For those who are unfamiliar with the concept of online reputation management, you should get familiar with it real quick. Why? You want to give the best possible impression to people that search for your name on the web.

What is online reputation management? It is the process of monitoring your name online, in an attempt to remove or hide negatives and constantly keep positives at the forefront.

With the amount of information being put on the Internet each and every day, it’s tough to control what might be out there with your name attached to it. This goes for both individuals and organizations.

When it comes to online reputation management, where do you start?

Search the Internet for your name. Use Google, Bing or some other popular search engine. What comes up? Good stuff? Bad stuff? Stuff you want people to see? Stuff you don’t want people to see? Either way, these search results for your name is what currently makes up a good chunk of your online reputation, at least in terms of what the search engines are presenting.

What are some ways you can control your online reputation, specifically in the search engines?

First, start off by searching for your name or your organization’s name. Search for content, search for images, search for videos – search for all types of media on the web that might have your name attached to it.

Observe the results. What type of information did you find? Good? Bad?

You may be happy with what you found, finding nothing particularly offensive. If this is the case, great! If not, you have some work to do.

First of all, start off by carefully considering anything new that you release onto the Internet. Don’t post anything about yourself or your business without first deciding if this is indeed information that you feel comfortable putting online.

If you don’t think that a particular picture will go over well with potential future employers (or even family members), don’t put it online. If you have an opinion that could garner massive negative reaction, you might want to think twice about putting it out on the web.

When finding negative stuff regarding your name in the search results, you have two options:

  • Attempt to remove the bad stuff from the web
  • Put enough new good stuff on the web in an attempt to “bury” the bad stuff in the search results

To remove bad stuff from the web, you need to directly contact the administrators of the web sites where the negative content is posted. In many cases, webmasters might simply remove content/videos/photos from web sites if they have a direct request to do so. Once this content is removed from a particular web site, it should disappear from the search results in a few weeks or less.

You may or may not be successful in getting webmasters to respond to your inquiries to remove content. Some sites just exist, with nameless or non-responsive webmasters. You might not be able to find somebody with the ability to remove the content.

When contacting web sites about removing content, be patient – and realize that it might be near impossible to get content removed from a particular web site in some cases.

Once you have accomplished the task of removing as much negative content from the web as possible, there may be a certain amount of content out there that you just have no control over, be it good or bad, and it still remains in the search engine results for your name.

What can you do about the remaining stuff?

Bury it.

Start posting new content to the web. Make sure that the new content is favorable to your likeness, nothing negative.

Examples:

  • If you are trying to bury some bad college photos, post more favorable photos of yourself to the web.
  • If you are trying to bury a blog article that is negative about you as a person, have friends or colleagues write blog posts about your name that present you in a different light.
  • If you are trying to bury bad news about your business, post newer content about your business on blogs and online news sites to eventually bury the bad news.

You get the idea. Create constant good buzz about yourself or your organization on the web and the bad buzz will start to fade.

Absolute Marketing Group can help you work towards your online goals if you need help. We have a Fargo-Moorhead based web design team that can help you do everything you read about on our web site. Contact us today if you need help with your next web project.