How To Suppress Negative Press? Online Reputation Management
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What Does “How To Suppress Negative Press? Online Reputation Management” Talk About?
This episode of the James Dooley Podcast features a focused conversation between James Dooley and Kasra Dash on the growing field of online reputation management and the specific SEO strategy known as power posts. The two discuss how traditional digital PR campaigns and bulk guest posts often fall short when it comes to actually ranking in Google search results, particularly for branded queries like name reviews, testimonials, or searches containing phrases like 'is this brand a scam.' They explain why these conventional approaches fail and what a more strategic, mathematically optimized alternative looks like.
James and Kasra break down how power posts differ from standard guest posts by using tools like Market Muse and Page Optimizer Pro to ensure the right entities and secondary keywords are placed correctly throughout an article, giving it the best possible chance to rank for specific targeted terms. They use James Dooley himself as a working example, illustrating how a one-star review ranking on page one for 'James Dooley SEO consultant review' could cost him clients, and how a properly built power post targeting that exact phrase could push the negative result to page two or three. The conversation also covers the off-page SEO component, including tier two backlinks, social signals via Signal.com, and rapid indexing through Index Externally, with James noting that some results can appear within 48 hours and solid page one rankings within five to seven days.
“strategically get a power post optimize it to specifically rank for the keyword you want it to to sync the negative press get some tier 2 back links and get some engagement that's exactly what a power post does”
— James Dooley
Who Are the Guests on “How To Suppress Negative Press? Online Reputation Management”?
James Dooley is a well-known SEO consultant and entrepreneur, co-owner of the Fatrank brand, and a recognized figure in the digital marketing space who has been featured in outlets such as the Manchester Evening News and the Daily Mail. He brings hands-on experience in building and protecting online brands, and his ability to use himself as a live case study throughout this episode makes the technical content highly relatable and practical for listeners at any level.
Kasra Dash is an SEO strategist and co-founder at Searcher.com, a service that specializes in producing power posts for link building and online reputation management. He works directly with ORM companies advising them on how to move away from scattered guest post strategies toward scientifically optimized content placements. His expertise in off-page SEO, entity optimization, and behavioral signals gives the episode a strong technical backbone that complements James Dooley's brand-focused perspective.
What Are the Key Takeaways From “How To Suppress Negative Press? Online Reputation Management”?
Here are the key points discussed in this episode:
- Power posts are specifically engineered to rank for targeted keywords, making them far more effective than standard digital PR articles or bulk guest posts for suppressing negative search results.
- Traditional digital PR campaigns, while useful for brand awareness and earning high-domain links, do not strategically include the entities and secondary keywords needed to rank for specific branded queries.
- Controlling branded auto-suggest results, such as suppressing queries like 'is Fat Rank a scam,' requires creating content that directly targets those exact phrases rather than hoping that general coverage will rank for them.
- Off-page signals including tier two backlinks pointing to the power post page, social signals through platforms like Signal.com, and rapid indexing are all essential components that make power posts outperform orphaned guest posts.
- Results from a properly executed power post campaign can appear within 48 hours for long-tail branded queries, with more competitive terms typically showing meaningful page one rankings within five to seven days.
“it's powerful it's relevant and it's getting traffic that's the Holy Grail in my opinion of link building”
— Kasra Dash
Is “How To Suppress Negative Press? Online Reputation Management” Worth Listening To?
This episode is worth listening to for anyone who has ever wondered why their digital PR spend is not translating into controlled search results for their brand. James and Kasra do not speak in abstract theory. They walk through a real scenario using James Dooley's own name, explaining exactly what happens when a one-star review ranks on page one for your name combined with the word 'review,' and precisely what needs to be done technically to push that result down. The explanation of entity placement, semantic structure, and the use of specific tools like Page Optimizer Pro makes it immediately actionable for SEOs and marketing managers alike.
Beyond the tactical detail, what makes this episode particularly valuable is the comparison framework the two speakers build throughout the conversation. By consistently contrasting power posts against digital PR campaigns and scattergun guest post buying, they help listeners understand not just what to do but why previous approaches have been falling short. Whether you are an ORM agency looking to improve client outcomes, a business owner managing your own reputation, or an SEO professional expanding your service offering, the conversation gives you a clear, structured framework you can apply right away.
Who Should Listen to “How To Suppress Negative Press? Online Reputation Management”?
This episode is ideal for:
- Online reputation management agencies looking for more effective and scalable methods to suppress negative search results for their clients
- SEO consultants and link builders who want to understand how to build backlinks that are simultaneously powerful, relevant, and traffic-generating
- Business owners and entrepreneurs who have negative press, bad reviews, or damaging auto-suggest terms associated with their brand in Google
- Digital marketers who have invested in PR campaigns or guest post packages and are frustrated that those efforts are not producing page one rankings for targeted branded queries
Where Can You Listen to James Dooley Podcast?
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What Are Listeners Saying About This Episode?
“The breakdown using James Dooley's own name as the example was genuinely useful. I finally understand why my client's Daily Mail feature never ranked for the specific review keywords we actually needed. Going to revisit our whole ORM approach after this.”
“Kasra's explanation of orphaned pages and why guest posts without tier two backlinks just sit there doing nothing was a lightbulb moment. I've been buying 40 guest posts per campaign for years and getting almost nothing from them. This episode completely changed how I think about that budget.”
“Really appreciated the timeline breakdown toward the end. Knowing that indexed power posts with proper signals can show long-tail branded rankings within 48 hours gives me something concrete to set client expectations around. Practical and no fluff.”

James Dooley: so obviously you work with quite a lot of online reputation management companies and you advise them on how to suppress negative press around companies and brands and businesses but what's some goto tactics is let's say for example if I had some negative stigma around me let's say I don't know for whatever reason people started hating on me uh maybe I decide to run for presidency who knows um what what would you do to to suppress any negative stigma
Kasra Dash: so online reputation management is growing massively more and more people are searching online for even before people get taken on as for a job role so if you're looking to take on an employee they looking at like okay what has this person done previously or what videos are online what images are online about them can I understand more about them right or especially if you're looking to hire a specific company to do some work whether that's a service are build an extension on your house you want to make certain that these are the right company to choose so with regards to online reputation management so many companies are coming to us now in wanting power posts right now what they was doing previously was buying a lot of digital PR campaigns the issue with a digital PR campaign is that it's not the the wording on these articles they're not specifically trying to rank in Google they're not mathematically and scientifically putting the right entities in the right placements of the page so with certain tools like Market moves page optimizer pro and plenty of others you want to make certain you're getting edge analysis to give you the best chances to rank and that's exactly what a power post does some of us online reputation management companies instead of just doing digital Pi was then buying 30 40 or even 50 guest posts but again a guest post is an article written on a third party website but majority of the time it's a 500 or 1,000w article not trying to specifically rank in Google I'll repeat a power post goes in and specifically tries to rank the Articles to then suppress any negative articles that's so just just to dumb this down a little bit right like let's let's say for example if I was like prime example you you've had um PR done for James Dy and you you've landed in like Manchester even the news and the sun daily mail stuff like that um but they never actually mention certain entities and certain secondary keywords to do with you so am I right in saying that instead of like a a normal digital PR campaign where it might say um expert at fat rank right what a digit or sorry what a power post would actually do is that article that's trying to rank for your name it might mention certain entities about you so like James douly would be your name potentially your your date of birth potentially um where you were born um am I right and saying that that's kind of what what you're saying with page optimizer pro in market
James Dooley: for sure so like prime example is right let's say um if you're losing the example of James Dy right yeah if I had some articles written in maner evening news saying that I'm a great SEO right but I wanted someone was then looking to potentially hire me as an SEO consultant and they specifically go and type in James Dy testimonials James D reviews James douy case studies right let's say those three terms that they might search for to say all right who are they my man evening news article is just talking about who I am and what I've done and in there could be some testimonials or case studies but that page isn't specifically targeted to try to rank for James Dy case studies James Dy testimonials and James dly reviews so that page then might only rank on position number two or position number uh page number two or page three so I want to try to get articles ranking on on page one and it could just be that someone had a bad experience with myself and if if someone did then leave me a review and it said James D review in the title and someone specifically then give me a review and it was a onear review for whatever reason now that page is ranking position number one for James douet SEO consultant in review right and if if a potential new client's looking to maybe hire me and they see this one star review it might make them think twice of hiring me mhm so so what online reputation management companies do is go I on a minute we will try to control The Narrative of what's been seen on page one we want to make certain that James Dy SEO consultancy review has a positive brand up so we need to try to get this one star review onto page two or page three of Google and then what will what they call suppress the article trying to get that ranking lower but you've specifically now got to write content that's got like in the title tag James D SEO consultancy review if that's the term that you want to try and rank it for especially certain brands that might have The Branding and something after it with regards to the aut suggest so if let's say fat rank right which is a brand that we own if if in the auto suggest you start typing in fat Rank and one of the questions that show up in the a complete saying is fat rank a scam mhm I've now got to realize some people are going to click on to that I want to know create lots of power posts that specifically right is fat ranker scam and saying no it's an absolutely amazing brand that does x y and Zed so I want to control that narrative and that's what a power post can do yeah digital PR doesn't do that going getting yourself in a magazine or a highd s doesn't mean it's going to rank for the key words that you want it to rank for going by in 20 30 40 guest posts and doing a scatter good approach in hope that one of them might start ranking isn't the right way of doing it strategically get a power post optimize it to specifically rank for the keyword you want it to to sync the ne negative press get some tier 2 Bat links and get some engagement that's exactly what a power post does
Kasra Dash: so we've spoke about the content side so the content is actually specifically going after lsis and entities around whatever you're trying to rank um and there's not like really a set amount so if if the article needs to be 3,000 wordss it has to be 3,000 if it has to be 500 it has to be 5,000 500 um let's talk about more of the off page SEO because there's also the off page SEO element to power poting as well so and this is this is twofold as well right so powering up a page generally speaking majority of guest posts are digital PR campaigns the orphan Pages which means there's no internal link so there's no power going through to that page for getet the Dr the link is placed on a page not not on a demain so you want to know what page level power that it's got and if that page doesn't have any back links it's going to struggle to rank so if I can go and get several tier 2 back links pointing to that page it's going to power that page up to increase rankings it also where the twofold part comes in is if that's linking through to your brand it also makes that link a very powerful link it also makes that link in my opinion the best link that you can get by not because it's powerful it's relevant you can't get any more relevant than it trying to rank for a keyword that you want your own money site to rank for anyway so it's powerful it's relevant and it's getting traffic that's the Holy Grail in my opinion of Link building so from a link building standpoint it's the best type of link you can get in having a power post but then having that power that you're talking about and the behavioral signals the off-page signals going to that page Google's looking at that going there's plenty of people visiting the page sharing it on social media and linking to it this page must be a good page and therefore it gets better rankings so many people are doing guest posts and and their offing pages with no back links no traffic no social shares and they're wondering why it's not ranking or why those guest posts are not giving any power through to the site but specifically for online reputation management companies they're wanting to do it so they can control the narrative suppress the negative press and why take it to chance why go bu 30 40 50 guest posts you don't need to it's go by 10 power posts not 50 guest posts yeah yeah yeah it cost you a little bit more because you're doing that little bit more on the guest Post in optimizing the content hitting it with c2s and sending some social signals an engagement through to the page but it's ranking for the keywords that you want it to rank for that then kind of lowers and suppresses the negative price and that's why a lot of om companies online reputation management companies come to search a for power post and then I'm sure there'll be a lot of om companies that's watching this and probably the next question that they've got is how long does does it take
James Dooley: so generally speaking it completely depends on the keyword difficulty so to speak but normally we write the article we'll send the article through to the online rep reputation management company for them because sometimes they might be working for big Brands and they might have like brand protection officers yeah so they need to see what the article is that's being put out there they'll sign it off and say yes I'm really happy with that article I don't want them changing too much because it's strategically written in a way to to try to rank it's just making certain that the overall messaging for balls within their branding no to be fair they can be a little bit more laped cuz it's not going on their website it's going on somebody else's website MH um and they don't really want to be seeing that they've written it do you know what I mean so they want it to be ghost posting there's then then showing how amazing that that brand is but then we'll send it through we'll say look we're looking to position it on this side they can decline our accepts but again our team seos we know what we feel would get best bang for their book we then going place the article on the third party website we then go do signal.com to get some social signals and engagement to go through to it we do our tier two back links which like link insert so that's a link placed in an existing article to power up that page that we've just written and then generally speaking you should start to see results I would say some sort of rankings within a week is is kind of where it's that because your strategic once it's indexed we also load it into index exceptional so once it's index Norm it's index within 24 to 48 hours normally then it you need to then get the the links the the tier two links you need to get them in next so again we load them into in exceptional for Google bot come and crawl the links and it starts pass the power through to that page so you could start seeing some page one rankings for some longtail keywords within 48 Hours MH but then once the other stuff starts to fall into place like the t two links and behavioral signals Norm 5 to seven days is where you start seeing results within a couple of weeks you should for for long tail off for Branded queries depending on the difficulty you like I said you could see number one rankings pretty quickly
Kasra Dash: is is there anything else that you want to add trust if anyone is looking for power posts make sure you check out searcher.com if you are an online reputation management company and you're looking for something like this get in touch we do have some bulk discounts that we can do for yourself um if you're not an online reputation management company but you just want to try in my opinion what I feel is the best type of battling that there is that gets you the best bang for your book again head off over to searcher.com and then go to the power post page um or fill in the inquiry form and we could have a chat to discuss what the best strategies for you would be specifically for power posting as part of your link building strategies
Creators & Guests
Host
James Dooley is a UK entrepreneur.