Methodology
Your digital presence, or your client’s, is an important asset. It is the medium through which most people learn about an organization or an individual.
Search engines crawl billions of pages and build an enormous database of information of every kind. The algorithmic composite, calibrated to satisfy the searcher quickly, often misses the mark. That can lead searchers to inaccurate or harmful conclusions, and to real-world decisions.
It’s not really magic. It is data, strategy, experience, skill, and attention to detail. This is how we think about online reputation, and how we solve problems for clients and partners.
Talk to a specialist →We track what’s said, find where it falls short, and curate what should be.
We track what AI models, Wikipedia, and Google say about your brand. Then we look at how you want to be seen.
We close that distance by analyzing why your digital reputation doesn’t match your narrative: the missing sources, the missing stories. From there we plan and implement the content and technical work to capture the narrative you need.
On Wikipedia, that means working transparently with the community, within their guidelines.
See the methodology in depth →Three interests compete for primacy in search.
That’s why brands have to take control of their online presence in a deliberate way, working to the overlap where every interest is reasonably met.
The searcher’s interest
Accurate and relevant information about the person or organization they are looking up.
Google’s interest
Satisfying the searcher: understanding what they mean, whether there is a direct answer, where they are, and what else they tend to search.
The company’s interest
Presenting its own narrative accurately and prominently to the audiences who matter.
Most clients arrive in crisis.
The smart ones stay ahead of the next one.
Typically, clients come to us in a crisis. Once the urgent issue is solved, they realize a strong online presence prevents the next one, and continue with us on an ongoing basis. We would always encourage brands and individuals to optimize their digital presence well before a crisis hits. Clients and PR partners choose Five Blocks for reasons like these.
- ✓Online crisis management for executives and brands.
- ✓A strategic focus on a specific reputational area, like employer brand or ESG.
- ✓People can’t find the brand, or confuse it with another entity.
- ✓Unfavorable or irrelevant information appears prominently in search.
- ✓Wikipedia does not present the full picture.
- ✓Assisting PR partners with their clients’ digital strategies.
Natural, multi-voiced, and low-risk by design.
Google processes everything online to assemble a dossier on any topic as fast as a searcher can ask. From experience and research, we have concluded what durable solutions require.
Natural
Long-term solutions reflect how content genuinely exists and is referenced online, not artificial constructs.
Different voices
Durable presence is corroborated across authority types, not concentrated in a single source.
Low-risk
Nothing depends on tricks or loopholes in Google’s algorithm. We curate, we don’t game.
Using technology and big-data analysis, we create and implement a deliberate, holistic, customized, and confidential plan to optimize and prioritize the content that should populate top results, helping you control the narrative. The work runs across three phases.
Analysis & Strategy
We use technology and big-data analysis, working with clients and their PR teams, to plan a deliberate search presence grounded in evidence rather than guesswork.
Peer & competitor appraisal and forensics
Understanding the sources of content and how to influence them: making sure clients take the opportunities competitors are leveraging, and identifying specific threats.
Keyword & term targeting
Term targeting and enhancement across the queries that matter, using multiple analytics tools.
Reputation tracking: IMPACT™ Proprietary platform
IMPACT™ is our proprietary tracking and analytics platform. It follows individuals, brands, and issues over time, compared to peers, and across geographies and languages, providing real-time monitoring and the actionable insight that is critical to understanding and influencing digital reputation.
Explore IMPACT™ →Ownership & Optimization
The more results that are owned and controlled, the further a searcher has to go before reaching anything less favorable.
SEO of owned websites
On-page and off-page SEO of owned websites and the assets you control: owned social pages and platforms such as YouTube, LinkedIn, X, and Facebook.
Optimization of Google features
Knowledge Panel, Images, Video, the People Also Ask box, and more, so the surfaces around the results work in your favor.
Content strategy, based on user intent
Particularly on clients’ corporate sites: answering popular questions and serving searchers something genuinely useful that competitors don’t.
Wikipedia strategy
Expert navigation of the complex Wikipedia environment, working transparently with the editor community to ensure proper representation on this important platform.
Wikipedia Strategy & Management →Location & language
Making sure stakeholders searching in different languages and locations see the information you intend, wherever they are.
How GeoSearch™ works →Social media, profiles & third-party content
Optimization of existing content and of social media and business-profile sites, plus elevating target third-party content such as news, the news box, and review sites.
Proactive Reputation Building
Reputation is not a one-time project. We monitor, calibrate, and capture new opportunities as they appear.
Monitoring & tracking
Ongoing monitoring and tracking of your digital presence, with calibration in real time as results shift.
New opportunities
Identifying and analyzing new opportunities, and potential challenges, as they arise.
All hands on deck
Making sure every PR effort is reflected online, so earned work actually shows up where people search.
Google is an answer engine. It prefers coherent results about a specific entity.
Being deliberate is key. Google sees itself as an answer engine and favors coherent results tied to a clearly defined entity. Defining your online presence as an entity, using platforms such as Schema.org and Wikidata, helps searchers see better-structured and more relevant results.
See Entity Optimization →PR, marketing, and brand professionals message to specific audiences. Online reputation should be viewed the same way.
Different audiences search for different things. A program can focus on one or more of these areas, optimizing for the relevant search terms and shaping how specific internal and external stakeholders experience the brand.
Employer brand
The brand in terms of employees or prospective employees.
e.g. ABC careers, working at ABC, ABC salariesTechnology & data security
The brand from a technical point of view.
e.g. ABC data breach, ABC site offlineConsumer brand
The brand from the point of view of buyers of your products or services.
e.g. ABC reviews, ABC brandCompetitive brand
How the brand looks versus its competitors.
e.g. ABC competitors, ABC reviewsLeadership
The brand in terms of its key executives.
e.g. ABC CEO, the CEO by nameFinancial
The brand in terms of its financial standing and investors.
e.g. ABC stock (and symbol), ABC earningsLegal
The brand in terms of lawsuits or legal action.
e.g. ABC lawsuit, ABC settlementESG & ethics
The brand in terms of its ESG efforts.
e.g. ABC sustainability, ABC environmental record, ABC ESG, ABC diversity
Contact us.
Whether you are in a crisis today or building deliberately for the long term, reach a senior specialist directly.
● Confidential by designA senior member of our business development team reads these. We are happy to sign an NDA in advance of your sharing anything sensitive, and we typically respond within one business day.
Members of our team, some of whom you may work with
Held in strict confidence. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.