Category: Search Engine Optimization

Protecting Your Online Reputation

Your online reputation can make or break your personal brand strategy. In order to maintain your online reputation, regularly scheduled monitoring is necessary to keep track of what information about you is out there on the internet. While you can control what is on your personal online profiles (Facebook, LinkedIn, etc), you can’t always control the information others post (whether it is true or false).

I recently found a new site called BrandYourself that allows you to manage your online reputation and personal Google rankings. This site can help you manage an SEO campaign for your personal brand.

Their services are free, though you can pay a fee to upgrade to access additional monitoring features. To start off, I think that the features you get with your free account are sufficient though this may depend on what you want to achieve and the current state of your online reputation.

How it Works

For each step in the monitoring process, the site gives you a score and suggestions on how to improve.

  • They pull the first ten Google search results corresponding with your name. You then categorize each result as positive, negative, or not me. They provide tips on how to bury negative results through a process of getting your positive results to rank higher than negative listings.
  • Submit positive links about yourself, such as your LinkedIn profile. (Only 3 link submissions allowed for non paying users) Once you submit the links, they give tips on how to better optimize the links to appear in search results, how to cross link your profiles, and how to boost your social media profiles so that they will show up in searches. Each link is then tracked to see it how it performs in search results over the next few weeks.
  • Create a BrandYourself profile, which is automatically Search Engine Optimized (SEO’d) to rank high for your name and increase rankings for your submitted links. Check out my BrandYourself profile to see what they look like http://briannasmith.brandyourself.com/

Other Features

  • You can earn badges for having positive search results, having no negative search results, burying search results not about you, boosting a positive search result to the #1 spot in searches, and more.
  • You are notified whenever someone visits your BrandYourself profile page and when the search ranking changes for one of your submitted links or listings.

I have just started using this online reputation management tool myself, so I am still in the trial stage. But, so far I really like the features that the free membership offers and can see why upgrading would be beneficial as well. This is a one stop shop for managing your online reputation that I recommend checking out.

For more on Personal Branding, check out my other articles:

Growing Offline Business Using Online Tools

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Social media has several purposes:

  1. Creating Conversations
  2. Building Brand Awareness
  3. Build a Community
  4. Educate
  5. Reach New Audiences
  6. Understand Your Current Audience
  7. Create a More Personal Brand
  8. Interact Directly with Customers
  9. Display Credibility
  10. Promote Your Company

The list could go on and on, on why social media is beneficial to your brand. With any marketing attempt, there must be a goal (such as selling more of a products). Online marketing efforts are very successful at creating online “followers” into offline customers, including:

  • social media
  • online ads
  • geographic based platforms

How Online Marketing Drives Offline Success Infographic

The infographic below from KISSmetrics breaks down how influential online marketing is for increasing sales and reaching conversion rate goals. Here are a few of the facts that stood out:

  • 53% of people on Twitter suggest companies and or products in their tweets with 48% delivering on their intention to buy
  • 75% of small businesses have a company page on a social networking site
  • 20% of searches on Google are location specific (are you using the right keywords for your SEO? Check out my blog on choosing the right keywords to increase your Google rankings here)
  • On average, 1155 people purchase a group deal on Groupon DAILY
  • The best banner ad size and location are 300×250 and the top right corner

How Online Marketing Drives Offline Success

http://blog.kissmetrics.com/how-online-marketing-drives-offline-success/

The Evolving Role of Keyword Research

Keywords are the basis of a successful SEO campaign. But, how do you decide what keywords to use?

One of the first things to remember when beginning search engine optimization is that you need to be realistic. There is a lot of competition to obtain the top ranking spots, especially for the very generic words. It is important to find out what your niche is and expand from there. You cannot be everything to everyone.

The InterneSearch Engine Optimization Keywordst is ever evolving, so you do not want to be too specific or fixate on one keyword. Your keyword list should be constantly evolving.

Just like the other parts of your business strategy, SEO is about understanding your customer. Understanding how they search for your product and how they view your brand.

There is already a lot of information available regarding how customers are finding your website, just pull the Google Analytics “traffic generating” keyword list. This list will show what searches are already bringing the most traffic to your site. If you have an internal search, pull the keywords logs from there as well. After reviewing both lists, choose the less competitive (or less generic) keywords for your SEO campaign. Above all, remember that SEO is constantly evolving.

Once a quarter it is important to re-evaluate your campaign to:

  • Remove poor performing keywords
  • Identify opportunities and areas of growth
  • Modify your SEO strategy for the upcoming quarter

As your campaign progresses, analyzing which keywords have the highest conversion rate. If your goal is to get people to your site and have them submit a “Contact Us” form, see which keywords are achieving this goal and which ones are not. If your keyword list is not achieving your goals, consider revising the direction. If your list is meeting your goals, you will still want to look for available opportunities for growth and monitor how the keyword results are changing. Because, one quarter you may hold the top spot, but by the next quarter you may not.

Image: Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net