Dealing with a former associate's bad behavior
-
A former associate (law firm) has gotten into hot water since leaving the firm. The problem is that he has numerous profiles across the web that are still associated with the firm's address and website. A search for his name in Google often leads directly to the law firm or their profiles.
Is there anything that can be done to dis-associate the firm from this person?
Thanks
-
Thank you very much for you for your feedback. I'm dreading all of this manual work.
-
This is very helpful. Thanks for taking the time to provide really good information.
-
I agree with Patrick - ORM is neccessary to overcome that and it`s always a lot of manual work... wish you all the best!
-
Eric,
Sounds like you need Online Reputation Management (ORM) services or a company which can actually take on this project, since it will require the efforts to contact each of the websites, directories, social sites, etc to communicate with them that the Associate is no longer with the firm and may create more bad than good for the firm's website and reputation.
Unless you can get this Associate to login and remove their information from the profiles (if he actually created the profiles), then I would consult with some local companies who provide this service. We used to provide it, but it is a lot of work and not all the time beneficial and effective. Meaning, it doesn't always work as you need to get the site's owners/webmasters to get in and physically remove the links which are showing in the SERPs. It's a lot of work for you, the ORM company and the actual company who's hosting the link.
Hope this was helpful, but that's the route I'd go and recommend.
Patrick
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
The brand drop down doesn't seem to be appearing for any brands in google.com.hk. Is it something which needs to be set up and registered, or automatically rolled out by Google?
In google.com.hk SERPs the brand drop down doesn't seem to be appearing for any brands. Is it something which needs to be set up and registered, or automatically rolled out by Google? And if so is Google just slow rolling out in this part of the world? Thanks
Branding | | seanfhutchinson0 -
Backlink Badges - Good or Bad
One of my free tools for creating web pages automatically inserts a back-link to my home page as a footer, or 'badge' from the free web pages it creates. Hence there are tens of thousands of low quality sites out there linking back to my home page. While this was great ten years ago, Google looks on things differently these days. So the question is, will Google penalize me for this? Does the negative outweigh the positive - should I remove the insertion of back-link badges from the product? Thanks, Peter
Branding | | virtualmechanics2 -
Scribd embed links - bad idea?
My client's site in question has a TON of outstanding, constantly updated, highly detailed articles. The site owner also has a branded collection of nearly all of them on Scribd. I guess I can live with that because dupe content isn't an issue and the pdfs there link back to the site and another domain of ours. Plus it gets a lot of eyeballs on our newish brand and content, and we can run reports on users. BUT, we have Scribd social share buttons on each article on our site that (among other things) allows a user to grab a direct link to the content on Scribd or an embed link for their blog or whatever. So, two questions really - Foremost, shouldn't we get rid of that embed option on our page? I mean, isn't is stealing from our backlink potential? I can't imagine juice would somehow pass back to us through a Scribd-located doc or embed but I haven't found info affirming or contradicting that. And secondly, isn't a Scribd collection a bit analogous to posting videos on YouTube and hoping your page will ultimately benefit from it via clickthroughs, etc? At this year's MozCon I heard a strong argument against that. Thanks -
Branding | | Jen_Floyd0 -
YouTube won't let me disconnect a Google+ business page from my channel.
Hello! Here is a good one. My YouTube channel is connected to a Google+ page a created by accident. Since I named this accidental page as a business, when I go into advanced setting to disconnect it from YouTube, it says "This feature is not available for this account." Does anyone know a way around this? I don't want to have to rebuild my Google+ page on the new, accidental page. I have put quite a bit of time onto my current page and would like to get it hooked up to YouTube. Please help! Thank you!
Branding | | sarita3450 -
Competitors' dummy websites --- What SEO (or other?) strategy is this?
I work for an e-retailer. I've noticed that at least one of our competitors (and, I think, a second as well) has set up a neutral "third party" website that attempts to provide unbiassed information about different manufacturer's products. Of course, their products always win out over the competitor in these comparisons. But this one site (and another whose corporate backer I can't seem to figure out) is keyworded so poorly, and not branded at all. There are very few (if any) links to the corporate sponsor, or links, period. It's definitely not serving to have "Little Brand x" appear next to "Big Brand Y" in search results, either (again, really poorly keyworded). Other SEO seems really minimal. What do you think their strategy is? Is it a dumb waste o' money or something really smart that I'm not picking up on? Your insights most appreciated!
Branding | | Novos_Jay1 -
Author Site And Book Site - Multiple Sites Bad Idea?
The question: I've been doing work for authors lately and a common question is if they should have a site for their book and a site for themselves. Separate sites with different domain names. At first I thought this would be a bad idea. Why spread information across two sites if they can be related and used together in one? But I see a lot of authors doing this and some with marketing companies. One site for the author with information about them, their books, their social media presence. Then another site for their book, with new social media accounts, other info, etc. What do you guys think? Has anyone tried both and seen any pros and cons? Is there a perfect answer?
Branding | | JoshBowers20120 -
Webmaster tool's "Content Keywords" advice needed
I am looking in my webmaster tools and under the "Optimization Tab" >> "Content Keywords" and I find my website's list of what I assume words Google notices mentioned frequently. I want to know how I can better manage this and get more relevant key words to show up. Because the website I am referring to is a college lifestyle magazine we have various topics that range and I could see confuse Google.The top word is college which is great but some of the others seem a little random and could definitely be more relevant. Any tips on how to improve this? webmaster-tool.png
Branding | | CEOLaser0 -
Is this the current recommendation for hyphen(s) in domain name?
Let's say your customers company name in the real world is "Foo Bar Baz Inc." and if it is read (and understood) as "foobarbaz inc." by someone hearing the name it does also make semantically sense (like "Dog Food Market"). Customer owns a lot of domain combinations, but notably foobarbaz.com foo-bar-baz.com Would you recommend to dedicate "foobarbaz.com" as main brand and domain for all SEO efforts and do the proper redirects from the other domains? Or would you do it the other way around, redirecting to the foo-bar-baz.com domain? Thanks!
Branding | | kqkq0
