Rule 1: Keep Your Reputation Issues Guarded

You should never talk in public about your online reputation management strategies. You can talk about the subject in general terms, but never discuss your actual strategies. It undermines the whole purpose of reputation management; you can’t tell the public how you manipulate them (or machines/ search engines) and expect them to let you get away with it. Even if you’re proud of what you do, don’t talk about it in public. Just shut up and act! Except for c a personal ego boost, there are simply no benefits from talking in public about what you do to

Rule 2 Big and Bigger Reputation Issues

It takes a lot of skill and preparation to develop a successful online reputation management strategy. The more time and skill sets you assign to this task, the better and more predictable will be the results you obtain. If you just jump into the first idea that comes along for dealing with a reputation issue, you may end up with far more problems than you started with.

Rule 3 Consider All Options

Unless you carefully consider all the realistic options to deal with your reputation issues, you won’t make the best choices or achieve the results you’re hoping for. In most cases a mix of paid and organic solutions is best. In rare cases legal actions may be part of the solution. Within these three main groups of solutions – paid, organic and legal – there are hundreds of options. The more carefully you evaluate each of the relevant possibilities, the more likely it is that you’ll end up with the best combination of strategies, tools and techniques.

Rule 4 Don’t be a Hero

Seek professional help with the development and implementation of your search engine reputation management strategies if you need it. Even with the perfect strategy, it only takes one error to blow it all up and backfire on its originator.