How will the Ulster Bank crisis affect its Online Footprint?

This is an incident that people will associate with the brand for years to come, and one that is likely to affect their trust of the brand.

But what damage has been done online? 

Type in ‘Ulster Bank’ to a search engine and after the direct links to the bank’s website, searchers are hit with link after link of negative headlines. 

“Chaos not over yet as Ulster Bank struggles with backlog”

“Ulster Bank woes continue on busiest banking day of the year”

“Ulster Bank customers still without account access”

The above headlines are the result of a Google algorithm update late last year that filters real time news stories and video content into your search engine results pages (SERPs). 

The titles of these pages all include the keyword ‘Ulster Bank’ which will contribute significantly to the brand’s search engine optimisation (SEO) and putting paid to the old saying that ‘all publicity is good publicity’.

These articles and negative headlines are an indelible footprint of the brand on the world wide web. Not ideal. 

So what can brands in crisis do to minimise the damage to their reputation online?

While there is no way to have this negative content removed from the web, unless you own it, reverse SEO can be used to push negative articles further down the search engine results pages.

A Cornell University study shows that approximately 10% of users will view page 2 of results pages on Google and only 2% page 3, making the later pages the perfect place to ‘hide’ negative stories of a brand in crisis.

But how do you get it there?

1. Survey the damage

How many negative stories is Google showing? Has the negativity spread to social media?

2. Respond