Online Reputation Management

Most people don’t give online reputation management a second thought until it’s too late and they are forced into a disagreeable, and potentially costly, situation. It’s easy for individuals and businesses to take their reputations for granted when there isn’t a sleuth of negativity plastered all over the Internet. Until the day they find their bottom line being negatively impacted by what’s said about them online. Then all of a sudden, online reputation becomes of paramount importance.

So how do you recover from an online reputation crisis and most importantly, how do you prevent yourself from having one in the first place?

Damage Control: What to Do Once You’re in Crisis Mode

If there are negative posts about you on the internet, one of the first things you have to do is start flooding the same SERP – the exact same keywords – with positive mentions.

1. Create a list of keywords. For what keywords do the negative posts appear? Is it just your name, or the company name? Do the negative posts appear around variations of the name?
2. What are the negative URLs you are trying to bury? Create a list of all of the negative URLs you are trying to bury. Start tracking the keywords they are ranking for and their current positions.
3. Create or optimize your top-tier social profiles. If possible, make sure your social profiles include the target keywords. Some of the most powerful profiles that always rank very highly are LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus. Make sure these are as well optimized for the target keywords as possible.
4. Register your second-tier social profiles. Use a service like KnowEm to register hundreds of secondary profiles. Some of these second-tier social profiles have high domain authority and will quickly appear in the SERPs.
5. Become a contributor for high-profile sites. Reach out to authoritative domains that are accepting guest contributions and write for them regularly. Make sure you include your keywords – your name or company name – in the title so that these will start ranking.
6. Link to your social profiles in your articles. On every article that you contribute to authoritative domains, choose two or three social profiles and link to them. These links will boost the authority of your profiles and improve their rankings.
7. Lather, rinse, repeat. The key will be to create so many of these positive mentions that they drown the negative ones. To do so, you’ll need to keep your social profiles updated and active, and boost their link popularity.