7 Steps for Managing Your Online Reputation
If you've ever Googled your name, you
know how important managing your reputation online
can be. Each day, thousands of individuals are searching
online for information about others simply by searching
on Google or other leading search engines. With information
being so readily available, managing your reputation
is more important than ever.
How to Manage Your Reputation Online
Fortunately, managing your reputation
online isn't all that difficult, but it does take
work. Here are 7 basic steps you can take to ensure
that your reputation doesn't become negatively impacted
by what's being said about you online.
1. See where you stand. Start your reputation
management initiative by Googling your name. Try it
with quotes and with out (first and last name together).
Look through each of your results on page one and
page two of Google. Are there any negative
information that you wish to remove?
2. Set up a Google
alert. Visit Google and set up an alert for your
name. After setting up the alert Google will send
you and email to confirm that you wish to receive
the updates. Accept the alert and each time your name
is published to the Web, you'll know about it.
3. Contact website owners for name removal.
If there are sites that include your name and commentary
that is less than desirable, contact the appropriate
websites requesting that the information be removed.
More often than not, website owners will agree to
remove your name and/or inappropriate information.
4. Purchase
a domain with your name. Add sites and webpages
associated with your name and watch negative search
results get pushed lower on Google rankings. Visit
GoDaddy or another provider of website URLs and hosting,
and purchase a domain that contains your name. Even
if your name is rather common, experiment with variations
until your name can be established in the form of
a dot com. Once you own a domain, publish a webpage
with your personal profile.
5. Start a blog under your name. Blogger
is a great tool for setting up your own blog which
can be used to publish information about yourself.
Popular blog sites are often picked up by Google and
you can control the content. Be sure to sign up for
Technorati after your blog has been published. Submit
your blog for review and its popularity will increase,
improving search rankings and continuing to push down
negative search results.
6. Free press release. Use free-press-release.com
or a similar free press release site to publish favorable
information about your and your reputation. This form
of reputation management is easy and costs nothing.
Be sure to use your name throughout the release and
in the release title.
7. Author
articles in your field. Publish article relative
to a particular topic or area in which you've done
some work or have experience. Use article distribution
services to build online references to your content.
Make sure your articles contain an about the author
section that links back to your main website.
There are a variety of strategies you
can use to manage online references about you, your
family, or others that need to manage their reputation
online. Other online sites like Facebook, MySpace,
Flickr, YouTube, and Squidoo, offer ample opportunity
to deliver favorable search results that can push
unfavorable results down in search engine rankings.
The key is to start today to pro-actively manage your
reputation and put yourself in a favorable light.
About the Author:
Michael Fleischner is an Internet
marketing expert who has been featured on The
TODAY Show and Bloomberg Radio. Discover how to improve
search engine rankings at http://www.myseomadesimple.com.
