Reputation Management Is Becoming Increasingly Important For Businesses & Individuals
Reputation management is a hot topic at the moment as recent articles covered by the Guardian and the Telegraph highlight the importance of controlling business and individual’s online reputation. The reputation and image of any business is significantly important to the success of the company due to the impact this can have upon sales. In recent years the use of the internet has exploded as more and more people share their opinions and experiences online. The increased use of social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter and review sites such as Trip Advisor have created a platform for users to share positive and negative experiences online.
Many businesses have been quick to harness the potential of social media sites to promote positive images of their businesses online, however reputations can quickly be ruined by only a few negative reviews. This has led to many businesses to understand the importance of reputation management. Many businesses and individuals use the internet on a frequent basis; however until recently very few have stopped to consider the impact which their opinions could have upon their personal relationships, job prospects or their businesses. Bad publicity can be very damaging for individuals and businesses however until recently any negative publicity could quickly be forgotten. The growth of the internet as a method of communication has created new problems as information shared online is much more permanent. To ensure that individuals and businesses have a positive digital footprint it has become much more important to consistently portray a positive online reputation. A bad review, critical blog post, unflattering link or an out of control rant from an ex-employee which shows on the first page of Google search results can have devastating effects for a business, as this can cause click-through rates to plummet and business sales to drop and can often affect search results for years to come.
Businesses and individuals are beginning to consider reputation management companies to control their digital footprint and remove negative online impressions due to negative comments by ex-girlfriends, negative court cases and confusion with similar search terms which can in some cases portray unfair or outdated reflections. Google’s search algorithm can often portray certain websites to be more relevant than they are. Some industries have been badly affected by negative online reputations, in 2008 after the financial meltdown apparently some top bankers were paying over $10 000 a month to ensure that their digital footprints remained positive. Eric Schmidt the executive chairman of Google has predicted that in the future prominent individuals will employ an identity or reputation manager to maintain their online image.
94% of people never click on a link past the first page meaning that it is important to ensure that the search results on the first page of search engines is positive. It is possible to get negative content removed from sites and search engines however this can often be difficult and may need to be significantly defamatory to be removed; this is why many people hire reputation management companies to help with this. Reputation management companies use many techniques to affect Google search results such as reverse SEO which improves results by pushing negative pages further down the search results and push positive or neutral results higher up the page.
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