What is ORM? What is its role in SEO?

You must have heard about SEO and ORM. For many years, professionals utilized the SEO practices to improve the ranking on the search engine. SEO became a never-ending battle in the late ’90s and is continuing to rank better. 

SEO has affected many online and offline businesses and has become one of the most prominent digital marketing methods. But relying on SEO isn’t enough. It is required to maintain and deploy some other tactics such as ORM, that is, Online Reputation Management. 

The combination of both aspects will not only improve your search ranking but also the brand image of the business.

Before proceeding further, do you know what SEO and ORM are all about? If not, then I am sharing the answer below.

What is SEO?

SEO, as you understand, involves the techniques and tactics to enhance the visibility of websites on search engines. It involves increasing the traffic and rank of the websites. It entails multiple factors that influence the search engines to move the websites on different positions or ranks. 

SEO involves different keyphrases that rank for a single website or a page. These keyphrases are ranked through the algorithms that take multiple factors, into account, for ranking. Search engines like Google have more than 300 factors that are analyzed before placing any website in a particular position. 

What is ORM?

ORM is a broader and more prominent term than SEO. You can say that SEO is a key part of many ORM campaigns. Online reputation management involves the visibility and image of a brand in front of the end-users.

SEO majorly focuses on driving ranking on search engine results page (SERP), while ORM deals with the online reputation of a brand. It targets to build and manage the brand reputation or positive perception of a brand. 

ORM involves different websites that rank for fewer branded terms. For this, it combines various disciplines of digital marketing such as 

• SEO
• Web Development
• Content Development
• Online Public Relations
• Web Analytics 
• Social Media optimization and marketing

ORM is a multi-channel approach that targets reputation building by some activities that include

• Building SEO and user friendly website 
• Maintaining positive social media presence
• Managing online reviews and ratings on different websites
• Doing discussions in forums
• Sharing useful and informative content on different platforms
• Maintaining online PR
• Web analytics and so on.

This multi-disciplinary approach of the ORM is what makes it different from SEO. 

Benefits of ORM Beyond Search Ranking

ORM has numerous benefits that are beyond search engine rankings. I would like to mention some of them.

• Trust - If you have a good brand reputation, people would like to trust your brand more than others.
• Word of mouth - When you have five-star rating or reviews, people speak about you. They refer you to their known ones as well.
• Profits - Having a good reputation increases your chances of getting more business and profits.
• Reach - You can reach to the audience that you might not reach with search ranking.
• Risk - You have fewer chances of risk because people move with the crowd.
• Employees - Companies having a good online reputation gets talented employees to work for them.

How SEO and ORM are Connected?

Both SEO and ORM are aspects of digital marketing that go hand in hand. How? Let me tell you. 

As specified above, SEO is a primary part of ORM. Therefore some of the off-page SEO activities are utilized in the ORM that is

• Business/local listings are targeted for link building but can be utilized in ORM in terms of ratings and reviews.
• Spammy link removal saves businesses from bad links and distance websites that are not good for business’ reputation.
• Brand mentioning helps you to get a high-quality backlink and also brand awareness.
• Press Releases also get backlinks and increase brand awareness.

These are some of the SEO techniques that are utilized in good ORM strategy.

How are SEO and ORM different?

When it comes to the difference between these two, the major difference is that ORM utilizes SEO as its discipline. But when you dug deeper, you will get some other differences as well. Check out some of the differences below

Working

SEO focuses on improving the ranking or position of a website on the search engine on some targeted keyphrases. 

ORM works on building and maintaining brand reputation by creating a positive perception among people.

Number of websites

SEO provides results to one website at a time. A single website ranks on different positions for different targeted keywords. 

ORM includes multiple websites where your brand is present or can be presented. It involves social media sites, business listings, etc.

Focus

SEO revolves around search engines and professionals use SEO practices by considering search engine guidelines. Whereas, ORM works around brand reputation and changing the people’s perception of a brand.

ORM strategies are defined according to the business activities and the clients a business has. 

Revenue

Both of the digital marketing aspects are used to generate leads and revenue for a business. SEO does it by generating organic traffic through search engines.

On the other hand, ORM does it by improving the brand reputation and image in front of their audience.

Goals

While SEO is all about generating traffic and improving ranking, ORM is utilized to build trust and credibility among the audience.

Online Reputation Management Techniques and Tactics

I hope now you have a clear understanding of ORM and its relation with SEO. Now let’s talk about good and successful online reputation management techniques.

• Optimize your website not just for service or product keywords, but also for the branded keywords.
• Increase your online presence by building local listing profiles and optimize them to improve search ranking.
• Keep your eyes on the reviews that your users are doing for your business. Manage reviews positively no matter what type of review the user has done.
• Ensure that the backlinks your website has, are not talking about something negative related to your brand. Therefore, links should be relevant and authoritative.
• Don’t forget to monitor the brand mentions. Make sure that websites mentioning your brand, are not spoiling your brand reputation. If they do, remove those links.
• Survey your customers regarding the improvement in your business products and services and analyze the insights.
• Share newsworthy content of your business through Press release websites. It will be beneficial for both brand awareness and link building.

ORM or SEO - Which one is for your business?

The easiest way to decide which one is your business need, simply perform the following things

• Search your company on Google.
• Check on which position your website is appearing
• Look for the other websites where your business is present.
• Examine the information and inspect to find anything negative.
• You can do all the above things with your employees' names.

If you encounter anything negative about your brand during the search, it’s time to improve your online reputation. Consider the fact, if you have found negative things by googling your company, your users are going to find them too. So, it's the time for you to go for ORM of your business.

If you don’t find anything negative (which is great), focus on improving your SEO. You can also start the ORM to give more power to your business and to increase your brand awareness.

Both of the strategies are profitable if implemented genuinely and professionally.

Conclusion

As you can see, both SEO and ORM are equally important for a business. Although both are different but are still connected. If you want a good online reputation, you need to implement a good SEO strategy. SEO makes people get to you and ORM ensures that they don’t leave you.