The Ultimate Guide to Creating a Positive Brand Image for Online Reputation Management

Online reputation management is something that most people and businesses only think of when they need it. And when they need it is when disaster has struck – a negative review about their business, a negative blog post about their products, or a negative record about themselves surfaces online.

The thing to keep in mind is that online reputation management is one of those things that works better if you implement it before you actually need it. The following are ways to build a positive online reputation before you need it or start building positive online properties to outrank negative news and reviews.

Own Your Own Website

Your first goal for creating a positive online image is having a website. Chances are, you already have one for your business like yourbusiness.com. Be sure to also protect your personal brand by having one for your own name, i.e. firstnamelastname.com. Websites with an exact business or person’s name in the domain generally rank first when someone searches for the name. If you have a website you control at #1 in search results, it will get the most amount of clicks and prevent most people from continuing to look through the rest of the search results.





Own Related Domains


If you want to take it to the next level, build up some other domains for your business or yourself. Hosting companies are notorious for having negative information pop up in search results from bad reviews to anti-their-company groups. GoDaddy tackled this by creating a crop of additional websites with their brand name in the domain.






Start Multiple Blogs


Your main personal or company blog doesn’t have to be your only blog. Thanks to Google+ authorship and Google Direct Connect, you can tell Google a blog on any topic is related to you.

Here are two great examples. Danny Sullivan is well known for being the editor-in-chief for Search Engine Land. If you search for him, you’ll also find his personal blog named Daggle. It comes up in search results for his name simply because he put Danny Sullivan’s Personal Blog in the title of the homepage and connected it to his Google+ profile.






Be Active on Social Media


Notice that I didn’t say create a whole lot of random social profiles that you may never touch again. There’s little point to doing that when reputation management is concerned. Instead, you want to create several strong social profiles on prominent social networks and keep them active and up to date. You will also want to build a strong audience on these networks as well – you could almost consider your number of connections like the number of links to your profile – the more you have, the better they will rank.

Some of the best social profiles to create and routinely maintain that will generally rank well in search results include the following.

Google+ – Profiles for people, pages for business. Make sure you occasionally include your name or business name in a status update or two as well.
Facebook – Profiles for people, pages for business.
Twitter
LinkedIn – Profiles for people, company pages for businesses.
Biznik – People only.
Pinterest – Make sure one of your pins includes your name or business name too!
Myspace – Don’t laugh, it still ranks well in search.
Quora
Flickr
YouTube
Vimeo



Do Interviews


If you or your business is asked to do interviews on blogs, videos, or podcasts, definitely say yes. Typically people will include your name and/or your business name in the title of the resulting content which will rank well in search.






Place a Lot of Images of Yourself Online



This is easily done when you’re creating social profiles and getting guest posts. Having lots of images of yourself online might sound like vanity, but it can trigger image search results for your name or business to pop up, further pushing down potential negative search results. Easy ways to do this is through profile photos on your social networks, author bio pages on your websites & blogs, avatars on forums, and so forth.




Create an App or Podcast


Apple.com is a highly authoritative website, so it is no surprise that any apps or podcasts rank well in search results. As a matter of fact, your app or podcast is almost guaranteed to show up on the first page of search results for your name or your business so long as you include it either in the title or the description.






Publish a Book on Kindle


It doesn’t have to be anything extraordinary although it should be something you would be proud to sell. But when you publish a book on Kindle, you become an author, granting you the privilege of creating an author page on Amazon. Thanks to Amazon’s authority, your author page should rank well in search.





Interlink Everything


One key thing to note with all of these opportunities to build your reputation is that you need to build links to them all and interlink them when possible. Basic SEO 101 – if you want something to rank, you need to build backlinks to it. Some ways to interconnect all of your good online properties and build links to them at the same time include:

Making sure your social profiles link out to your website and blog.

Making sure your website and blog link out to your social profiles and local search profiles.

Adding links to your podcasts, apps, books on Kindle, guest posts, guest posting author bio pages, etc. in your blog content.

Embedding your videos into your blog content and share them on your social networks.

Linking your blogs and subdomains to your main website (when applicable).

Adding anything notable to your Google+ profile links section. Be sure to distinguish social profile links, links to sites you contribute to, and general related links to the proper sections. Don’t forget to +1 them as well.