How it Works
Before the internet, you could make a mistake, and some time later, nobody remembers it. And you could move on.
But today, trouble is forever. Because the internet never forgets.
Urgency
Some situations have urgency, like a lawsuit, fraud charges, or any publicity casting you in such a bad light that your business, your standing in the community, or your love-life is seriously threatened.
An URGENT situation is a “deal-breaker” with your customers, your friends, your sweetheart. This needs immediate action. And handling it requires *all* the tools, and all the methods. This needs professional and skillful handling, right away.
There is no time for leisurely learning about a few of the tools. There is no time to experiment and play around, because before you’ve learned enough or done enough, permanent damage has been done: a business bankrupted, friends lost, a relationship shattered.
Internet Time
Maybe you’ve noticed that the speed and the frequency of these high-profile internet scandals has been increasing. You’re right. As more and more people go online every year, and as it gets easier and easier for more people to comment, and post, and “review” and “reveal,” your exposure keeps increasing.
With social media, blogging, Facebook, easy-to-change websites, twittering — and the increased efficiency and fast updating of ever-more-powerful search engines, which store cached versions, even when the originals have vanished … it’s just becoming easier and easier for anyone to become an overnight casualty buried beneath an avalanche of negative internet postings.
Google Insurance
Here is the basic secret …
“If you control more and more pages about yourself online, then as the sheer mass and strength of these listings increases, then it becomes harder and harder for negative internet content to affect you.”
Oh, detractors can write something, but if it’s on page 47, who will ever see it?
That’s right: nobody. (And we can still push it further down.)
That negative post becomes as worthless as yesterday’s chewing gum lying in a trashcan.
It’s a new world.
You can ignore it at your peril. But with just a little preparation, we can fortify and protect your online reputation so that the good effect can last for years and years.
The sooner your positive-reputation webpages appear online, the stronger they become in the eyes of search engines. And this makes it even harder for random recent negative page to gain any headway in the search results.
Think of it like an old western movie. And what works best would be to build a protective wall around the town — to make it like a fort — *before* an attacking tribe of Indians comes streaming out of the forest to attack. Because thoughtful preparation before an attack is often easier, more effective, and a more powerful protection than radical and intense activity after an attack on your reputation is already happening.
Safeguarding Your Reputation
It’s not that different than leaving your wallet out in a shopping mall.
You stop for a slice of pizza, and leave your wallet lying on the table as you walk away. You’d not be surprised if somebody took it, would you? Oops.
And it’s just as easy to lose your reputation online. Anyone can make an impact on your reputation: anyone from teenager with a Tumblr account to a grandma commenting on a political blog. That easy!
So … safeguarding, and planning ahead, is best. Protect your wallet. Protect your reputation.
But what if you’re too late, and what if the negative pages and content already exist?
All is not lost. Because with enough tools — we got ’em — and fast action, the damage can be minimized, and the attacking force pushed back. (Or in this case, the attacking posts pushed *down* in the search results!)
A Simple Overview of Reputation Protection
1) Define What’s Important to Protect
For example, it would be important what will be shown when somebody searches on your name. And also when they search on your brand name, company name, domain, your address and any info that ties back to you.
These are the online search terms that must be protected
2) Evaluate the Current Situation
Pull the top 100 search results for terms you decided that are important to you in last step, and then go through them, evaluating each one. Is it —
- Positive?
- Negative?
- Neutral?
Now we know what needs to be done. For every positive item, we need to move it UP, and that will knock a negative item DOWN.
3) Monitor
It’s like using radar to see what’s approaching. If your monitoring system is created properly, we can monitor websites, blogs, forum postings, photos, social media sites, tweets and other news. You will know and be alerted any time anything shows up about you online.
4) Build
Step by step, building for the future makes today’s results better, and prevents future difficulties. When you set out to intentionally create and strengthen your online reputation, you enhance present results, and just naturally prevent future trouble at the same time.
5) Repair and Prevention Actions
The question is … how to own the top search results. Search Engine Optimization techniques need to be known, and in fact a complete knowledge of current best-practices in search engine optimization is required.
Then there are Legal Tactics. Even though there are few cases when legal tactics are the best route, but generally, you really don’t want to use these, because
- They are expensive (lawyers)
- They can be very slow (months or years)
- And most importantly, often do more damage than good, by backfiring
Barbara Streisand learned about this the hard way. When she sued a company which had photographed her home from the air, her lawsuit hit the internet as big news, and the backlash publicity did far more to destroy her privacy than the original photos ever could have done. Oops.
Aggressive Tactics
There do exist black hat methods. We cannot recommend them.
Proper white-hat methods should be sufficient for the job.
Get a Free Evaluation
We can provide a free Current Situation Evaluation. Whether you’re already under attack and need professional action taken quickly, or if you’ve decided to take precautions and get some Google Insurance for the future, we can help.
CLICK HERE to get a free Current Situation Evaluation.