Today, reputation management is a necessity for a lot of businesses since websites and mobile applications allow both customers and competitors to litter the online space with whatever comments and remarks they please. The transparency is a step in the right direction since it gives power back to the consumer.
Unfortunately, there are always companies that rely on competitor bashing or that one client from the past that makes it their sole duty in life to ensure that your company goes down simply due to one bad mistake that you might have made back then.
A solid reputation management campaign, on the other hand, can be incredibly valuable to your business not only for burying damaging or negative search results, but also can ensure that your most important client interactions, web assets, and business news regularly appear at the top of frequented search results pages.
Reputation management has actually received the nod from Google by posting some advice on managing your reputation through search results. If you combine this advice with that from other reputation management professionals such as VelSEOity.com, it is possible to simplify online reputation management and gain the most necessary and useful tips.
1. Claim Your Brand Name
Claiming your brand name online is the first step towards managing your reputation online. Whether your brand is the name itself, your product name, or the name of your business, you should ensure that nobody else has control of misrepresenting you online by having control over part of your brand.
To do that, you should use the web services below to look up each instance of your brand name online:
– UserNameCheck.com
The secret is being consistent. Use one name across the board. For instance, if your company name is ABC plumbing, you should use “abcplumbing” as the username for all services available through the 3 resources above.
2. Manage Your Brand Name
After locking up the 300+ username accounts you find via the resources above, the next step is managing them. Now, it will be practically impossible to manage all 300+ accounts, so rather than spending your time across all of them, focus on the top 10 to 25 (listed below). The 80/20 rule applies to the accounts listed here as it does with numerous other things in business: the top 20 percent of the services account for 80 percent or more of what’s effective.
The Top Accounts for Managing Your Reputation Online
– Quora
– Foursquare
– Tumblr
– Yelp
– YouTube
For all these accounts, you need to ensure that you fully complete your profile by adding a photo, some content, your info, as well as links to other accounts/websites that you own.
3. Monitor Your Brand Name
When it comes to establishing and improving your reputation online, claiming and managing your brand name are just 2 parts of the equation. Monitoring your brand online is one of the most important aspects of managing your reputation. Monitoring the search results, status updates, tweets, blog posts, and other online mentions can be notoriously difficult and time-consuming. Fortunately, some amazing tools are available that businesses can use to monitor their brand name properly.
Top Tools for Monitoring Brands Online
– Bing Search
– Twitter Search
– Google Alerts
– Google Search
– MonitorThis
– Trackur
With all the resources listed here, all you have to do is enter the top search terms that you would like to monitor. For instance, if your company is ABC Plumbing then one of the search terms would be “abcplumbing”. The resources will query the major search engines along with blogs and other online mentions to help you know what the search engines have picked up.
To automatically receive an email whenever a new mention appears in the results, you can set up Google Alerts. Besides that, you should also check the search results at least once every week for your brand name to always keep a pulse on what the search results have to say regarding your brand.
4. Repair Your Brand Name
It can be quite the challenge to keep your online reputation and brand name completely spotless if your business had a not-so-rosy past. The good thing, however, is that is possible to manage and monitor your brand online. If you encounter something not favorable for your brand, you need to take immediate action to ensure that your brand and company never suffer from negative publicity. Before taking any action and getting worried, you need to understand what’s possible and what’s not possible.
Top Tips for Burying or Removing Negative Search Results
– If you control where the result originates from, just remove the mention of it from your blog/website
– If you don’t control where the result originates from, send a request to the webmaster of that website
– If you want the content removed, you can expedite the process by using Google’s URL removal tool
– To help push negative results away from the first page create profiles for your brand/company
– Post client testimonials on your blog, website, forum, as well as social media profiles to bury any negative comments.
– Publish a lot of quality content
In today’s world, online reputation management is crucial for business survival. Build a good reputation for your business and keep it positive.