Protect Your Online Reputation - Do It Yourself
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First, let's see how the process of "reputation fixing" works. If you are a little bit experienced in the world of SEO and search engines then you know that these engines do take time to crawl through the pages indexing them, so it takes a while until "new" content appears within the SERPs. Thus, it is very important to start early. You may fix your reputation in as little as 2-3 days but it may take as long as six months!
Patience is the key. Starting early is the best advice. Additionally, you should not wait until somebody attempts to defame your personal image or the brand of your product or company. If you currently do not have an online presence, that's amazing, because you are going to be responsible for the content you craft about yourself. You will have the ultimate control over your online presence.
In order to achieve the best results, it is helpful if you get at least a little familiar with search engine optimization, copy writing, promotion, marketing, public relations, and maybe even a bit of psychology -- knowing how to "influence" your audience (i.e. prospects) by emphasizing some areas of your crafted content. None of these is necessary, though.
First of all, the easiest and probably the most effective advice is registering your own name or company name as a domain (yourname.com or yourcompany.com) and set up a simplistic website. One main page is enough. It should contain your name, your company, some biography information (you don't want to be confused with someone else; this is important especially if your name is way too common). You may add photo(s) too.
It is a well-known fact that a basic web site on a registered domain gets picked up quite fast by search engines and you will end up within the top ten listings. Oh, and I am sure you have heard about "blogging," right? These online journals rank pretty damn well and search engines love them. Set up a new blog; create links back and forth your basic web site and your blog. Post a few entries about yourself and that's all.
Create lots of sub-domains around your name and claim ownership of the most popular websites such as Blogspot, Wordpress, MySpace, Livejournal, Hi5, Orkut, etc. Yes, that's right. Sign up for as many social networking websites as you can think of but don't worry about their content, let alone updating them on a frequent basis. All you want is an "online presence." Complete each with valid information and data that you want to be "known" about you and don't forget to link to your own website!
And now comes one of the best- LinkedIn. In this case you do need to spend a bit of time in order to take advantage of this unique social networking site. It is way different from the rest and due to the benefits you can gain from it from personal networking, connections, and your reputation it is something that you should definitely get right.
Check out the following articles written by Terri Wells on the topic: "Raising Your Visibility with LinkedIn" and "Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile" all published on the SEO Chat website. Try to apply Terri's tips in order to optimize and raise your visibility!
Create a Google Page using the Google Page Creator. Fill your page with valid and accurate information once again. Don't forget to link everything back to your main web site too. The beauty of Google Pages is that they do get crawled and indexed within a few hours right after publication by Google. This is really quick and a sure-fire solution.
Finally, you may even hook yourself up with Flickr and Picasa. Upload images that are related to you or your company, for example: company logo, some brands, pictures of local headquarters, some office shoots, and even from some presentations, conferences, events, sponsorships, and so forth. Post a few images, and be done with it.
In a nutshell, these should be more than enough to consolidate the first page of search engine results with positive and accurate listings regarding your reputation -- and it's all done with content that you have crafted yourself. Like I said, it helps a lot to link from each profile back to your main web site. As well as doing this, you may create a page on your website that links to each and every place where you own a profile. By this I mean you create a simple "links" page.
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