Protecting Your Online Reputation With the Experts
Protecting your online reputation is no easy feat nowadays. The internet is home to countless websites and social media platforms where someone can easily capture your information within a few simple clicks.
How do you go about protecting your reputation online? In short, you can start by keeping tabs on what Google says about you, contacting the website owners where you find negative information and lastly you can work to publish positive information about yourself on either social media or a custom website you create yourself.
In this article, we will walk you through some of the most basic steps to ensure your reputation remains in good standings online. Users are beginning to trust search engines more than a personal recommendation from a close friend or family member.
Here at Internet Reputation, we work to establish a clean and positive web presence for all of our clients (over 5,000 and continues to grow every day). Call us today if you have any questions about managing and protecting your online reputation in 2019.
Don’t wait until a crisis has emerged, it is important to be proactive and not reactive.
Now let’s dive into it, let us walk you through how you can personally protect your online reputation in 2019.
Review Existing Search Results
On any given second there are roughly 63,000 searches on Google. People are looking for you online if you believe it or not. With over 228 million searches per hour and close to 6 billion searches per day Google has become the “all seeing eye” for those seeking an answer on the internet.
Using tools such as Google Alerts allows you to track your name or business effortlessly online.
By tracking specific keywords you will receive an email notification instantly with a link to visit the website you or your business was mentioned on.
Head over to Google Alerts. You will need to connect this to your desired Gmail account. Here you are given the option to receive hourly, daily or weekly reports from where your name has recently been mentioned online.
We recommend tracking your full name, phone number, email, and your business’ name (if applicable).
This way after you conduct your initial search for how your name appears online you now have a fully automated service, for free, doing all the future monitoring for you.
Create a List of Websites You Deem Negative or Unwanted
Start by heading over to Google, Bing, or Yahoo. We recommend starting with Google as this is the primary search engine used by most adults.
It is important to create a spreadsheet (you can do this on Google Sheets). This way you are not continuously clicking on results on each SERP. Repeatedly clicking on links within Google could send a signal to Google that you are interested in this post as Google may potentially rank it higher and higher over time.
Search for your name while in an incognito browser. You can open this window by simply hitting shift+ctrl+n at the same time. This will show you search results that are unaffected by cache or personal memory stored on your computer.
After you are done compiling your initial list. Determine which websites are having the most negative impact on your overall reputation online.
These can consist of the following types of information online:
- Google Search Results (anything on the first 3 pages)
- Blog Posts (not written by you)
- Social networks (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc)
- Personal Information Background Check Websites (Spokeo, Whitepages, and many more)
4 Steps to Clean up Your Online Reputation
When working on the internet, if you are not tech-savvy it can feel like an endless cycle of failure. We wanted to break down the most effective ways to control, alter, and improve upon how Google looks for you when people are searching your name.
If you have any additional questions about the 4 steps below please feel like to contact us directly to learn more about how you can protect your online reputation in 2019.
1. Contact WebMaster of Website in Question
By now you should have taken a few hours to search Google and create your spreadsheet that includes all the websites you consider unfavorable.
The internet is home to many tools you can utilize, for free, in order to find information in regards to the owner of that specific domain.
The best tool to locate contact information for a particular website would be ICANN WHOIS. By simply typing or copy & paste the name of the website into their search bar you will be prompted with contact information (if the domain is public).
If the website is private or protected by the hosting company there should be a “contact form” or “about us” section somewhere on the website where you can submit a ticket. This sends a direct message to the website owner so be sure to include valid contact information and the reasoning why you would like your content removed.
Please keep in mind that if you are seeking the removal of public information your request may be denied. Having proper court documents may give the website owner’s reasonable cause to remove or at least update the existing information.
2. Create Various Social Media Profiles
One easy way to increase the amount of information online that you control personally would be by creating countless social media profiles.
Websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and even Quora tend to rank highly on the first page of Google. These are typically very easy to set up and take little to no time at all in doing so.
Create an account, upload a different photo to each one as well as completing the bio or about me section to give your social media profile that added a boost in SEO.
3. Creating Exact Match Domains
One of the easiest ways to get rid of negative content on the first page of Google is by purchasing and building an exact-match domain.
What is an exact-match domain you may be wondering…
An exact match domain is a website that is your firstnamelastname.com. Google tends to hold websites in higher regard if the keyword or search term is the same as the website name.
For example, if your name is John Smith you could purchase JohnSmith.com or JohnSmith.net.
Nowadays you can watch various YouTube videos that will walk you through step-by-step on how to create a website within a matter of a few hours (sometimes less depending on your experience with working online).
4. Remove Yourself From People Search Websites
One of the most noticeable websites online and typically found on the first page of Google is known as “People Search Websites”.
These background check websites house very personal information that is available to anyone with an internet connection and about $10 to create an account.
After given access another can locate your contact information, home address, criminal history and even links to your social media profiles.
By removing your name from these people search websites you will be, for a lack of better terms, off the grid.
So let’s get started! If you need assistance or would like us to work on this for you please call us today at 877-532-0861.