A few years ago we had someone working at our company who hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons. It turned out that this person had been stealing from our clients accounts over a period of about three years, and he eventually went to jail. It was me that actually caught him at it, and it was me that pressed charges against him on behalf of our clients. All of the clients have been extremely good about it and most of them have stayed with us thanks to our honesty about the whole affair.
Unfortunately it has become increasingly difficult to attract new customers to our company because whenever you Google our name, the first thing that comes up is the story about our old employee stealing funds from our accounts! It hardly fills the customer with confidence, yet it is not a fair reflection on us as a company.
I had been wanting to do something about this for ages, but most people I spoke to had no idea how we could change it, until I spoke to someone who works with computers. He told me that there was a good chance that working with an SEO specialist, I might be able to get our own website up above the story that was online, and with any luck, push the negative story onto the second page of google. As soon as I heard this, I was straight online, trying to find a company who dealt with this sort of thing.
I found a company who specialised in Reputation management and once I spoke to them they were very confident that they would be able to do something for me. Three months later and we had succeeded! My own web page came up top, and the negative story as demoted to page two of Google’s search results!