Online reputation management is a specialized field by itself. When you have an online presence, specially an online business through a site, you’re building a name for yourself. To manage this, you have to be very careful and track any negative remarks against it. This is about fixing problems, but there are various preemptive techniques for your online reputation management that I will introduce here.

Whatever Published Is Searchable & Findable

There could be a whole range of different measures you can take to prevent damages to your image. Here’s some of them:

Online Reputation Management Point # 1

Be careful about what you say! When you write something at your site/blog, be ultra considerate of its wording, tone, consequences, etc. So far, we’ve heard that search engines can scan and index text and links. For this very sensitive issue, we need to pay more attention about how the web content is published. If a video is published in which some points are carelessly mentioned, don’t ever think that video content cannot be  searched! That page has got a title and title tags are crawled.

Online Reputation Management Point # 2

Pay maximum attention to the choice of words! The world of diction is very complicated. You may use a word in a context for a certain purpose and it makes sense. Chances are the sentence having that particular word is taken from your web copy and republished somewhere else. Under such circumstances, the meaning could change and convey a message you’ve never wanted to say. Now, you’re being quoted for that as well. So, you have to be very careful about the choice of words and even statements.

Online Reputation Management Point # 3

Don’t reveal the unnecessary information at your profile! The profile you create for your site/blog should reflect the real characteristics of your company or yourself. This doesn’t mean that you must uncover whatever existing aspects. Your profile is a chance to introduce you to the world telling them how helpful, effective, professional, etc you are. Why should you include some negative points to add some spice to it?

People are different and people change! Some may misuse such information and damage your image. Then, you have to go to any imaginable extreme to mend it. You may change after a couple of years yourself and regret why you thought those remarks were cool!

Online Reputation Management Point # 4

You may hide it from search engines, but you cannot hide it from social media! It’s a mistake to think that online reputation management can be achieved through hiding your web content from search engines by inserting “noindex” tag in the header or excluding that page from robots.txt file. As soon as someone reads it, this possibility emerges that your content can go to social media and get buzzed very quickly!

Online Reputation Management Point # 5

Be extra cautious about how you address your audience and talk to others! Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law! I’ve had to quote this very famous sentence to remember the graveness of some consequences your carelessness may incur for you. The courtesy in speaking, the clearness in talk, the perfection is description, the techniques in explanations, and many other points can help your online reputation management while lack of any such elements can end up in harming you.

Online Reputation Management Point # 6

Don’t use misfit words in commenting at blogs! This is a very known point that you may wonder why I’ve included it. If you leave your link building campaign to one of those blog blasting sofwares or companies, you lose control over any attempts that they may make to get backlinks for you. They may even use your own words, but send them to the blogs that are absolutely irrelevant. This is very harmful for your online fame. Have you ever seen any well-known companies or experts sending such spam comments? At least, I’ve never come across them.

Online Reputation Management Point # 7

Don’t mock others’ web content! This will create enemies and generates hatred toward you. It generates tit-for-tat and makes it difficult for you to fix the problem later. Why not mentioning good points that could win hearts or helps tackle problems instead? This is something that could happen without your knowledge first and spreads quickly. You usually notice it much later.

These are some general points that have come to my mind. I appreciate any comments that could add to this list. Also, you can read Google’s post on managing your reputation through search results to learn more about what Google says about fixing the problems.