How Clean Is Your Online Reputation?

What Is Online Reputation Management?

Online reputation management is the process of taking actions to keep a company’s or a private person’s reputation positive and clean, by influencing what people find when they search for you on search engines, particularly on Google.

Why Is Online Reputation Important?

Let’s say you have a job interview tomorrow. It takes seconds for the interviewer to search your name on Google. You would be amazed what can be found about people online.

The same applies to a company you plan on doing business with. You search the company’s name and see many complaints and negative reviews. Would you still do business with that company? Probably not.

Data is so accessible today and does not require any special efforts.

Monitoring Your Results

Monitoring is the first step. Some people and businesses do not even know that their name generates negative results online. Simply by typing your name in Google, you can get the idea if there are any negative results about you or your business. A Google search is the first and most simple tool, but you do not want to type your name in every day to see if something new came out. Therefore, you should use Google Alerts, another free and easy-to-use tool.

You simply log in with a Gmail account and create one or more alerts about anything you would like to monitor. Every time something new is published online regarding the content you requested, you will get an alert. You can input your name or company name within a few very simple steps.

Discretion in Reputation Management

The most important thing about reputation management is keeping it discrete and private. When doing reputation management, try not to reveal that there is any intervention. Among entities doing reputation management, you can find: businesses, celebrities, politicians and private people.

Reputation Management & SEO

How are reputation management and SEO related?

Suppose you search for your company’s name and some of the results on the first page are negative; sometimes you can ask the website to remove the results and they might do so. But, many times, they will not even respond to your request – that is where SEO comes in. SEO can produce positive results about you or your business and start pushing these results up on Google in order to move the negative results down, the same way searched keywords are promoted in SEO. The goal is to increase the visibility of positive results under the term you want to manage.

How Can You Do It Yourself?

First step – search for your name or business name on Google. If you find negative results, there are two things you can do: 1. contact the websites and ask them to remove the negative content or 2. start creating positive results online and push them up to move the negative results down. You need to have some knowledge in SEO to do all the above. If you do not have sufficient knowledge, you can contact our SEO team.

How Much Does Reputation Management Cost?

The price differs from case to case. First, all the negative results need to be monitored. The price is then usually a function of several factors: How many bad results are there? Are the results coming from strong websites (e.g. news sites) or websites that can easily be pushed down? Can you pay the website to completely remove the content? These factors, along with other parameters, affect the amount of work that needs to be done to clean your reputation, and the required investment accordingly.