So you’ve decided it’s time to tackle your online reputation. Before you jump in and decide to hire someone or go at pushing negative results down yourself, consider these four things:

Goals

What are your goals for beginning an online reputation management campaign? Are you looking to remove a post completely or will you be content once a negative result appears only on page 3 and beyond in the search engines. Are you only targeting one search engine or multiple search engines? As with any project, once you have goals defined, it’s easier to not only start a project, but to identify when a project is successful.

Timeline

Not all online reputation management projects are easy. A reputable web site that you want to move down to page 3 for a specific keyword won’t budge quickly, so expecting results in a one month time frame isn’t always realistic, while in some cases, neither is 8 months. The amount of time and effort you put into producing results will effect your timeline, but how much time and effort do you have to dedicate to just this project – 5 minutes a day or 40 hours a week?

Budget

Hiring a consultant or company to assist you in your online reputation management can get expensive – anywhere from $97 from a small company that can get you results that you have no say in to hundreds of dollars per hour for well known consultants. Even if you decide to go at it yourself or dedicate an employee’s time to fixing your online reputation, things like Pay Per Click, copywriting, web site design/building, profile creation, and press releases can quickly add up.

Maintenance

Once you’ve met your goals – say the negative results appear on page 3 and beyond – there’s maintenance time to consider. Monitoring search results and keywords, updating sites to stay relevant, adding and creating new content to continue increase links, and claiming new profiles as they become available are all part of the maintenance needed to keep the results you worked so hard for. While search engine results have the potential of staying the same for ages, a negative news article that gets republished or linked to by a major contender down the road can mean that you start all over again with your online reputation management campaign. By staying ahead of the game and building power (via links) to your positive sites, a negative result that re-appears down the road won’t take as long to push down.

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30 Days To A Better Online Reputation Series

by Rachel KuptzOnline Reputation Management

I’ve been meaning to post a series of articles for awhile now, and I’ve finally got all my thoughts organized in order to publish the posts.
I turn down a lot of projects based on my workload, the type of online reputation repair project that is being proposed, and budget constraints. That doesn’t mean I don’t [...]

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Online Reputation Management: Creating Positive Mentions

by Rachel KuptzCreating Positive Mentions

We’ve already covered the basics (101) on how to find positive mentions and analyze negative results as part of your overall reputation management strategy, so now it’s time to figure out how to create positive mentions in order to push down negative results or, for those without negative results, to own the first page of [...]

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Online Reputation Management: Finding Positive Mentions

by Rachel KuptzBlog

Before you begin creating sites and profiles as part of your online reputation management initiatives, take a step back and find sites/posts/news mentions that already mention the keywords you’re trying to rank for.
Keeping with the American Laser Centers example, I’ve decided to use them again for this post.
While negative posts may be ranking high for [...]

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Online Reputation Management: Analyzing Negative Results – The Basics

by Rachel KuptzAnalyzing Negative Results

[Note: I am not affiliated with American Laser Centers in any way. I picked them as an example because they are a local Michigan company that I googled and – right away – saw a page full of negative results for. I have also not researched the complaints and am not aware of whether they [...]

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Unique Article Wizard: Article Marketing Review

by Rachel KuptzArticle Marketing

Review: Unique Article Wizard
What Is Unique Article Wizard?
Unique Article Wizard is an article submission tool that allows you to submit articles to a variety of blogs, directories, and submission sites. Unique Article Wizard has a number of blogs that belong to it’s directory, so finding relevant sites that will list your article is usually [...]

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Link Building Strategies

by Rachel KuptzLink Building

Spruce Up Your Link Building Strategies With These Tried And True Methods
While press release writing and article marketing are great methods to incorporate into your overall link building strategy, there are quite a few other tactics to consider to make sure your strategy is complete.
Directories
Large directories like DMOZ and Yahoo! Directories may not drive major [...]

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Optimize Your Press Release As Part of Your Link Building Strategy

by Rachel KuptzBlog

 
When most people think of press releases, they think media attention. Press releases can also be used to gain quality inbound links to your web site, though. As part of your overall link building strategy, there are a few reasons why press release writing can be beneficial: get one way links from quality sites, earn [...]

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Online Press Releases For Linkbuilding: Press Release Distribution Services

by Rachel KuptzBlog

Paid Press Release Distribution

PRWeb
Business Newswire
PR Newswire

Free Press Release Distribution

24-7PressRelease.com
1888PressRelease.com
OnlinePRNews.com
ClickPress.com
EcommWire.com
Express-Press-Release.com
Free-Press-Release.com
Free-Press-Release-Center.info
I-Newswire.com
NewswireToday.com
PR.com
PR9.net
PR-Inside.com
PRBuzz.com
PRCompass.com
PRUrgent.com
Press-Base.com
PressAbout.com
PressMethod.com
PRLeap.com
PRLog.org
TheOpenPress.com

PR: wait…
I: wait…
L: [...]

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