Online reputation management to protect your brand image

Everyday, millions and millions of people surf the web. Your reputation on the web can have a direct impact on your personal, professional, industry or business reputation. When surfers browse through the top search results on leading search engines for obtaining information about you and your company, positive content on the first page of your website is sure to attract the attention of the users. However, negative information lists on the front page can damage your online reputation.

Online reputation management (ORM) helps business owners and professionals deal with bad press. To deal with user generated content and all kinds of online media, online reputation monitoring is essential. Online reputation management presents ways to neutralize negative publicity by removing negative aspects on your website. Nowadays, most online businesses utilize online reputation management services to enhance the company's online image and publicity.

Online reputation management services include search engine optimization, social media marketing and search engine marketing. Utilizing these strategies, the service providers help protect your name  and brand image on the web by manipulating search engine results using ethical techniques, to obtain high ranking for your website on Google, Yahoo, MSN, Alta Vista, and other popular search engines. The services include online content monitoring i.e.  professional content sponsored by big media giants as well as user generated contents like blogs, reviews, comments, and ratings. The need for management of user generated media lead to the inception of online reputation management.

With the growing popularity of social media and social networking sites, the search results of major search engines were also affected.

Given below are some examples of online media monitored by Online Reputation Management:

• Social networks like Facebook, Orkut , Myspace to name a few.
• Review sites like Opinions and Mouthshut.
• Social Bookmarking websites like Digg and Stumbleupon.
• Blogs
• Discussion forums
• Blogging communities like opendiary, livejournal
• Micro blogs like twitter, plurk

Other services offered include positive link updating, content creation and full monitoring of your brand or service. The service providers avail the services of skilled content writers to create new, positive content for SEO optimized articles, press releases and websites. Optimized videos, blogs, banner ads, PPC campaigns and social media campaigns with relevant key phrases can help in enhancing the visibility and online image of your website. Apart from Search Engine Optimizers, the services of social book marking professionals, bloggers, link builders, coders, project managers and others are also essential.

Online reputation management services can be beneficial to your business in many ways. It can help in improving customer satisfaction by analyzing the customer`s point of view about a product or a service. Online reputation management can also help in accessing the position of your competitor`s product or service in the market. You can build a list of keyword phrases which are used to find your product or services on the web.

Online reputation management strategies help your business to

• Grow across the web by projecting the brand name in a clear and concise manner
• Counter negative attacks
• Increase qualified traffic to your website
• Increase sales and lead generation
• Build a successful and ongoing identity

By availing the Online reputation management services of the providers you can easily recover your website reputation from negative search engine results and generate positive listings.