Tips for Using SEO As a Form of Online Reputation Management

Tips for Using SEO As a Form of Online Reputation Management

To attract and keep the attention of your target audience, you’ve got to make sure you do your part to properly manage your online reputation. While there are several ways businesses great and small can do this, one of the easiest and most effective is through the use of SEO. Learn how you can better ensure anything that appears about your business in search engine results and elsewhere always positions you and your company in a positive light.

Know What You’re Dealing With

The very first thing you want to do is get a lay of the online land as far as your professional reputation is concerned. Type in the name of your business (or your name if yours is a one-person company) into a search engine. Take a look at the results and ask yourself what kind response the material is likely to elicit from someone thinking about doing business with you or interested in learning more about your organization. Bear in mind that some of the results you uncover might be your own work. If it is, ask yourself if that’s the kind of image you still want to project or if you’d like to take your company in a different direction.

Besides paying attention to what’s posted, you should also look to see where it’s posted, such as a high-traffic site that’s likely to receive more visitors and more potential customers or something found on the 10th page of search results.

Change the Tide

Know that you don’t have to be stuck with poor content that ruins or blemishes your online reputation. Besides using helpful tools like ReputationDefender, you can also make efforts to post material that’s more positive and in line with where you’d like to take your company. Not only is this a good way to spread the word about your business, this step also helps to push poor content further down search engine result pages. Specifically, aim for posting uplifting content on major social media sites like Facebook and Twitter since this is where your SEO efforts pack the biggest punch.

Make It Automatic

Because it can be time-consuming putting out positive content and managing your online reputation while running your business, it’s a good idea to automate the process as much as you can. That way, you don’t have to worry about juggling as many tasks as you make the most of your business. There are services available that scour the web for content related to your company so you’re constantly aware of what’s out there and can act on it if need be. Other tools allow you to choose the content you want to push to the top of search results through your business site, social media profiles and even your email signature. Know that some of these services require a fee, but you might find it well worth it if it means protecting your online image.

Make the Most of the Power of Social Media

While social media is a great way to market and advertise your company in addition to better managing your image, it’s even better if you take full advantage of the power it possesses. First of all, because there are so many social media sites out there, you want to ensure your business is only on those that have the biggest impact, which includes:

• YouTube

• Facebook

• Twitter

• LinkedIn

Once you’ve created a profile on those sites, be sure you actually participate and utilize them as much as you can, otherwise, their overall effectiveness will go stale. Additionally, be sure you completely fill out your profile on each site, no matter how long that might take, and check to see that all the information is correct and remains up-to-date.

You should also make as many professional connections as you can on the above sites, using your current business contacts and friends as a jumping-off point. These are people who can help boost your reputation and spread the word about your products and services, offering you free advertising and marketing.

Create an Online Headquarters

As you’re pumping out positive content, start to create an online base where all that content is centrally and easily located, an origin point of sorts. You can do this by buying your domain name rather than using a free one. Also, post as often as you can on your social media platforms and the site you just bought. You should also make sure everything positive about you and your organization has your name on it, which is excellent for ensuring internet search spiders do a better job of locating specific pages and information related to your business. Finally, you’ll also want to do everything you can to scatter plenty of links to your content to every corner of the internet.

Properly managing your online rep doesn’t have to be time-consuming or difficult. With the right tools and information, the job practically does itself.