We all know that it’s important to manage how people perceive us, particularly in the ever-increasingly utilized internet search.
Many consumers go straight to the search engines before considering which brand to go with for a particular product purchase. They want to see customer reviews and consumer reports. Many employers go straight to the search engines to do background research on potential hires.
So regardless of whether you are an individual or a business, monitoring and managing your brand’s online reputation is an important aspect of managing people’s perceptions of you.
Here, we will address how one can actually use their blog in order to repair a damaged online reputation.
Making sure your blog is high in search results helps you to suppress other negative links
Studies show that people who conduct internet searches rarely look past the first page of search results (almost 90% of them stay on that first page of results!). Since that is the case, then it makes a compelling argument for attempting to push the negative results that might appear in your name beyond that first page. You can do this by ensuring that your social media profiles are plentiful. That includes your blog, Google+, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace”¦the list goes on!
Create a Google+ profile and create a +1 link on your blog
If you are just starting a blog, create a profile on Google+ and make sure to put a Google+ icon on your blog. Having people share your content via Google+ by clicking on that icon ensures that Google recognizes the content as high quality content, and therefore is more likely to recognize it in search results. As your Google+ profile improves, your search engine results improve. Your Google+ profile in and of itself will take a spot in the search results, which is great when it comes to suppressing other negative links.
Quality content is key
To get people to share your blog content, which as mentioned above is quite important, you must have content that is engaging. The more people who share your content by either linking to it from their own blogs, social media, or Google+, the more likely your post is to be ranked higher in search results.
Be sure to use keywords that are important to you and make the content stand out – if the blog post is successful, your post will be more likely to show up in results for those keywords.
When writing quality content, don’t be afraid to deviate a little from the subject your business is about. Make the content relevant and engaging so that the reader wants to come back for more, and is inspired to continue to share your posts.
In summary, some might not take blogging very seriously, but it can actually be a very useful tool in helping to repair and manage one’s online reputation if you follow the aforementioned suggestions.
About the Author: Cara Aley is a freelance writer who covers a wide variety of topics from reputation protection to health and wellness to digital marketing strategies.