Reputation management is necessary to ensure the long term survival of any successful online business. Your name is the most valuable asset you have, without a good reputation clients simply won’t risk buying from you. That’s why you have to do everything you can to fight for your reputation and that means a strong and timely reputation management campaign is a must.

Try googling the name of your business. If you’re lucky you’ll find your website and maybe some other positive material such as a good review. However if you aren’t filling up the whole first page of Google search results your company is at risk. That’s because if anyone writes anything negative about your company it’ll pop right up on the first page when someone searches your name.

Start your reputation management campaign by creating blogs, social network pages, reviews, press releases and directory profiles about your company. These should fill up at least the first page of search results for your company name. Google values the age of a page so by getting there first you have a major advantage.

In some cases slanderers will get there first and start slamming your company before you even realize it’s possible. In these cases you’ll have to push the offending material down onto the second page and beyond. This is a lot more difficult than building a strong defense and will probably require a dedicated team of link builders working for months to boost your positive material until it pushes the negative material away.

You can help speed up the process by writing interesting material for your blogs etc., this way Google sees that people are reading about your business and promotes these entries to a higher search ranking.  You should also encourage your satisfied customers to write about their positive experiences with your company.

 

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