Internet Reputation Management ? Business search engine blog ...

It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it,?
Warren Buffet, American Businessman and Philanthropist.

Internet is a great scientific invention that aids business to grow, expand and communicate with its clients and customers. But like all inventions, it has a flip side: it can provide anonymity and opportunity to anyone who wishes to malign your reputation. A tarnished reputation not only costs a company its name and respect, but its business opportunities are also badly affected.

Internet Reputation Management Problems

Reputation of any person or company is mostly hampered in three different ways. They are as follows:

A government regulatory body or a journalist has posted something negative about you or your company. This type of negative posting is generally done with no malice or intent to damage. They just post general information which is regularly updated.
A wronged person, who has been caused personal damage by a company?s products or services. This category of people generally vent their anger and cause short term damage.
A vengeful person, whose sole mission is to ?get at you?, by attacking your reputation, causes the most damage, because it?s fueled by anger and jealousy. How is Negative Reputation Managed

Negative reviews and inaccurate content generate negative publicity, which in turn leads to negative listings of your company. To counter the growth of this kind of negative publicity, Internet Reputation Management, sometimes also known as Search Engine Reputation Management (SERM) has been developed.

A series of search engine optimization (SEO) tools are designed, to make the negative publicity generating websites fall in their search engine rankings. These sites are pushed back to distant search result pages, making them almost invisible.

Positive publicity generating websites are optimized to rise in Internet search engine rankings. New content, like social networking sites, blogs and web pages are also developed to counter negative publicity, and then these newly developed sites are made to appear, relevant to the concerned company?s search terms and listings. This is done over a substantial period of time, until negative listings drop out of search engine listings.

Internet Reputation Management Tools

Internet reputation management tools and techniques followed to restore a company?s search listings include the ones given below.

Search Engine Reputation Management (SERM): SERM uses two tools to dilute negative publicity, namely, search engine marketing and search engine optimization. Both these tools apply damage control techniques, to restore corporate identities and reputations on the Internet.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM): The primary goal of search engine marketing is to build and manage brands, website promotions, market or keyword research, generating client specific or brand specific content and to increase web traffic to generate business.

On-line Identity Management (OIM): This technique refers to on-line personal branding and is done through identity exposure, using social network services and participation in social media sites like Facebook, Orkut, Flickr, Twitter, etc. The main objective of on-line identity management is to get high search rankings for as many sites as possible, when someone searches for a particular person?s name and his or her reference while browsing the Internet. As obvious in the above explanation, this technique is specifically used to restore an individual?s image and reputation.

Social Media Marketing (SMM) / Social Media Optimization (SMO): This services employs the concept of placing a company?s product or service and brand in front of the networking community, to improve its on-line business and reputation.

On-line Reputation Management (ORM): This service is meant for monitoring and protecting a brand, product or business across the Internet. ORM involves marketing and public relations along with search engine marketing, to raise awareness of the brand.

Internet Reputation Management uses SEO tools, not only for damage control, but also to position an individual?s or a company?s brand, product or service in higher search listings. In this highly competitive age, your reputation can make or break you or your business. A positive campaign to enhance the image of your business, will put your company on high visibility on the Internet.

Tagged as: Internet, Management, reputation

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