Reputation management its just SEO right?

I was doing the usual read of the feeds this evening and came across this post from SEOmoz and always a enjoyable read and this post was no exception regarding reputation management.

One of the points raised time and again regarding Reputation management is it ethical and morally correct? and as always you can take 2 views

1) You are manipulating not only your own site but other sites within the SERPs and therefore this is ethically wrong as you are effecting the natural order of Google!
2) urgh aren’t you an SEO company manipulating the search engines what you do?

You can probably guess I take position 2 in this debate, reputation management is a personification of SEO it’s less about manipulating a site or page within the SERP’s but rather an overall brand, both good and bad.

So are all clients who come to companies looking for Reputation management services bad?

No we have clients who for a range of reasons feel there brand is misinterpreted a good example is recently we were engaged by a software company who were number 1 for their software in terms of keywords, but sitting at number 2 was an article from Digg regarding their software. Nothing wrong with that it had done very well over 500 Diggs in fact and nearly 50 comments, unfortunately the digger mentality is such that they may come across as (Struggling for the words) confrontational and this case was no exception. Several comments were particularly scathing in their criticism without justification, as by there own admission further down the thread they had not even tried the product. However this doesn’t help the company and as such we were asked to remove the page from Google first page. We did not do this, but rather used a more creative means via a blog to point out the problems in the thread and with a small amount of manipulation managed to bump up several balanced but slightly critical review to 2nd and 3rd place leaving the Digg post at number 5 (where it still is).

I guess I’m trying to say reputation management is not simply manipulating the SERPs to hide bad things, but to create and focus a brand image. Negative and critical commentary can be used positively but outright lies and the usual rubbish that makes it into the comments on certain sites will have a negative effect on sales if seen and is that fair?

If your interested in Reputation management we have run several bits on the blog over the last few months, and I discuss in detail some hints and tips on the webdigity forums a poor mans guide to reputation management

What do you think should companies and individuals use SEO to help maintain their brand image? or is this companies and individuals manipulating Google one step to far?

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