I visit Tamar Weinberg’s blog on a weekly basis, or as much as she updates it, because of her tagline, “Social Media, Internet Marketing, and Personal/Biz Development from a tech geek at heart.” And since I’m not a tech geek at heart, I find her blog gives me techie ways to look at client challenges I may have. She recently posted a personal story, and not very techie mind you, about how burying a negative result might have hurt her personally. The short story is that she recently had a cold, took Zicam, and then subsequently lost her sense of taste. She then searched on “Zicam taste buds” to see if anyone else had this complaint and found not only did someone else have this complaint, but that 300 others had filed a class action lawsuit against Zicam and won a settlement for $12 million. I bet she wished she had tried Zicam sooner…

She then asked the question of professionals like me who try and bury negative search results, “What would you do if you have a client who wants you to change their rankings but their mission conflicts with your interests? What if they are trying to push down rankings that you feel are important for public safety?” My answer is that before we take on any client we ask them for the truth and what their goals are with bringing us in. And if the truth is that their nasal spray kills taste buds, and they’d like our help to bury the negative coverage, we would have to pass on that big budget. We have to be true to our ethics and SEO professional code of conduct.

However, if a company in a situation like Zicam came to us, we’d advise them on how best to tell their side of the story. I honestly don’t know if they’ve fixed the sense of smell issue? If you do a search on Zicam and related words, they are buying PPC listings for a majority of searches, which is a step in the right direction. However, that’s the only step before they go back two steps by using an unbranded, boring press release on their parent site. A step that seems concocted by their lawyers and not their marketing or patient ethics department. I had no idea where I was – would you? The release headline doesn’t even mention Zicam.

On the organic side of things, they are ranking for a majority of related searches, but only once, not twice. They need to optimize the standard title, meta tags, and body copy, but also create content that will rank for negative searches. In addition, they need to optimize the press release on their parent site since it doesn’t rank organically.

A recap of what Zicam needs to do:

• Continue to buy PPC listings, but expand the list of related terms
• Direct PPC visitors to the Zicam site with a more dynamic release stating your case on why you settled and your current position
• Optimize your site for organic search rankings
• Optimize your press release to rank
• Disclose possible side effects or this case in general, tell your side of the story
• Split up your insanely long FAQ in order to rank more than once for certain terms
• Create a competitive matrix to help you achieve rankings for related searches like “Airborne”
• Build links into your site to help increase rankings

My last piece of advice doesn’t apply to Zicam since they are a pharmaceutical and many cannot participate in forums where patients are disclosing side effects. However, if you aren’t a pharmaceutical you could certainly participate in the many forums that rank for your negative results. Zicam has at least 10 ranking.

Zicam, if you are reading, we’d be happy to help tell your side of the story, but not bury the facts.