Reputation Management is a common practice used by SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) companies to help their clients keep only positive results on page one of the popular search engines. Although the security manufacturer's method of dealing with their problem was unconventional and some may say questionable, the end result was exactly what is required from a Reputation Management campaign.

If the alledged takeover of the forum was indeed true, it was in our view ethical for the purposes of Reputation Management, however, it put the manufacturer in a position of owning a forum that was used by many people involved in the Australian Security Industry - some of them their competitors. IP Alarms and others were making posts on an Internet forum that they understood to be owned by people or a business from outside of the security industry and with no interest in security industry politics.

IP Alarms offer SEO services to their security industry clients worldwide and we had a keen interest in finding out if the forum takeover was true or whether it was just another rumour started by one of the manufacturers unethical competitors. Direct questions were asked to the forum moderator and the response was quick and effective. The answer came in the form of removed posts and a forum ban. The excuse was that the IP Alarms forum profile contained a link to the IP Alarms web site, which is true, but it may not be the real reason for the ban. Whatever the real reason, the voice of IP Alarms has now been silenced on the SCSI forum and our research is complete. Here is the thread.. Decide for yourself. If the link is broken and the thread has been closed or removed from the forum, you will understand why.

IP Alarms will not go to such lengths to protect the reputation of your business, however, if you are in the security industry and are suffering from negative press, we can use "white hat" SEO techniques to help clean up your company image in the major search engines.