Today, in our digital age, it has become crucial for any type of business to manage its online reputation. The internet is more than just the source of information; it is a platform where people express their opinions and engage with others. Nowadays, everyone can go online and Google the name of a business before they decide to work with it. They can easily find any type of damaging content that can destroy the business’s reputation immediately. That is why online reputation is so important, and why you should understand how to manage it properly.
Read on to find out how to cultivate a positive online presence and protect your brand.
5 Tips for Creating a Strong Positive Online Presence and Reputation With the Help Of SEO
Online reputation management is one of the key factors in the success of any business. Let’s take a look at how you can control your online reputation with the help of effective SEO practices.
1. Assess Your Current Situation
Before you do anything, the first — and very important — step is assessing your current situation. Evaluating your online reputation is where you should start, because it will allow you to learn how others perceive your brand and determine specific areas for improvement.
How should you begin your assessment process? First, search the name of your brand or business across various online platforms and search engines, then thoroughly evaluate what you have found. Did you find any negative reviews, articles, or comments about your business? Is there positive feedback highlighting your expertise or achievements? All this data will help you understand your current reputation landscape.
However, a simple online evaluation is not enough. You should also check popular online communities with a more prominent presence. The communities that you should check and evaluate include social networks, industry forums, review websites, and other communities that are relevant to your industry or niche. When exploring conversations and discussions about your business, you should always pay attention to the sentiment and tone.
It is also a smart idea to use special online monitoring tools to track mentions of your business, name, brand, product, and specific keywords. These tools will help you gather valuable real-time data and use it later for cultivating and improving your online reputation.
2. Increase the Ranking of Positive Results
If you find positive comments, articles, or reviews about your brand or company, one of the primary goals of your search engine optimization strategy is to optimize and promote this positive feedback. Here are some useful tips for doing that.
• Make sure that all profiles related to your business and brand contain relevant, complete, and accurate information.
• Optimize your Google My Business page and unlock its potential, which means helping it stand out from the crowd. A well-optimized Google My Business listing will help you boost your online presence and strengthen your local SEO.
• Address all the aspects of your website pages and other online properties, including online directories, content marketing outlets, social media presence, and others.
When you focus on increasing the rank of your positive search results, you help your business and brand to create a more positive and professional image for current and prospective customers.
3. Create High-Quality Content
It is not a secret that content is the king of marketing and SEO. Would you like to strengthen your online presence and improve your website’s popularity? Then, you need high-quality and effective content. Proper content helps you boost your brand’s popularity and attract new customers. However, creating and posting valuable and powerful content might not be that easy, and you need to have a solid content marketing strategy.
Here are four useful tips
Search for Proper Keywords
You need to conduct a keyword search to determine specific keywords that are relevant to your business, industry, or niche. Then, you should use these trending keywords to create effective and high-quality content.
Define Your Audience
It is a waste of time to try to create content without knowing your potential audience. Knowing your audience will help you understand their needs and wants, so you will be able to speak effectively to your audience on various platforms. Also, when you are familiar with your audience, you choose the right social media platforms for cultivating your online presence.
Develop Your Content
Once you have your keywords and once you know what your prospective clients are, you can start working on creating your content. Remember that you should always create valuable content that will define you as a credible source of information.
Promote Your Content
Publishing content is not enough — but your content cannot promote itself. You have to do it. Therefore, make sure to market your content via various social platforms and help it reach a wide audience.
4. Take Advantage of Social Media
When used properly, social media can help your reputation shine. It offers you unique opportunities to show your audience and prospective clients who you are and what your brand represents. It’s like a window that offers a peek at your company, so let this window be open and attractive for new customers. Active social media and online reputation are closely linked, so do not ignore them.
However, if you decide to be active and present on social media, make sure to do so consciously. That means you should avoid posting useless and poor-quality content and stay away from inactive social media profiles. Improving reputation on social networks might not be easy and might require expertise and experience. Therefore, you may want to consider relying on experts in this area, such as Status Labs.
5. Include User-Generated Content in Your Strategy
User-generated content is another effective way for businesses to promote their brand and improve user engagement, so you should consider it as another SEO reputation management strategy. So how would you define UGC, and how is it different from other types of content?
UCG is the type of content that is created by regular social media users rather than paid professionals. It is becoming more and more popular, and it has a significant impact on online reputation because it offers an authentic and valuable user experience. Active UCG includes reviews, comments, tweets, likes, and more.
There’s one thing you should know and remember about this type of content: Unfortunately, you cannot force it. However, you can encourage your audience and clients to begin creating it.
Here are four ways to do that.
• Launch an ambassador program and start working with the most active and passionate users who will spread the word about your company and brand.
• Create a social media contest and offer prizes.
• Create a unique and very specific hashtag for your brand and product and encourage your audience to use it.
• Partner with an influencer who will promote your brand and product by telling their audience about it.
Can You Repair Your Online Reputation and Recover From Reputational Damage?
The short answer is yes, you can. However, there are certain things you should know and specific steps you should take. Don’t underestimate the importance of an online reputation, especially its negative aspects. A negative online reputation can have serious consequences for any business, and it can lead to a decline in the overall success of a company. Here is what you can do to recover from a negative brand reputation online.
Acknowledge the Issue
The very first step for any company that is trying to repair their online reputation is to acknowledge the problem. That means you should take responsibility for any mistake and harm that you may have caused. Being honest and transparent about the situation is what will help you recover from damage and restore your reputation much faster.
Stay in Touch With Your Audience
It is crucial to keep your audience informed of what is going on. You should also let your audience know how you are addressing a certain issue. There are multiple ways to communicate with your audience effectively, including social media, email newsletters, blog posts, and others.
Take Action
After you acknowledge the issue and communicate with the audience, it’s time to take action. Your actions can be different and may involve implementing new policies and regulations, making changes to your products or services, or even offering financial compensation.
Focus on positive aspects. It can be difficult to remain positive when you are dealing with the consequences of a negative online reputation. However, if you focus on positive aspects, it will help you balance out the negative. You can showcase your company’s successes and achievements, establish new partnerships and collaborations, get involved in charity, and more.
Keep Monitoring Your Reputation
In order to prevent negative brand reputation from happening again, it is crucial to keep monitoring your reputation regularly. There are multiple online tools that you can use for monitoring and addressing negative perceptions online before they get widespread.
Recovering from a reputation crisis might not be easy and might require the professional help of an online reputation management firm. Status Labs can help your business to evaluate the current state of your online reputation and suggest effective strategies to improve and strengthen your online presence.
Andrej Fedek is the creator and the one-person owner of two blogs: InterCool Studio and CareersMomentum. As an experienced marketer, he is driven by turning leads into customers with White Hat SEO techniques. Besides being a boss, he is a real team player with a great sense of equality.