Reputation management means protecting your business from online slanderers and jealous competitors that want to destroy your company. Like it or not it is very easy for your enemies to post negative material about your company online and unless you have used proper reputation management that information is going to be right up at the top of any Google search results for your name.

The key to reputation management is to have the entire first page of Google search results for your name filled up with accurate, positive posts about your company. Create as many blogs, social network pages, directory entries, reviews, and any other pages as you can for your company. Once they fill the first page maintain them regularly with quality content. Now when someone posts about your company online their entries will be unable to penetrate the first page of Google.

If slanderous material does find its way onto the first page of Google you’ll have to push it back down by reinforcing the reputation management steps outlined above, this is no easy task and can often take months. Realistically removing old post from the first page could require a dedicated team of link builders working for months. The idea is that you need to make the positive pages appear more relevant for a search of your company name than the negative material. One of the key ways that Google judges this is by measuring the number and quality of links leading to your pages.

In addition it is often worthwhile to encourage former customers to post about positive experiences they have had with your company. In addition it is worth addressing slanderous remarks in the comments section of negative pages. In some instances if a claim is extreme and is harming your business, a webmaster will take down the offending material voluntarily.

 

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