Online reputation management Archives

Strengthen Your Blog's Rep, Step by Step

Guest Post

According to eMarketer, 2012 saw U.S. Internet usage expand by another 3.1 percent, reaching 239 million people— 75.6 percent of the population. If you can consistently corral just a fraction of those reader's interests, you've got a massive success on your hands. However, all the ambition in the world won't help you get from aspiring blogger to massive success unless you know how to apply your savvy ideas consistently and effectively.

Managing your blog is like managing your brand. Noted internet author and lauded connoisseur Seth Godin describes a brand as a “set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships.” Tied together, they account for an audience/consumer's choice in product or service. Branding service Reputation.com knows that being on the web means “the end of forgetting,” Reputation founder Michael Fertig tells the New York Times. The double-edged sword of online exposure can be swung in the direction your blog's popularity— that is, if you use some savvy tips and tricks from the pros.
Stay Ahead of Trending Topics

Naturally, not every trending topic is going to be relevant to the content of your blog, but with some creative content strategy you can leverage the hottest tickets of the trend-o-sphere to help generate eyes to your site. If your blog is predominately home-and-garden based, for example, you could feature an article about the recently published look inside Kim Kardashian and Kanye West's new home. There is always something abuzz in the media that can help draw attention to your blog. Spending some time each day building alerts and perusing Google trends can help ensure you get the best bang for your trending buck.
Brief Yourself On SEO

Understanding Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of the golden tickets of conquering internet popularity and reputation management. Although it seems like only super scientists truly understand the complex algorithms that make the internet zoom, teaching yourself a basic understanding of how key phrases and words can be used to help poise your blog is essential. Allblogbasics.com has an excellent run down of what bare bones SEO terms and practices means in three key arenas:
Site Layout (Site Design)

On-Page Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Off-Page Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Look for Creative Social Media Tie-Ins

Blogger Jeff Bullas remarks that the rise of social media was once thought to be a threat to blogging by many, however that has turned out not to be the case. Micro-blogging sites like Twitter and social media titans like Facebook had some bloggers worried that their content would be pushed to the wayside in favor of shiny new ways to connect.

Luckily, this is not the case, and bloggers have found many creative ways to parlay social media to better their blog's reach and reputation.

Link Link Link: Spreading your words across all your profiles is an important way to increase attention and visibility, and can also help strengthen the SEO power of your posts.
Titles and Intros: The title and first few lines of your blog post are the most important when it comes to getting people to click on it.
Contests and Questions: Drawing people to your blog through clickable content is one thing, but bringing them there by leveraging their own interests is another. Tweeting engaging questions to your audience, can also help draw passionate people toward relevant content and get you noticed.

Domain Stacking Or Brand Stacking In Google Search Results And Online Reputation Management

Earlier this month Google introduced Domain Stacking in its search results. By Domain Stacking or Brand Stacking we mean that when you search for a particular brand then many search results on the first page are from one particular domain , depending on the brand popularity and authority of that domain.

For e.g if we search for Apple or SEOmoz or Hersheys you will get an idea that the first 7-8 searches are related to a particular brand or domain name.

The main question which arises in this case is :

When we all want quality search results and we want search results having a varied mix then why has Google adopted this algorithmic change ?

Google has not said much about this on its blog or any other media but this should be highly linked with the online reputation management of a brand. When people search for your domain and if the first 7 – 8 results are from your domain then they get to know about your brand through your website.

Though all brands are not getting the same stacked results , the brands which are highly popular and have a domain authority with good back links surely stand a chance to rank for the first few searches on page 1.

It is quite obvious that once you get to know about a company and you are interested in its services or products you would like to conduct a brand research and know more about it. For that the social media sites will surely have the buzz around the brand available on their conversation pages but those again are opinions and preferences reflected in their tweets and like button counts but if the potential customer wants to know more about the company then he will surely want to know what the brand has to say.

Hence, the social media and this kind of domain stacking searches give the all round information to the user and the user can take an individual intelligent decision. As in the long run the user is responsible for his decision – the social media offers suggestions and opinions, the brand site offers facts , figures and information related to their products and the user puts two and two together and comes to a confident decision.

Your brand name is also one of the priority keywords for SEO . If you have the brand name in the domain name itself then it is surely a plus point and the inbound links from the authority domains have an added advantage.

It is too early to say how this change in the Google algorithm is going to impact the correlation between social media and online reputation management but, it is essential to start working on getting a listing of at least 7-8 search results from your domain itself for your brand search query , as this will determine your brand popularity and authority on the web in the long run.

As an average user today comes to know about your brand through social media or search engines . Whether the visitor hears about your brand via the social buzz and then goes to the search engines to find and reach your website or whether he reaches your website first through the search engines and then goes on the social media sites or real time search results to catch upon what others say about your brand does not matter. Having a presence on the search engines and the social media is very important and essential for a online visibility, influence and reach.