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Personal & Brand Reputation Management Tips For 2020

YEC
POST WRITTEN BY
Zac Johnson

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Reputation management is one of the hottest phrases and concepts in the world of online marketing, business and branding today. Not only is it a multibillion-dollar industry, but it's also quite influential in the many different ways people will see, find and get a first impression of your personal or business brand.

With this in mind, it's extremely important to make sure that you have some form of reputation management working for you, without having to shell out thousands of dollars to an ORM agency in the process. Whether it's for your personal or business brand, the process of accomplishing this is usually the same.

Having been in the content creation and Google search industry for more than two decades now, this is something I have quite a bit of experience with. I have some great tips for how you can get started improving and protecting your own personal brand, while also getting the job done, in just a few minutes per day.

Protect your personal name with Google search results.

Reputation management and brand marketing come in many different shapes and forms. However, in this article, I want to focus on the importance of securing the first page of organic listings in Google for your personal name.

To do this, we will explore opportunities for securing your domain name, starting a site and ranking social media profiles and authority articles in Google, thus allowing you to dominate and own organic listings in Google should someone search for your name.

Let's get started!

To protect your name and personal brand online, let's first assume you don't already have any sites or social profiles up and running. If you do, even better! Now just follow along with each of the recommended steps below.

1. Secure your personal name as a domain name.

Your name is important, and if someone is going to search for you online, that is what they are going to type in. If you don't currently own your personal name as a domain, then go and register it.

With more than seven billion people in the world today, it's very likely someone else shares the same name as you. This is why it's important to secure your domain name before someone else snatches it up. If the dot-com version of your name is already taken, try going with dot-net or dot-org.

2. Launch a website or blog.

After you secure your domain name, focus your efforts on creating a small website or blog to represent yourself and your expertise. With your personal name as your domain, and some content to represent you, the end goal is to rank your site at the top of Google for your name.

The actual site creation process can easily be done through any drag-and-drop site creator or by using a popular CMS such as WordPress. Be sure to also create some valuable information for your site that represents your expertise and knowledge, while also linking out to your social profiles.

3. Rank your social profiles in Google.

Social platforms including Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are beloved by Google, so it's easy to rank these profiles higher in search results with a little effort. Your end goal is to rank for each of the main page organic listings around your personal name, and pushing your preferred social profile pages up on that list shouldn't take much effort. Just like you would promote any other content, start linking to and sharing your social profiles whenever possible.

For best results, try to secure your social profile account username or URL with your exact name. If you Google your name right now, you may even see some of these social profiles already ranking on the first page of Google. If so, focus on those first.

4. Send backlinks and social promotions to your authority articles.

Lastly, with only a few more spots left until you can fully secure that entire first page of organic search results on Google, you will need to get a bit creative. If you've ever been interviewed or written an article for another authority site, this would be a great time to focus effort on promoting them as well.

Often, the higher the rankings and authority of these sites, the easier they will be to push up and rank higher in Google for your name.

Reputation management is all about preparation before disaster strikes.

The best reputation management and emergency plan to have in place is the one that never needs to be used. By spending the necessary time and effort on protecting and securing the first page of search results around your personal name, there is little need to worry about someone coming in and causing problems down the road.

Even better, this provides every person or brand who might be looking up your name in Google with the best experience and information possible.