Your personal reputation should be important to you. If you’re looking for a new career then remember that prospective employers are more likely than ever to conduct some research on the Internet in a bid to find out information about you that your CV doesn’t show. If you ever decide to become freelance or set up your own business then your reputation will become potentially even more important as consumers and businesses are especially likely to look online in order to find out who they are dealing with.

Everything you do on the Internet leaves a trail of some sort. Whether you manage your own website, or you are a member of social networking websites, your name and your reputation will be governed by the pages and comments that appear on these sites. You can certainly manage your own website to ensure that others see information that you want them to but can you elicit the same level of control over other people’s web pages, blogs, forums, and other online comments?

The short answer is no. If somebody wants to post negative comments about you then they can, although they do face legal repercussions if those statements can be proven to be defamatory. However, you can protect your personal online reputation by closely managing the search results that people see when they look for your name. Create positive or informative web pages and blog posts. Add profiles on social networking websites and get involved in discussions relating to your industry or your hobbies and these can eventually take the place of negative posts.

When a user conducts a search using Google, Yahoo, or virtually any other search engine (Technorati, Blogrolls, etc…) they are presented with a list of pages that are deemed relevant to that search. Typically a page is considered relevant if it contains a number of instances of the word or term that the user searched for.

Furthermore the pages are then ranked according to how relevant and how much authority they are perceived to have. Considering results are usually returned in a second or so, there’s a lot of calculations that need to be conducted to ensure that users get the best information quickly.

Page relevance, or on page SEO, looks at the existence of keywords in the page content. While it was once considered standard practice to aim for a specific number of keyword instances in a page, search engines now encourage more organic results and so the number of keywords can be considerably more flexible.

Search engines are also believed to look at factors like domains and some HTML tags in order to determine the value of a page.

Off page optimization concentrates specifically on the number and value of links that direct to each of the pages. Each link is considered individually and if it uses a specific keyword or a related keyword then it indicates that the resulting page is relevant to that term.

Another factor considered in calculating a page’s rank is the authority that it is perceived to have. Links from pages with more authority will be given greater weight than those from sites with less authority.

SMX Advanced London is an event in the United Kingdom which is focused on the Search Engine Optimization and Online Reputation Management industries.

SMX Advanced London covers all of the search engine marketing topics – SEO, paid search advertising, analytics, social media marketing, local, mobile, and much more – again, with each session taking a deep dive into a topic, covering aspects of search marketing that many may not have considered or even known existed. Our goal is to “wow” an audience full of people who themselves are qualified to speak.

The event seems really interesting–professionals from all over the Europe and the UK will be present. We’ll try to keep readers abreast of any important news that comes out of the conference.

There are many areas of the Internet that can be used to promote or besmirch the reputation of individuals and companies. Social networking and bookmarking sites, review sites, and blogs are some of the most popular places for such reviews. Many of these sites are crawled by Google and other search engines and as results pick up steam through threaded posting the pages can rank highly in the results pages.

In order to counteract occurrences of negative press that might hit the top spots in Google, Yahoo, and other search engines it’s possible to use SEO as a valuable tool. SEO is an ethical way to ensure that your own pages appear as high as possible in search results. This not only includes pages on your main website but also on blogs, forums, and other pages that you own.

SEO usually targets keywords and search phrases that potential clients use when shopping for specific products or services. However, it is possible to optimise a page for any chosen term or word. This includes the names of brands, products, and names that you want to protect.

Social networking and other social sites have gained a lot more popularity with users and subsequently search engines have begun to stand up and take notice too. Facebook profiles, Tweets, and social profiles have gained greater exposure in search results.

Using a combination of your own online real estate as well as other related pages it is possible to move negative results down the search results and replace them with more informative and positive results; a beneficial way to use SEO to manage your online reputation.

The survey excerpted below is the first I’ve seen of its kind. It shows that there might indeed be a link between fan pages on facebook, and similar business profiles on social networking sites, and people actually buying the products or services offered by that business.

The study by Chadwick Martin Bailey and iModerate Research suggested that 51 per cent of fans of Facebook Pages and 67 per cent of Twitter brand followers are likely to buy products and services from the firms they are connected with.

Research like this will only encourage the major businesses to pay more attention to their online brands and to running un defamation campaigns.

http://www.bluhalo.com/news/view/7829/econsultancy-reputation-management-to-grow-in-popularity

Ever heard of a slam book? It’s a notebook, usually owned by a junior high girl, in which she and her friends write terrible things about their classmates or teachers. Well, now the online equivalent has been created. Unvarnished is a new social networking site that allows people to review others’ professional career, work ethic, etc. The controversy is…individuals can make those reviews anonymously.

Their vision: a site that encourages candid and nuanced information about prospective hires, bosses and business partners.

So far Unvarnished, which is in private testing at GetUnvarnished.com, has hundreds of users and thousands of reviews. The company preloaded 400,000 professional profiles.

Critics say Unvarnished gives a bully pulpit to unscrupulous users who will unfairly sully the reputations of others, harming their ability to land jobs and promotions. Lawyers say the site is a litigation nightmare.

In all liklihood, the argument is moot–LinkedIn is the largest company of its kind and likely to remain so. And it doesn’t allow for the same sort of online libel that Unvarnished does.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/sc-biz-unvarnished-story–20100405,0,758983.story

People make a lot of suggestions regarding SEO and web reputation management, but none is better than the advice found in this article. They’re quite right, content is king.

“This is not just content for the website itself but content for press releases, blogs, testimonials, social media channels and other third-party sources”, said Mr Hollands-Hurst, who is a search engine optimisation (SEO) consultant at the group.

He added that companies wanting to manage their online reputation should both boost SEO and create sufficient positive content that will drive adverse comments away from the first search engine results pages.

Of course, the content has to be good. “Any press is good press” isn’t a rule that applies in the reputation management industry.

http://www.computeach.co.uk/IT-news/IT-Computer-Technology-News/Content-is-key-in-boosting-online-reputation-says-Pixl8/19701060

Expedia.com, Hotels.com, and TravelAdvisor.com all have one important detail in common for those who are interesting in this blog–they have allowed consumers to control the online reputations of hotels. Admittedly, this is a problem for hotels–who can’t afford to have that sort of online reputation.

A big majority of customer feedback, 70%, is “positive,” says Maureen Dime of Avalon Report, another firm that compiles online reviews for hotels. “But,” she says, “if 30% is unhappy with you, that’s still a large percentage. We call it a tidal wave of whispers.”

Hotels have adopted different ways of responding to the tidal wave.

John Spomer, managing director of the Driskill Hotel in Austin, says negative reviews are compiled daily and forwarded to appropriate departmental leaders who are “required to respond within 24 hours.”

The hotel hired a communications director this month, whose duties will include handling reviews. “We’re not doing the best job talking to the masses,” he says. “It really takes commitment.”

It certainly does take commitment, as satisfying customers should, but any hotel that tackles this issue so proactively should be commended.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/travel/2010-03-23-businesstravel23_ST_N.htm

A man was charged with extortion for reportedly promising to attack a New York-based insurance company’s online reputation if they didn’t pay him $200,000. This seems to have backfired in a major way for this man…

The 52-year-old defendant was charged with one count of extortion through interstate communications. Authorities say he threatened to send millions of emails to drag the company’s name and reputation “through the muddiest waters imaginable” in retaliation for the company denying his claim.

Anthony Digati, the accused, is going to suffer some pretty hefty punishments. However, none will be more serious than the damage done to his reputation. His internet reputation will suffer from this press whether he is guilty or not.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/threats-to-attack-insurers-online-reputation-net-extortion-charges/article1493843/

Walmart, that behemoth of a grocer that everyone loves to hate, has settled a lawsuit concerning gender discrimination for roughly $12 million.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. agreed to pay about $12 million in back wages and damages as well as hire more female applicants for warehouse jobs to settle a sex discrimination lawsuit filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the agency announced Tuesday.

Wal-Mart already suffers from a serious web libel problem. Simply plugging their name into Google will bring up a number of bad links on the first page–this is not good for a company that is international in scope.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704548604575098192684023802.html?mod=WSJ_business_whatsNews