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Online Reputation Management
A little information about online reputation management. I notice that I am ranking high online for my old Greg Boser interview in Google but why do I also currently rank #4 for his name? There are some difficult to explain reasons but basically Greg was hesitant to get into blogging and didn’t establish his internet footprint until not long ago. He was also using a domain that did not represent his name as accurately as it could. He now is taking online reputation management seriously by registering and moving his domain from webguerrilla.com to gregboser.com. As Greg knows, it’s not about how many posts you can blog per day, it is about creating an internet footprint for your name before someone else does. I can see from my stats that people do not search for “web guerrilla”, they search for the SEO greg boser, and often! Large companies also might not trust a guerilla doing their SEO so he is establishing his name as a brand, smart!
A few more thoughts on online reputation management
Anyhoo, I registered aaron pratt awhile back for reputation management purposes. Google and MSN have me ranked #1 while Yahoo (who relies heavily on links and can be easily manipulated) still believes SEO Buzz Box is “aaron pratt”. My names footprint has been established and is ready if I ever decide to offer some sort of SEO services. If I find some nut ranking for my name and saying bad things about me, I can also create a buzz on my “name” site to bury the negative publicity. If I ever decide to close down this site (and believe me I think about it ever day now) I can redirect to my name site.
Did you know that Google has algorithms to protect your identity? If you blog about yourself to secure your name, brand, product or service the task is much easier today in Google, they are all about originating content.
Below is more names I rank for from old interviews I did on this website. Most I rank on page #1 in Google but a couple are on #2. It’s great I do not have any bad intent, I get traffic for all the names on the list and more.
Aaron Shear
Bill Slawski
Cristian Mezei
Dan Kramer
Dax Herrera
Jermemy Zawodny
Jill Whalen
Jim Boykin
Jim Westergren
Lee Odden
Mike Grehan
Philipp Lenssen
Rand Fishkin
Todd Malicoat
A quiz: Why does Danny Sullivan, Robert Scoble, John Scott, Danah Boyd, Michael Gray and Shoemoney show up further down in the Google search results for this site? Let’s take Shoemoney for example, does anyone remember his can you outrank me for shoemoney contest? Why do you think he might have done that other than to get thousands of links? That’s right; reputation management, he flooded the datapool. My Google hating, Matt Cutts baiting friend Michael Gray came close but NOBODY can outrank Shoemoney for any extended period of time. Why do the rest show up further down in Google for their names for this site? That’s right, they have HUGE numbers incoming links and well established footprints for their names in all the social areas which is another great way to flood out people who might try to rank for you with evil intent. Do not think others can not rank for your name either, remember the Dave Pasternack SEO contest? Yes, SEO is rocket science, if a group of people get together against you, you can be crushed, but even then there are ways to get back up top.
What can I do to protect my reputation online?
Get yourself a website or blog and establish yourself today, if you do not have the time, find someone who can represent your name, product, service or brand accurately for you! Just having a blog set up with a bit of information about whatever it is you are trying to protect is better than nothing at all. A blog is like having a well oiled tank, covered and fueled up in your garage. What do you have to rollout when someone attacks?
Relevant External Media:
Elixir Systems Online Reputation Management - PDF format
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November 9th, 2007 at 4:40 pm
I’ve been buying variations of my name recently as part of any effort to manage search results. Fortunately I haven’t had to bury anything negative yet. In fact, there’s one result of a guy with the same name that has been awarded a computer science award. I’m fine with people confusing that person with me :-)
November 9th, 2007 at 5:42 pm
Yes indeed Marios, you could even hide your “whois” data and setup those domains with unique false identities to clutter the serps. ;)
November 9th, 2007 at 6:01 pm
Fortunately writing about me is easy enough that I’m sure I can generate unique content to keep the search engines cluttered legitimately :-)
I actually just found a listing for a domain that I forgot to redirect that, despite having duplicate content, Google didn’t seem to mind listing. Another spot in the SERPs owned by me! Of course, my 16-letter name isn’t what you’d call a highly competitive term so all of this is largely effortless compared to what a John Smith would be tasked with.
November 10th, 2007 at 8:02 am
Yes sir, it’s kind of funny that people are offering online reputation management as a service. It pretty much comes down to setting up a blog, several subdomains for a single website, registering many accounts using your name or brand in social areas, having a name or brand contest… buzz marketing for natural links, wait…I guess not everyone can do this stuff!
November 12th, 2007 at 5:12 pm
what an awesome and crappy post. this site is still my homepage in ff even though you never update anymore. i think reputation management was the way i originally found it.
i’m surprised you didn’t mention naymz dot com. i signed up recently and it was #2 in the goo within a week. #3 now, but still awesome.
i linked to my linkedin profile from my naymz profile, but the goo doesn’t like that one as much and puts it on page 2.
and finally a question. do you think that putting these peoples’ names as text and especially anchor text, although nofollowed, will reinforce your site’s rankings for their names?
November 12th, 2007 at 5:59 pm
cory - If I was to link all the names using anchor text pointing at each individual interview it could push them even higher, but I would never do this.
If you notice I linked directly to “greg bosers” new domain because I wanted to encourage Google to update, if you check Google now his new domain is ranking #1 for his name (and his about page #2) just as it should! His old domain has dropped out of sight, though it might appear off and on for a few more days. Oh, the power of anchor text from a trusted source eh? The power of good and/or evil that is. ;)
I believe linking to the serp for the other names (as I did) and nofollowing lowers the chances of encouraging Google to make me rank even higher for the names. Interesting question though, is the link text within the nofollow completely ignored? I did a test once within one of the posts on this blog (linking to one of google’s blogs) and it seems to be the case which is good.
In fact, at some point I might even disallow all the interviews via robots.txt and get on with my life, it is kind of lame ranking for peoples names. I even get emails asking me about “who is the best SEO” to hire, Google sees this site as some sort of SEO name directory.
It is time for me to move on…this part of my little study is over.
November 29th, 2007 at 11:56 pm
I hate your bubble about your anchor text theory about my domain. The reason you weren’t seeing the new domain in Google was because up until a few days before you wrote this post, I was running a conditional 301 for Google that kept them indexing the content under webguerrilla.com.
So even though I launched to new domain back in September, I just recently started letting Google index it. Because there are now is a decent volume of links to the new domain, it only took a couple of days for Google to swap the domains.
You’re assumptions about why I switched, and any potential benefit are also off-base, but I don’t have enough patience to respond to all of those in a comments box….
November 30th, 2007 at 6:22 am
Greg - You should at least be thankful for me editing your old interview and adding new link text to your new domain in this post right?
Yeah, I notice you ranking for Dave Pasternack again, SEO contests are ugly things…
“My bubble” and your “conditional 301″ show that it is never too late to do a little reputation management, relax, I was just messing around.