James Dooley:
Online reputation management is growing massively. More and more people search online before they hire anyone. If you are looking to take on an employee, you will want to see what that person has done previously, what videos are online, what images are online and what their online story looks like. The same applies if you are hiring a company to do a service or build an extension on your house. You want to make certain they are the right company to choose.

So with online reputation management, a lot of companies are now coming to us wanting Power Posts. Previously they were buying digital PR campaigns. The issue with digital PR is that the wording on those articles is not written to rank in Google. They are not mathematically and scientifically placing the right entities in the right parts of the page. With tools like Market Muse, PageOptimizer Pro and others, you want edge analysis to give a page the best chance to rank. That is exactly what a Power Post does.

Some online reputation management companies were also buying 30, 40 or even 50 guest posts. A guest post is just an article written on a third party website. Most of the time it is a 500 or 1,000 word article that is not specifically trying to rank. A Power Post goes in with the clear goal of ranking and then suppressing any negative articles that are sitting on page one.

Kazra Dash:
Just to dumb this down a bit. You have had PR done for “James Dooley” and you have landed in places like Manchester Evening News, The Sun, Daily Mail and so on. They do not always mention specific entities or secondary keywords about you. Instead of a normal digital PR campaign where the piece might say something vague like “expert at FatRank”, a Power Post article that is trying to rank for your name would mention entities like “James Dooley”, your date of birth, where you were born and similar details. Is that what you mean when you talk about PageOptimizer Pro and Market Muse?

James Dooley:
For sure. Take the example of “James Dooley”. If I have articles in Manchester Evening News saying I am a great SEO, that is nice. However, a potential client might specifically search “James Dooley testimonials”, “James Dooley reviews” or “James Dooley case studies”.

That Manchester Evening News article probably just talks about who I am and what I have done. It might contain some testimonial style content but the page is not specifically set up to rank for “James Dooley case studies”, “James Dooley testimonials” or “James Dooley reviews”. So it ends up on page two or page three. I need pages that target those exact queries on page one.

Now let us say someone had a bad experience with me and left a review with “James Dooley review” in the title. If that is a one star review, that page could rank in position one for “James Dooley SEO consultant review”. A potential client might search that and see the one star review first. That might make them think twice about hiring me.

What online reputation management companies do is step in and say, “Hang on, we will control the narrative on page one.” They aim to make sure “James Dooley SEO consultancy review” has a positive brand sentiment. They need to push that negative one star review down to page two or three.

To do that, they write content with titles like “James Dooley SEO consultancy review” and optimise the page for that exact term. The same applies to brands. If you have a brand name and Google’s autocomplete starts showing something like “FatRank scam” when people type “FatRank”, you have a problem.

If autocomplete shows “is FatRank a scam”, I know people are going to click that. I then need to create a set of Power Posts that specifically target “is FatRank a scam” and clearly explain that it is a legitimate brand that does specific services. That way I control the narrative.

Digital PR does not do this. Being featured in a magazine or a high authority news site does not guarantee those pages will rank for the exact terms you need. Buying 20, 30 or 40 random guest posts and hoping one of them ranks is also not a strategy.

You should be strategically getting Power Posts, optimised for the right query, to rank and then sink the negative press. Then you send tier 2 backlinks and engagement into those posts. That is exactly what a Power Post does.

Kazra Dash:
We have spoken about the content side. The content is specifically going after LSIs and entities around what you want to rank for. There is no fixed word count either. If it needs to be 3,000 words it is 3,000. If it needs to be 500, it is 500. Let us talk more about the off page SEO side of Power Posting.

James Dooley:
Power Posting has a huge off page element. Most guest posts or digital PR pieces are orphan pages. That means they have no internal links pointing to them. There is no power flowing through to those individual pages. Forget the domain rating. The link you get sits on a weak page.

You need to look at page level metrics. If that page has no backlinks, it will struggle to rank. If I go and build several tier 2 backlinks to that page, I power that page up and increase rankings.

The twofold benefit is this. First, you power up the page that you want ranking for the reputation management query. Second, because that page links to your brand, you turn that link into a very strong backlink. In my opinion it becomes the best type of link you can get.

It is powerful because you have built links to it. It is relevant because the whole page is about your brand and the query your money site wants to rank for anyway. It gets traffic because it actually ranks. Powerful, relevant and getting traffic is the holy grail of link building.

From a link building standpoint, a Power Post with tier 2 links and traffic is the best type of backlink you can buy. Then you layer behavioural signals on top. You send social traffic, organic clicks, shares and engagement to that page. Google sees a lot of people visiting, sharing and linking to it. Google assumes it is a good page and ranks it higher.

Right now, many people buy guest posts that are orphan pages with no backlinks, no traffic and no social shares. Then they wonder why those guest posts are not ranking or passing any real power.

For online reputation management companies, the goal is to control the narrative and suppress negative press. Why leave it to chance? Why buy 30, 40 or 50 random guest posts? You do not need to. Buy 10 Power Posts instead of 50 guest posts.

You will pay more per Power Post because of the content optimisation, the tier 2 links and the social signals. The difference is that they rank for the exact keywords you need. That is what suppresses the negative press.

That is why a lot of online reputation management companies come to Searcharoo for Power Posts.

Kazra Dash:
There will be a lot of online reputation management companies watching this. Their big question is “How long does it take?”

James Dooley:
Timeframes depend completely on keyword difficulty. As a rough guide, here is how it usually works.

We write the article first. We then send that article to the online reputation management company. In many cases, they are working with big brands that have brand protection officers, so the client wants to approve the copy. They want to see exactly what will be published.

They sign it off and confirm they are happy with the article. I prefer they do not change much, because it is written strategically to rank. They mainly check that the overall message fits their brand voice.

To be fair, they can be more relaxed than they would with on site content because this is going on third party websites. They do not want it obviously written by them. They want it to look like an independent piece that just happens to speak highly of their brand.

We then pick the site we want to place it on. The ORM company can decline or accept our suggested site, but our SEO team already knows where we will get the best result.

We publish the article on the third party website. We then use SignalBoy or similar services to send social signals and engagement. We build tier 2 backlinks such as link inserts, where we place links in existing articles that point to the Power Post page.

Once the article is live, we load it into Indexation tools like IndexationX so Google crawls and indexes it quickly. Usually the main Power Post is indexed within 24 to 48 hours.

We then load the tier 2 links into indexing tools as well so Google crawls those and passes power through to the Power Post.

You can start seeing ranking movement for some long tail queries within about 48 hours of indexing. When the tier 2 links and behavioural signals kick in, you usually see more solid movement within 5 to 7 days.

For long tail and branded queries, depending on difficulty, it is realistic to see page one and sometimes number one rankings within a couple of weeks.

Kazra Dash:
Is there anything else you want to add?

James Dooley:
If anyone is looking for Power Posts, check out searcharoo.com. If you are an online reputation management company and you want this at scale, get in touch. We offer bulk discounts for ORM agencies.

If you are not an ORM company but you want what I believe is the best type of backlink for value and impact, go to searcharoo.com and look at the Power Post page. Or fill in the enquiry form and we can talk through the best strategy for your specific situation.

You can use Power Posts as part of your link building strategy or as part of a wider online reputation management plan. Either way, it is about controlling the narrative, suppressing negative press and getting the most powerful, relevant and trafficked links you can get.