Technology is giving us new ways to do business, and this is a good thing.
Today the average merchant is not limited to customers within a one hundred mile radius of their brick and mortar location.
The ability to do business online has opened the door to the possibility of doing business with people from different cities, states, and countries.
The ability to do business like this has also created the need for online reputation management.
Online reputation management has more to do with how your business appears when people look at the big search engines than it does with someone filing a bad complaint about you.
Some of the big online reputation management firms gave us some friendly advice to pass on to you about what you should be doing, and how to do it.
You should be protecting your brand by being more proactive.
You need to have the content on your webpages organized appropriately and you need to be ready to respond when something negative is posted about you or your brand.
One way to help manage your online reputation is to use your company name in places like the HTML and the URL to your pages.
This makes you appear to be more of an expert to the big search engines.
You want to make sure that when you are making a reference to your company you use the company name.
Familiarity brings confidence from people so do not say "we build the best portable buildings around" say " B & K Buildings builds the best portable buildings around".
This gets your name out there and people associate the name with you.
You will have to diversify your business presence on the internet.
You need to own as many slots in the top ten keywords that people would use to search for your business.
If you are B & K Buildings then you need to be suggested when the following keywords are used: • Portable buildings • Metal buildings • Storage buildings • Utility buildings • Metal shop buildings • Custom built metal buildings • Portable building relocation • Portable building movers • Companies that move portable buildings • Backyard storage buildings You need to know that bnkbuildings.
com will be offered every time one of these keywords is searched.
You also want bnkbuildings.
com to be offered as close to the top of the suggested sites as possible.
People have more confidence in the first ten sites that are suggested under a keyword.
Get other sites that have things in common with your site to link to your site.
This will show the big search engines that you are popular and they will increase your ranking, thus increasing your reputation.
Use social networks like LinkedIn to help get your brand name out to the people.
You can also use Facebook and Twitter to get your name out there where people see it and become familiar with it.
Be diligent in the way you watch your online presence.
When you see something about your company that is negative contact the creator to see what the problem is and if there is anything you can do to help resolve the issue.