The Halifax Entrepreneur Erasing Your Digital Sins
HALIFAX- A California woman drives to a department store to return some clothing–a pretty routine trip for a mother of young children. But when she goes back to the parking lot, she is arrested.
The woman forgot her kids in the car, and it’s a hot day.
Her story makes the news. When people Google her name it’s at the very top of the search results. The woman, who once had a high-paying job with a major computer company, is now unemployable.
So the Californian mother makes a call to Nadernejad Media, all the way up in Halifax, to restore her online reputation.
“She told me ‘I can’t even get a job at Target,'” Nader Nadernejad, the founder of Nadernejad Media, recalled in an interview with Huddle. “It was a horrible, silly, mistake.”
Nadernejad is a unique Halifax entrepreneur who specializes in fixing people’s online reputations. If your name or your business gets negative results when it’s Googled, Nadernejad Media can push those results further down the page.
Some in this “suppression” industry don’t like to talk openly about what they do. But Nadernejad believes most people deserve a second chance and shouldn’t have a Google search paralyze their lives forever.
“I had clients who say, ‘I go to the gym, I’m afraid the guys are going to look me up (online),” said Nadernejad. “Or ‘I go on a date, and I’m afraid my date’s going to Google me.’”
Nadernejad said suppressing these negative results doesn’t involve anything underhanded. His company simply produces positive content that will rank high on page one of a Google search. Those positive stories push the negative results further from the top of the page–and in turn further from people’s minds.
Nadernejad’s first-ever client was a personal trainer in Toronto who was plagued by a news story about getting charged for stunt driving on the freeway. Nadernejad organized a public event, through Facebook, where he did a fitness run with local senior citizens, getting the trainer positive attention.
In other cases, Nadernejad will find interesting stories to write about his clients and submit articles online as sponsored content. Or he will make a press release to circulate to news outlets.
One recent client was a retired dentist who fled the Lebanese civil war many years ago with $200 in his pocket. As soon as he heard that story, Nadernejad knew that was something people would be interested in hearing about.
“I said ‘you have an amazing success story; how can we share it?’”
Of course, suppressing negative search results isn’t as simple as writing one positive story, or hosting a public event and hoping it ranks higher on Google.
Nadernejad understands the technical side of the process; like search engine optimization (SEO), higher domain authority, and how long an article should be to get a better ranking.
It normally takes several months to achieve the desired results. One client worked with Nadernejad for a year and a half.
Sometimes the campaigns can be quite expansive, as well. One client was an IT specialist who was haunted by a negative story on the internet. So Nadernejad had him create an online course, charging $25 per person, and issued a press release.
But we all know from social media that it takes less than a bad news story to ruin an online reputation, especially for businesses. It has never been easier for a dissatisfied consumer to write a bad review and have it impact revenue.
One of Nadernejad’s clients was a freelance artist who did drawings for his customers. He had suffered some bad customer reviews and Nadernejad felt the artist’s business shouldn’t go under because of them.
“When you do drawings, sometimes people don’t like your drawings, or the drawings come in late-so you’re going to get reviews,” said Nadernejad.
“And I think businesses should be accountable if something does come late. But for it to tank the entire business or tank revenue by 50 percent, it’s a little tricky.”
Angry customers are more likely than satisfied ones to leave bad reviews. So, in certain cases, Nadernejad suggests businesses reach out to those happy customers and ask them to leave a review.
Nadernejad believes in what he is doing because he thinks society should be more forgiving. He said we shouldn’t make ultimate judgements about someone based on a single Google result. It raises interesting philosophical questions about how long someone’s mistake should follow them.
However, Nadernejad said he doesn’t take on every client: if someone calls him and doesn’t sound sincere or honest, he feels he can’t help them.
“There are people who call where I speak to them and they don’t sound remorseful at all, or they lie. When that happens, then I can’t forgive them,” he said.
Derek Montague is a Huddle reporter in Halifax. Send him your feedback and story ideas: [email protected].