“We worked with several other companies that claimed they could improve performance. And all failed…all except Untouchable. Untouchable took the time to look at what we were doing, how we were doing it and helped orchestrate a cohesive, cross-departmental plan that generated immediate and lasting results. And in our space, this was no easy task.” – Tim McAndrew, COO Dalbey Education Institute

Issue: “9 of the top 10 results for our name accuse us of being scammers. Customers search our name and cancel their orders. Job candidates Google us and then withdraw their applications.” This was the essence of our introductory conversation with the Dalbey Education Institute’s marketing department.

Dalbey Education Institute, a national leader in educational materials, approached Untouchable Marketing in the summer of 2008 with a problem: Over 100 websites had written negative reviews of their products and employees. Why? Because they were trying to sell their own products and using DEI’s fame was an easy shortcut to notoriety.

The internet can provide endless opportunity for anyone who wants to get their message heard. Unfortunately, many websites have taken to the practice of bad-mouthing popular brands knowing that search engines want to present a balanced viewpoint and are likely to include their opinion. In Dalbey’s case, some sites went so far as to suggest that visitors call the sales line and harass sales representatives!

Clearly, the sophistication of the average internet user is not high-enough to instantly seperate the valuable reviews from the scam artists selling their own products, and something had to be done to clear DEI’s name.

DEI was at the tail-end of a 6 month contract with another SEO service that had created an ineffective network of blogs to try to combat the problem. Dalbey approached Untouchable Marketing to get a more hands-on approach.

Approach: This is war, and your brand name is at stake.

Untouchable Marketing took the time to investigate all of DEI’s web-marketing assets individually and prepare a multi-stage approach. Our strategy was three-fold: strengthen the entire DEI network of sites, target 10 sites to defend key-terms, and attack the offending sites using cutting edge reputation defense strategies.

Although they had not concentrated previously on SEO, DEI had amassed an impressive collection of web properties. Unfortunately, due to some technical details, none of them was being used to its full potential. Step one was to unlock the network’s real power, not only for the short term, but to inoculate the company against future attacks.

Of the many sites in the DEI network, 10 were identified as being strong enough and targeted enough to immediately compete with the most competitive negative sites. These sites were heavily promoted using the latest SEO techniques to reach the front-page for key terms, and push the negative sites back.

Finally, Untouchable Marketing went on the offensive, using tactics fresh from our Research & Development projects to attack the offending sites. These tactics were so new that few SEO firms could even detect them, let alone implement them.

Results:

After a long, difficult battle against the offending websites, Untouchable Marketing was able to remove two of the more dangerous and offensive web pages from key brand-related terms. We were able to literally detour traffic from those sites to informational pages about DEI’s long history of customer satisfaction and community works, effectively starving those pages of the traffic and money that was keeping them alive.

At the final count, we had retaken the #1 spot for the most-searched term and now DEI owns 8 of the top 10 results for branded search terms, and the policies we put in place with their IT team and current network are leading to additional gains every day.

“Here’s my advice: if you want results, don’t waste your time (and your money) with anyone else. Give Untouchable a try and see for yourself how effective SEO efforts can really be.” – Tim McAndrew, COO Dalbey Education Institute