In this video, digital marketing expert Joe Apfelbaum answers a desperate client’s question about removing negative information from Google. He explains that you cannot delete existing results, but you can push them down by creating and promoting fresh, high‑quality content that ranks higher for your name. He outlines a step‑by‑step approach: start by Googling reputation‑management advice; understand that click‑through rate (CTR) influences rankings, so you must click on the results you want to promote and avoid clicking the ones you want to suppress. He advises building a diversified content portfolio—own domain, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, press releases, blog posts, videos, podcasts, images, and directory listings—to populate the SERP with positive assets. He recommends making a concrete list of 5‑100 desired results, prioritizing the top 10, and developing a 90‑day, annual, and multi‑year plan. He suggests using paid brand‑name ads to dominate the top slots, leveraging PR to secure new articles on reputable sites, and, when a bad article exists on a site, publishing a newer article or commenting to push the newer content higher. He also mentions hiring freelancers via Upwork for guidance. Throughout, he stresses realistic expectations: reputation work takes weeks, months, or even years, and most people rarely Google themselves, so the issue is often less severe than perceived. He ends with a calm, encouraging call to action: stay proactive, create a plan, execute, and monitor results.
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Somebody just asked me a question. He called me up and he said, Joe, I'm pretty desperate. I know it's late at night and I have a really big problem. Somebody told me that they have a bunch of stuff on Google written about them and they're really, really depressed about it and I want to help them. And I know you're the digital marketing expert. How do we get rid of the stuff on Google? And I basically gave him a bunch of advice and then he's like, could you call this person and speak to him? For 5 minutes. And I said, listen, I don't really have time to sit there and coordinate a call with this person, but what I can do is I can make a video and then I can email you the video because I'm exhausted. I don't have time to have conversations now and I need to go to sleep. I had a really long day. So I said, I'm going to make a quick video, put it on Facebook Live, and then you can watch it. And if you're happy, great. If not, Google it to find out more information. So, oh, the first advice is always Google it, right? So you Google reputation management, how to get stuff off Google, how to get stuff off the first page of Google. Page, there's a billion articles and a billion videos. So rule number 1, if you want to learn how to do something, Google it. You don't have to call your guru, just Google it. There's a million people that will tell you how to do it. That's number 1. Number 2 is if you want to remove stuff off Google, here are the tips. You cannot remove something from Google. What you can do is you can add more stuff and then whatever's on Google, it'll move down, right? So let's say stuff, something's on the first page, you want to move it to the second page, to the third page, to the fourth page, you got to put in fresher stuff, better stuff, stuff that are more relevant. Now, there's something called the CTR, a click-through rate, and Google's algorithm, one of the factors that makes something rank for a certain keyword. So for example, for Joe Apfelbaum, if you Google Joe Apfelbaum, you'll see that the first couple of results are there, but it's based on the Google algorithm, and one of the factors that the algorithm has is CTR, click-through rate. So somebody searches your name and they keep clicking the same article, if you keep searching your name and clicking the wrong article, What's going to end up happening is that article is going to keep ranking higher and higher and higher for that keyword because you are clicking it yourself. So never ever click on something that you don't want to rank. What you need to do is you need to go into Google, find things that you want to rank, and then click on those things. Now, oftentimes when people come to me and they say, Joe, how do I manage my reputation online? How do I remove bad stuff? I say, what do you want on there instead? And they're like, I don't know. I have no idea. I have no idea what I want on there. I said, make a list of 100 things that you want on Google. One, I said 100. They're like, 100, it's so much. I'm like, no, it's not so much. 100 amazing things that you want to rank for your name. Literally make a list. He's like, I can't make 100, it's too much. I said, so it's not worth the effort, obviously. They're like, okay, can I do 5? I said, okay, start with 5. What are 5 things or 10 things that you want on Google? So they start with 10 things and they're not even sure what to pick. So I said, okay, let me give you a couple of hints. Number one is, You want some articles, you want some blog posts, you want some press releases, you want some videos, you want podcasts, you want social media profiles, you want directory listings. Those are just a couple of ideas of things. You want images to come up on Google. Those are things that you want to come up on Google when somebody searches your name. Now Google has something called universal search results. So when you search for something, Google doesn't know if you want a video, if you want an image, if you want an article, if you want a directory, if it's local, if it's national. So Google is going to show you all different types of results. And for the first 10 results, you'll see some, you'll sprinkle in a video, some social media, an article, some news. Yeah. So there's different categories in the SERPs, SERPs, search engine result pages, SERPs. There are different categories. So in the different categories, you want to mix what you're putting in there with different flavors of different things from the different categories. Also remember, the CTR is a super important trick. Because especially for a keyword that doesn't get searched so much search volume, and if you have a domain name, if you don't own a domain name with your own name, that's the first step. If you don't have a LinkedIn, a Facebook, a Twitter, an Instagram, that's the first step. You want to create that. So that's 5 things you can do right there. If you don't have any press releases with your name, that's the first step. You want to send out a press release, issue a press release quoting you about something that you did about something in your company. If you don't have People, articles that you've written on LinkedIn and in other places, on Medium, you want to start writing articles. If you don't have any videos that you posted on YouTube, post 10, 15, 20 videos on YouTube. If you don't have— like, literally, these are like the basic stuff that you can do to rank. Like, literally, you can hire a company to get you on podcasts, and you can be featured on 4 podcasts per month. You could do this for 3 months, and you could be featured on 12 podcasts talking about whatever you want to talk about, whether it's your specialty, your business, Something that you're interested in. People are always looking for interesting people to put on their podcast. So there's a million different things that you can do to get your reputation managed. But the key is understand this: if you don't have a plan, if you don't have a strategy, if you're not proactive about it, it's not just going to go away on its own, and it's not going to go away overnight. And most importantly, the most important thing I want you to remember is that it's not such a big deal. Now you might think it's the biggest deal in the world. But it's not that, you're literally not going to die from this. Yes, it's going to ruin your life a little bit. It's going to hurt you a little bit. But oftentimes when I speak to people, they're making it a much bigger deal than it is. Most people are not going to Google you. Most people, some people are, but most people are not going to Google you. They're not even Googling themselves. Let me ask you a question. You're watching this video. When was the last time you Googled yourself in private? Not in public, because we don't want to be Googling ourselves in public, right? But when was the last time you Googled yourself really? When was the last time you Googled your spouse? When was the last time you Googled your employee? People don't do that. As much as you think people do it, they don't do it as often. So in your head you're like, oh my God, everyone's Googling me, everyone's going to find it. No, people are not Googling you as often as you think and if you're wondering how often people Google you, put up an ad and see how many impressions you get, see how many times people— the ad gets served up. Put $5 on the ad, $10, $15, $20 on the ad and see what happens. Regardless, you should have an ad for your brand name if you're having a reputation management issue. That's a separated thing that you should do. But, you know, so he's like, how much does it cost? Can I just give you $500, $1,000 to do it? I said, no, if you're going to give me money, give me $1 million and I'll make sure I'll own the first 300, 500, 10,000 pages of Google. Give me $1 million and I'll take care of it for you. He's like, it's not worth $1 million. So I was like, so then do it yourself. He said, can I give you $500? I was like, no, keep your $500. What am I going to do with your $500? I don't want your $500. I'll make you a video. I'll teach you how to do it yourself. Go on Upwork, find a freelancer to kind of help you out, to guide you along the way, educate you on what to do. No one's going to do a better job than you. And the last thing you want to do is someone putting a bunch of spam for your name. If you're a lawyer, if you're a CPA, if you're an author, if you're a professional and you want to make sure that you have stuff for your own name, create a plan. Identify what you want in the top 10 results of Google, in the top 100 results of Google. What do you want on there? Make a list, make a wish list, just like in your life when you want to have a great relationship. What does your relationship vision look like? If you want to have a great business, what does your business look like? What's your 90-day priorities? What's your annual plan? What's your 3-year vision? What are your goals? What do you want to accomplish? If you don't write it down, it's not going to happen. And even if you don't have a bad reputation and you're watching this, you should still have a plan for what you want in the top 10 results of Google for your own brand name, for your own— for all that stuff. It's very, very, very simple. So what do you do, serious disparaging things and major news outlets report on? When people are reporting on things on your own name, you want to be proactive. If you're an important person, you want to make sure that you have a PR company working with you to make sure that you're constantly putting out news articles. Now, if you have an article on a specific website and that article is really bad, try to get another article on that same website that's really good. Oftentimes, you can contact a different reporter and pitch them a story and they'll take that story and you'll get posted on that site. Sometimes you could even create a username and password and leave comments all over the website and then your comments that are fresher than the article that was placed there will come up first because your name is in the comments. So you want to make sure you— because Google's not going to show that many pages on the same site. So it'll either show that page or the other page, so you can actually channel which page Google will show for your— For your keyword on that site. So yes, so if you're picking a specific site, that's the way to do it. Get another article posted. You're probably usually not going to get that article down, but if you leave comments in other articles or you get another article posted, the likelihood of you getting the other article to go up, and also if you link to that other article and you use the CTR thing, which you search Google from a bunch of Apple stores and you tell all your friends to search Google not to click on this link but to click on a different link, It'll help the CTR, it'll help the algorithm, and it'll move things up for you. So those are a couple of tricks that will help you. Remember, stay calm, only fret over things that you could actually control, which is what you can control is have a strategy, have a plan, execute on the plan and watch it happen and realize that Google doesn't change its results overnight. It can take many weeks, sometimes many months, sometimes even years of a lot of labor, a lot of work, a lot of effort in order to see it happen. So hopefully this was helpful. Stay calm. If you have more questions about this, feel free to send me a message on LinkedIn, on Facebook, wherever, and I'll create some more thought leadership around this. Hopefully this was helpful. If you think it was helpful, give me a like, give me a share, share this with your friends. Let people know that it's not the end of the world. Take a chill pill, take a deep breath, and then be proactive. Even if you don't have a reputation issue, be proactive around your own stuff. Thank you very much. Have a good night. I'm going to retire and I'll see you early in the morning where we're going to exercise together. Have a wonderful day. Bye.
