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Mike and Matt share tips, strategies, services, and "how to" advice for Online Reputation Management. This is the perfect podcast for individuals and business owners looking for ways to control how they look on Google.
- Matt, today we're gonna talk about what we call the "Alter Ego Strategy." This could also be known as maybe the "Fake Persona Strategy." And basically it's a suppression strategy that you're using. Can you give us kind of an overview of like, "What's the alter ego strategy?" What is it?
- Yeah. So, instead of writing about the real person, we write about someone fictional who shares their name. Now, we can choose whatever profession we want, but I typically like to do someone like a marketing entrepreneur who loves to do blogs, interviews and press releases. Someone that explains why they're so content-focused online. So, it makes sense rather than like, you know, some boring old CPA accountant who wouldn't really make much sense. So, ultimately we could pick whoever we want, but that's kind of our "go-to." And yeah, so we write about a fictional person and put their information on high-ranking domain authority sites and we use AI to generate images so, they can't be reversed searched. And it looks very real.
- So, when you say you're using AI for the images, that's so that like we're not buying images from stock websites?
- Exactly. Yeah. Because you could reverse search those and then the gigs up.
- Yeah. Yeah. That's great. Okay. So, who is this strategy for? Who would want to do it this way?
- About half of our clients pick this route. It's good for people who are not business owners or C-level executives. Someone who's just an employee, you know, normal Joe, maybe someone who's retired, a college kid, a stay-at-home mom, or stay-at-Home Dad, someone, where it wouldn't really make much sense about them doing interviews about their career. You know, if you're an employee at a large corporation, not doing anything special, it doesn't really make much sense to have a whole new story written about you.
- Right. And so is it also safe to say that this is good- There are some people who don't wanna be online?
- Yeah. Yeah, we actually do. That's a good point. We have some people that it would be a good fit for real, them. Maybe they own a small business, but they just don't want to be more information online. They want to stay incognito, be low online presence. But the problem is you need to write information about that keyword, their name. So, no matter what, you have to have something out there. And if you don't have anything out there, then the negative is out there. So, yeah, if you're not a big fan of having more information online about you, it's definitely the way to go.
- Huh. Okay. So this is kind of an interesting question, but since we're making up all this stuff, we're making up all the, the whole person, like the, the pictures, the stories, the job, everything is fake. Is it legal?
- It's legal. I'm sure one or two sites might have it in their fine print, it's against their policy, but, you know, whatever. It's not like you're, they're gonna sue us. But I mean, even then it's, no one really cares, not illegal. We have had clients who've like, "Hey, I have, I share my name with an attorney, lets write about him instead." That's not illegal, but that is not a good idea because that person does exist. So, we would never write about someone real with that shares your name. It's always going to be someone fictional and yeah, nothing illegal about it at all.
- Gotcha. So let me kind of, let's play this out with an example. Let's say we have a hypothetical client. His name is Tim Johnson. Let's say he is an accountant, but he is an employee at a, you know, a large accounting firm. If he comes to you and he is like, "Hey Matt, I like what you guys are talking about. Let's do that alter ego strategy." Would you say that, is it gonna work better or worse if we use like the real Tim Johnson with his real social media and his real background? Or is it gonna work better to make up this hypothetical, you know, "marketing guru Tim Johnson?"
- There's pros and cons. So pros, we have more freedom. We can write about... we can get into more publications that are a wide variety. If the person is a janitor, we can't get them into DotCom magazine, for example. So, it gives us more freedom with a fictional. However, no one's actually searching for this fictional person. And as we all know, page views is very important, who clicks on what. And because this person doesn't exist, they're not actually getting a search. But if Tim Johnson, the accountant is real and we're writing about him, his friends, colleagues, dates, they're going to click on it. There'll be real traffic. So, we can always counterbalance that with click teams for the fictional person. And usually you have to, but yeah, pros and cons.
- So, I guess when a new client comes to you, you, do you sort of present this as an option to them? Or are they like, "Hey, I want to do, I don't wanna be online, I wanna do this." How does it...?
- Yeah, I always present both options and it's their choice.
- And then once the decision is made, like we're either going down the road of the, of the real Tim Johnson or the fake Tim Johnson, you've got to stay on that road. Right?
- Not necessarily. You could change it up. It's... I think the writers get a little pissy. They gotta relearn the person, but it's not a big deal. People switch on us and we're okay with it.
- Are you saying that you might create two alter egos for Tim Johnson? One is a marketing VP and the other is maybe a chef?
- Yeah, we've done that before. But sometimes we'll write about a fictional person and then the client decides, they want to do the "real them." They're like, "Oh wow, I love these articles. I want this to be about me, be about me now." So we'll switch gears.
- That's funny. Well, we're laugh... I'm laughing and joking about this, but the bottom line is that the strategy works, right? Because you're getting more content out there. It confuses Google's algorithm and ultimately it helps to push down the negative stuff about the real Tim Johnson, right?
- Exactly. And then the client's happy doing fictional, too, because they don't have to keep signing off on content and reading it. And it's fictional. So, it doesn't matter if the guy went to Harvard in 1992 or 1993, it's like, "Oh, I don't have to read the... it's not a big deal." But if we write about the "real them," they have to make sure every single detail is correct. And our writers are fabulous, but sometimes they'll get a detail wrong. They'll read their LinkedIn, let's say, and kind of pull wrong information. Rare. But you know, the client has to read everything. It's just, we publish a lot of words, a lot of content, and it's time consuming for the client. And these clients have their career, so they're busy. So, even these people, that would be good for "real them," they like the fictional route because it just saves them so much time.
- Interesting. Okay, last question. What percentage of people do the alter ego strategy? Is it like a 50/50 or...? - About
- half and half. Yeah.
- Interesting. So there's a lot of fake people on the internet?
- There are.
- Alright. Well, Matt, thanks a lot for your time today. And if you're watching this video, you know, and you need help pushing down negative search results in Google. If you want to bury them, contact us. We're going to help you. We're going to be the most affordable, no long-term contracts. If it's working every month for you, you keep going, you push it down as far as you want.
- Yeah. Month-to-month based, no commitment. And the first month has a 100% money back guarantee if you're unhappy for literally any reason at all. So, zero risk, give us a try.
- That's great. And if you want to read about your fictional self online, we're the guys to come to.
- Yes, Mike, thanks so much.
- Alright, thanks Matt.