Businesses and individuals alike must be concerned about their online reputations these days. It only takes one nasty post to go viral to turn someone into the internet’s scourge, leading people to lose friends and career possibilities while also losing businesses of consumers and cash. When it comes to protecting your internet reputation, you have many options.

You can engage an online reputation management business if your case is complicated or you don’t have the time to address your reputation difficulties directly. Various free programs are available if you wish to manage your image yourself.

What is the process of managing one’s internet reputation?

You must first understand how reputation management works before deciding which solution will best assist you in gaining control of your online reputation. Most internet reputation management technologies are based on search engine optimization or SEO.

SEO combines knowledge of how search engines work with careful content creation and timing to get the most out of fresh content, ensuring that it is widely read and shared, and pushing content you control higher in the search results list. However, repairing your online reputation entails much more than simply shifting some results forward and the rest downward.

Assessment, restoration, and monitoring are the three processes to maintaining a positive internet reputation. Here’s a basic rundown of how each procedure operates:

Examining your public image

Start by typing your name into a search engine to learn about your online reputation. Many individuals base their opinions of you on what they find in your search results.

However, you’ll need to ask a few questions to comprehend what the data shows you fully. What are the top links in your search results? Are these linked to your blog, your social media presence, or your company’s website that you control? Are there any links to websites that make factually correct statements about you? Are the links you come across genuinely about you or someone else?

For example, if you have a solid website associated with your name and the first few results are news pieces about your company, that’s not bad, but it’s not terrific. You want that link to be your company’s official site because more than one-third of all searchers click on the first link and ignore the rest.

Restoring Your Good Name

The next step is to correct your results to accurately reflect who you are. Depending on your situation, you’ll need to take different steps. 

On the other hand, reputation rehabilitation usually necessitates publishing new resources.

The most important thing to remember is that you’ll need to generate material superior to what’s presently there. You want to provide search engines a reason to prioritize your new content above older content.

This isn’t just about the text on the website; it’s also about strong SEO, having links from reliable third-party sources, and seeing that people are clicking on and interacting with your content.

Keep an eye on your public image.

Finally, the most crucial phase in the process is to keep an eye on your reputation. After you’ve spent the time and effort to repair your reputation, you’ll need to keep an eye on it at all times. Good reputation management software will automate this process for you, assessing links and displaying reviews and other content on a simple dashboard.

Tools for managing your online reputation for free

Now that you have a better understanding of what reputation management entails, you can choose which solution to utilize to address your specific reputation issue. Some of the most common free techniques to improve your online reputation are as follows:

Your preferred search engine

Spending time Googling (or Binging) yourself may seem egotistical, but it’s smart business. Just keep in mind that you’ll need to sign out of everything you’re regularly signed into, including Google, Gmail, and other services. Otherwise, you’ll only see results matching your likes and profile information, especially on Google.

Google Alerts

Google Alerts is one of the simplest methods to set up automated alerts for any subject—including your own or your company’s name—allowing you to set up frequent emails that will keep you informed of what’s being written about various topics on the internet. You can request daily or weekly alerts to be sent to your inbox when new information becomes available.

Mention.com

You’ll obtain a dashboard with mentions of your search phrase when you type your name or your company’s name into this powerful web tool. Mention.com’s free version allows you to export search term mentions, send them to others, and classify them as positive, negative, or neutral. You may also link your social media profiles and share your followers’ mentions.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a social media dashboard that allows you to manage and maintain your whole online presence. Its in-depth statistics disclose how people interpret your material, making it a good reputation tool. You may alter your messaging in this way to maintain your branding in step with your followers’ attitudes.

Social media monitoring is also available through Hootsuite. Users can search for and filter social media conversations in many languages by hashtag, topic, and region to see what the public says about them. Users may now collect more conversations using a variety of monitoring applications, allowing them to undertake even more reputation monitoring activities. This can be things such as reviewing site ratings and determining the tone of speech people use while discussing your business with the enhanced version of the program.

Complaint Search Box

Go Fish Digital established Complaint Search Box to allow customers to search through more than 40 online complaint sites. Individuals can use this tool to quickly and easily do searches to ensure that people are not dissatisfied with them or their company’s brand. If they discover that people are leaving negative evaluations, they can quickly respond to them, preserving their reputation.

Rankur

Rankur offers various services to help consumers keep track of their social media presence and where their name is being used. The ability to track when their name appears in social media, press releases, and blog postings are a few of Rankur’s most remarkable features. Users can also be notified when someone leaves a negative internet review about them.

ImageRaider

ImageRaider searches the internet for your images. If any are found, it indexes them and informs you if they are falsely sourced or misused. This is a handy tool, primarily if your business relies on photographs.

What if you require more than what the free tools can provide?

If you find that dealing with your online reputation problem on your own isn’t working or is too time demanding, you may always engage a reputation management service to help you. Many companies provide various services but make sure you choose a reliable one.

Begin by reading my guide to selecting an online reputation management firm. It discusses the characteristics of good online reputation management (ORM) firms and the red flags to watch out for.