Your online reputation is everything. When 75% of consumers have active social media profiles, the word can get around fast if you mess something up. People are prone to talking, and that has led to the rise of the online reputation industry.
Repairing and preserving your online reputation can be done in many ways. SEO is one of the ways you can do this, and this guide is going to show you how to do it.
Consolidate Social Media Profiles
You need a firm footing on social media for SEO reasons. Google prioritizes SEO when it comes to ranking you. But some online reputation experts will say that you have to claim your social media profiles on all manner of websites for the best effect.
This is largely a waste of time and most of the link building and presence building you will do on these sites will be diluted because you are spending less effort on each one. Instead, just focus on the big social media networks, including Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. These are the social media networks Google prioritizes.
Use Your Universal Bio
Your universal bio is the standard stock bio that will be used to describe you and your company whenever you appear in the press or at an event. It’s conventional practice to use the same bio everywhere, and the chances are this is exactly what you do.
Yet many companies miss out on a vital SEO opportunity. You can use embedded links to boost your ranking and long-tail keywords to make sure that the first few pages of your chosen search query are dominated by good news about you.
Since Google prioritizes current content in the rankings, any event you appear at can be used to help negative press decay faster.
Speak, Invest, Donate, and Hire
- Speak at events.
- Invest in something.
- Donate to a good cause.
- Hire someone new.
These are four courses of action you can use to create news and generate good press to drive down the bad. They are easy to do and people want to hear about them. Most of these things you were probably going to do, so it makes sense to take maximum advantage.
Don’t do them for the sake of it. Make sure they fit into your business strategy naturally. People can usually see through unnatural attempts at cheap publicity, and it tends to make managing your reputation even harder.
Stay Away from Wikipedia
Many people will raise their eyebrows when they read about this. Wikipedia is an extremely powerful platform with a lot of SEO potential. For someone who wants to maintain a stellar online reputation, this can be the worst thing that happens to them.
The number one rule of online reputation management is to never operate on a platform where you are not in full control of the content.
For example, on social media, you may not own the platform but you own the profile. You can edit and remove anything that appears on your feed. That gives you vital control. But on Wikipedia, absolutely anyone can edit your page with wrong information.
Consider the customer who had a negative experience with one of your employees. They can edit your profile and then it can take weeks to debate with the editorial board to get it taken down. It’s hassle you simply don’t need. This is a major vulnerability to your online reputation.
Start an Alternative Blog
One strategy that requires a lot of work to initially implement is to start an alternative blog linked to your business. For example, someone selling kitchen units may decide to start a blog that features tasty recipes. You’ll be surprised at how effective this can be for using your existing base of loyal customers. They will link to you and they will help you to dominate the search rankings.
Again, this does take a lot of effort to implement, but the SEO benefits are immense. Even for search strings regarding one blog, links for both blogs will appear.
How SEO Really Works for Online Reputation Management
You may have noticed that all the strategies presented here have one thing in common. They are designed to help you dominate the search results. Considering almost nobody goes past the first page of search results, if you can use your own content to force negative press further and further down the rankings, you are reducing the number of people exposed to a negative reputation.
This is how companies repair their reputations over time, and it’s how you can do it too.
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