Rick Santorum: an Online Reputation Management Political Case Study

Writing by Nick Stamoulis

Yesterday, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum announced his decision to run for the Republican presidential nomination. Seeing as I am not from Pennsylvania, I wasn’t familiar with Santorum as a politician, so I decided to do what the vast majority of the world does every day when they are looking for information; I turned to Google.

This is what I saw:

If the section outlined in yellow is too small for you to read, this is what it says, “Santorum: 1. The frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex. 2. Senator Rick Santorum.”

Not exactly what a hopeful presidential nominee would want to see when someone Google’s them.

The not-so-pleasant definition of Santorum was coined by columnist Dan Savage in 2003, in response to Rick Santorum’s comments about homosexuality and right to privacy. What was one giant Internet prank became the number one search result for “Santorum” in 2003 and pushed Rick Santorum’s official site’s down the SERP in Google, Yahoo and Bing. 8 years later, it is still a top ranking result. It should be noted that the second listing from Wikipedia is a page totally devoted to the incident.

That brings me to today’s post: the importance of online reputation management.

In the online world, your reputation is one of your most valuable assets, for both personal and corporate brands. Whether you are a politician, businessman, consultant, corporation or job seeker, your online reputation can make or break you.

Building a strong online reputation is no easy task and it cannot happen overnight. That is why it is important to take a proactive approach to online reputation management. Companies should strive to build an online reputation that is capable of withstanding any bad press long before they go into crisis-management mode.

Businesses and politicians no longer have the luxury of sticking their heads in the sand and waiting for the storm to pass. In the age of WikiLeaks, no secret is safe for long and problems can’t be swept under the rug. The increased use of social media allows news to travel around the world in a matter of seconds. There is no more hoping that a scandal will disappear quietly.

Seeing as how spreadingsantorum.com is still a top ranking site, Rick Santorum and his staff did a poor job of repairing his online reputation. Once something gets published online, there really is no way to remove it entirely. Even if they original page is deleted, you don’t know how many thousands of other pages have referenced the original. Rick Santorum has had 8 years to fix the damage done to his online reputation, yet spreadingsantorum.com remains at the top of the SERP. That doesn’t do much to lend aid to his presidential bid.

A strong SEO campaign can help with your online reputation management. One of the ways this is done is by producing a steady stream of quality, positive content around your brand. The more positive associations there are with your brand, the less power the negative ones have. While you can’t destroy bad press, you can push it out of the top spot so it isn’t the first thing someone sees when they search for your brand.