it that blatantly is probably a bad idea, but offering some advice might work indicating other keywords they could potentially rank for or a Featured Snippet they might be able to win.
Jason Barnard speaking: Those are all ideas for approaches that bring value to them. You’ll need to look at the specific case and adapt. Practically speaking, your top priority is the metas. You really want to get them to change the meta title. They could correct an inaccuracy or tone it down and maybe even be a little bit positive about you.
Jason Barnard speaking: A better meta title is an opportunity for them to look better on the SERP and also to rank slightly better for existing keywords or even rank for more keywords. And that gives them more visibility and potentially more traffic. The same thing goes for the meta description. Once again, perhaps they can make it more accurate or perhaps they can tone it down.
Jason Barnard speaking: You might want to ask them to change the content too, but bear in mind that that’s very delicate. You’d need a good relationship and a very good reason. Telling people what to say on their site is obviously a delicate issue. Good reasons include if they’ve got something factually incorrect, if you’ve updated your product, if your brand has changed in some way, your logo, your location, the market you cover, or perhaps you’ve been bought by a larger corporation. It might be worth pointing out to them that the meta title and meta description are not visible on their page, so their audience will never see it. Now, you might want to ask them to change the content, but bear in mind that that’s very delicate. You need a good relationship and a very, very good reason. Telling people what to say on their site is obviously a delicate issue. Good reasons include maybe they’ve got something factually incorrect, maybe you’ve updated your product, if your brand has changed in some way, your logo, your location, the market you cover, or perhaps you’ve been bought by a large corporation. If the article has enormous potential to rank for some great keywords with just a small SEO work that you can help with, that might be a good reason too.
Jason Barnard speaking: Throughout any exchanges you have with them, don’t lose sight of the fact that this specific issue isn’t a priority for them. It’s super important for you, but probably right at the bottom of their list of priorities. Once again, look at it from their point of view, put yourself in their shoes, and try to see how you can make it a higher priority for them.
Jason Barnard speaking: All of that assumes you have managed to build a positive relationship with the person. If you can’t build the relationship or the relationship doesn’t allow you to ask for those changes, don’t push your luck. Stop. If you feel they’re not going to be helpful, don’t push them. Also, don’t bully or argue, that will almost certainly make them angry and could well explode in your face.
Jason Barnard speaking: You could well make things worse and spark a rewrite that’s even more negative. And don’t call the lawyers or take an argument onto a public platform. Watch the lessons about Tactics to Avoid And Mistakes not to Make in the Fundamentals course if you haven’t already. And if you have watched that lesson, I can simply say the Streisand effect and you’ll know what I mean.
Jason Barnard speaking: This is the point where you’ll be glad you started leapfrogging before you contacted them. Their article will probably already be falling down the rankings on your Brand SERP and may soon drop onto page two. Now, how can you make the most of this
bad situation? If this person said something negative, unless it is out of pure spite, there’s probably a reason behind it.
Jason Barnard speaking: You could be a little self-aware and see where you’re falling short and what you can do to improve. You can also learn something by asking yourself why they’re ranking for your brand term? What are they doing right that allows them to rank on your name above content that you think is better? Something about their SEO has convinced Google that their article is a relevant and helpful resource for your audience.
Jason Barnard speaking: So, reverse engineer the SEO of that article, wording, inbound links, trust signals, structured data and so on and figure out what that article has that the articles below it don’t, and get some handy tips and tricks that will help you with your Brand SERP SEO.
Jason Barnard speaking: Thank you.
