In today’s Internet dominated world, we are in a constant battle to monitor and maintain our good business and personal names. As quickly as images and content are posted on the Web, they are replicated by algorithms and search engines, indexed, and made available to everyone.
The Internet is a permanent record of our past, and it never forgets anything posted online. The last thing you want or need is to have negative reviews appearing to your audience before the positive ones.
This is why online reputation management has become an essential part of building a successful business in the digital age. It involves monitoring, analyzing, and responding to online feedback and reviews, both positive and negative, to ensure that your brand’s reputation remains positive and accurate. By actively engaging with your audience and addressing any concerns or issues, you can not only improve your online reputation but also build trust and credibility with potential customers.
How to Respond To Negative Reviews
What do you do if someone posts something negative about you?
Or worse yet, submits a negative post to scam.com or ripoffreport.com?
One response to this growing problem is the rise of “reputation management” firms.
These companies will, for a fee, create a blitz of positive commentary about you and place it online. Essentially, they perform “SEO Spin” on your behalf.
The assumption is that the positive data will overwhelm the negative comments.
Something to be aware of – if one of these companies say they can “remove” negative comments you should know that it is impossible to remove comments. (The exception is a review that includes obscene or racially inflammatory language.)
The only thing that can be done is push them down in the search results so that they are not easily found.
Here are 5 Tips To Help You Manage Your Reputation and keep your positive comments ranking high in the search engines:
1. Register on all the social media sites and cross-link the profiles with each other. These sites have tremendous back link “juice” with the search engines and will rise together. You can also implement these additional social media marketing strategies.
2. Do your own search and find all positive comments about you anywhere online.
Even old comments are good. Link to these.
3. Take all the variations of your name and register them as a domain. Purchase the .com, .net, .biz and .org versions. Then, using your hosting companies easy webpage creator, design and upload a positive page extolling all of your best traits. Since these are such specific urls, they are most likely to rise to page one in Google.
4. Create several short YouTube videos of yourself, each emphasizing a positive attribute. Post these, using your name as the keywords in the YouTube description. Google loves video, and these will quickly be the first listings someone finds when they search your name.
5. Write yourself, or have someone else author a positive series of articles about you and post to article services. Many of these are considered “authority” sites by the engines and the articles will be visible on page one. (EzineArticles.com is one of the best for this, but there are others too.)
Being proactive and following these steps will help you keep your online reputation intact. Studies show that almost 90% of consumers trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation. So get in the habit of doing a Google search on yourself every few months just to be certain that the primary listings people will see are positive. And remember, in the online world we live in today, your online reputation can make or break your success.
Need help with your online reputation? 87% of your current and future clients will look for reviews about you and your business first! Our 3-Pak System is designed to create a strong online presence backed by solid social proof through a variety of Reputation Marketing processes. You can learn more about our Reputation Programs here or by booking a call at https://calendly.com/gordonvanwechel/marketing-3-pak.
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