Still Another Update: www.RegisterFlies.com

Another Update: Enom has stepped up to the plate and completely severed their ties with RegisterFly. They have created an FAQ which will allow you to transfer domains from RF back to Enom. Since our domain is technically expired, this is going to be an even bigger hassle than a normal domain push. I am going to call Enom in the morning and see what can be done. I have also backordered the domain in question through GoDaddy in case I get lucky. Pray for the kids.

Update: Apparently we are not alone. Has RegisterFly.com stolen our domain name? “It seems RegisterFly has gotten themselves into a lot of trouble recently for their practices and have been banned by Enom from registering domain names in the future.” Who else has this happened to, and what can we do about it?

I have never blogged for the purposes of evil before. In fact, I pride myself on my burgeoing online reputation management abilities. I do so now only because I have come up against service provider treachery the likes of which would make Carol Beer cringe. “Domain registrar says no.”

I help run a website for a non-profit community center here in Boston’s North End. I took over webmastering duties when the first guy moved away and I never bothered to transfer the domain name to my registrar of choice. I didn’t see the need. Instead, I left it at RegisterFly.com with whom I had no prior dealings. I am not going to play the ‘who let the domain expire‘ blame game here. I had access to the RF account - but I did not renew it before it technically expired (never got an email telling me expiration was imminent like I do everywhere else) and one day in December I got a panicked call from one of the center’s principals wondering why the site was down.

Long story short - it is two months later and after a barrage of calls to RegisterFly and its controlling entity, Enom, the site is still down and the domain unrenewed. I have moved it to a .org as a plan ‘B’, but refuse to rest until someone has at least explained to me why we’ve been ignored to the extent that we have. RegisterFly support tickets simply tell me there is a delay and to ‘just wait’. Enom doesn’t know we’re alive.

Yes, I am in a vendetta sort of mood tonight, but I’m also hoping a few tags will draw some Technorati traffic from folks who are experiencing the same issue with this collective set of jokers. It would be a shame if someone at the Boston Globe caught wind of my non-profit being cornholed in this fashion. I played a cop in the fundraising play this year, for goodness sake. I wore makeup. I’m pissed. We’re only trying to help the kids, Enom. Do the right thing and call a brother. I did a little research to no real avail - Does anyone know what the heck is going on with these two companies?

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What exactly is online brand reputation management (BRM)? Basically, negative or malicious press in SERPS (search engine results pages) can be combated by creating positive content or and knowing where to post or submit it. If the positive content is deemed by the search engines to appear on more integral websites, the negative rankings will be pushed farther and farther down the SERPs until that post by a disgruntled blogger is on page three and your good name has been restored.

Brand reputation management and search marketing were once very separate entities – but with the emergence of blogs, forums, social media and other user-driven content sites, they now must be performed in tandem. You don’t have to be a skilled programmer, or even know how to build a website, to get your opinions online anymore - This can be a very scary prospect for any company. If you’re not scared, you should be. Boo.

How do you combat a high-ranking negative reference to your name or company? Luckily, it is far easier to attain good rankings for a business or domain name because there is far less competition for these words than for the goods or services they provide. It is also reasonable to push down negative rankings for individual people’s names. But not always, obviously. If your client’s name is Gavin Wunderschnitzen, you’re laughing. If your BRM services have just been retained by John Smith, just give him his money back now.

The same blogs, forums and social media sites which can be used to negate or slur a brand, can be used to defend it. Here are some of my methods, and I look forward to your feedback and tips on the subject. Lots of folks are selling BRM as a service nowadays, but before you cannibalize a considerable part of your marketing budget because some 12 year old with a Bebo account and a crap in their diaper didn’t like one of their Christmas presents, consider the following Free BRM tips.

1. Well-written, newsworthy press releases are a great BRM tool for simultaneous direct traffic and SERP manipulation. Even if you’re using free PR networks, they will still make a visible impact if your targeted name or company is reasonably unique. Ask your client if they have any existing traditional releases that you can repurpose online quickly.
2. Build a Kiva.org lender profile page for your client. You’ll probably want to donate at least $25, but there’s no harm in building your karma while building your rank. Google seems to treat Kiva with very high regard. Hat tip to Dan Zarrella for this one.
3. Build Squidoo lenses and HubPages for your client. Use their name in the title and URL - as in both cases you get to pick it yourself - and it is static. This works absolute wonders, regardless of whether or not your lens on Sea Monkeys made any affiliate revenue last year. Oops, that’s mine.
4. Build a Blogger account for your client, and use their name in the title and URL. Don’t fret too much about content - use their mission statement or About Us page and split it into a few posts. Leave it to simmer and watch what happens.
5. Social Media/Networking sites with more of a professional audience - Your LinkedIns and your Facebooks as opposed to your Friendsters and MySpaces - will get indexed quickly and rise just as fast. Build profiles for your clients, post haste.
6. The next step is indexing - Now that you’ve built 7 profiles, a blog, 2 lenses and a hub what next? Get it all spidered lickety-split by linking to each from the sidebar of the blogger account you just created and then linking to that from your client’s site - or another juicy property that gets crawled regularly.
7. Build a custom RSS feed for the phrase you want to protect. Use the Yahoo! News tool to watch for negative stories or press releases, and a Technorati feed to monitor the blogosphere. This way, you can start to battle any negative mention of your client before they’re even spidered.

Those are my quick tips for the tightwad - and boy do they work wonders. For a more comprehensive guide which includes paid options visit Andy Beal’s take on Online Reputation Monitoring.

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