Ethics and honesty are essential. At least we think so.

See Related Article: Calculating the Value of Online Reputation Management

Suppressing negative links that appear at the top of Google search results can be challenging. After all, whatever appears online influences decisions, whether to buy something, hire someone, or go on a date.

The bottom line: a ruined reputation means lost business, and some who are impacted will do almost anything in desperation to get their reputation back.

Revenge is never a good idea.  

But who wants to work with or protect evildoers?

If someone is knowingly doing something bad, they rightly deserve their negative online reputation.

Any negative reviews should be left up as a warning for others to see.

There’s a limit to what can and should be done, as well as who to work with.  

But there is another side to ethics and honesty too

Is it ethical to charge a business or an individual $3,000, knowing that it actually will take $10,000 to repair their reputation?  We think not.  

Knowingly over promising and under delivering is in our view, unethical too.

Picking a price to repair a damaged online reputation, for example, is not a willy-nilly affair.

It’s not dependent on sizing up the client and determining what they can seemingly afford (or not) to pay.

Instead, it’s based on a genuine review of the issues and is determined by how many hours it might take to solve them.

So here’s what we don’t do (and we get asked):

Fake Reviews

We do not write false or fake reviews for Yelp or others because it’s unethical.

By the way, it’s illegal too.

Blackhat

We don’t engage in blackhat techniques or things considered not to follow Google’s rules and policies generally.  

This could include link farms, software to artificially “click” on good articles, plagiarism, article spinning, spam, and the like.

Hacking

We don’t hack any site at any time to try to remove a problematic link or review.

Purposely Evil Corporations

We will not work for any company out there that is knowingly doing or bad things.

Evil People

We will not work for an evil individual.

What is “evil”? We know it when we see it. If someone has made a mistake or took the fall for their boss, we can offer a second chance. Nefarious or caused physical harm?  Probably not.

Overcharge

Prices are based on a careful custom analysis–not on what someone thinks they can get out of you.

Undercharge

We don’t charge $3,000 for a repair job when we know that it actually will take $10,000 to solve it.  We’ll tell you the truth, as hard as it may be to hear.

Over-Promise

We never guarantee results. Who would? There could be occasional failures (yes, it happens–we’ve solved about 90% of our cases, though).

Online reputation management is not a science but is a subtle art based on high-quality work.  Also, Google is a constantly moving target since they make major overhauls to their search algorithms every few months. So, there are a few things we don’t do.  

Following ethical business and personal practices is at the heart of what we do here at Recover Reputation.

See Related Article: 25 Free Online Reputation Management Tips and Tools