Reputation Management

List Of Reputation Management Firms

Online Reputation Management is a very popular service online. Listed below are all of the reputation management firms and services found when you search for reputation management online. Each link below will take you to a page where you can review the reputation management company.

• Reputation Armor
• NetPardon.com
• ReputationAdvocate.com
• ReputationDefender.com
• ReputationHawk.com
• RemoveYourName.com
• GeneralCorporate.com
• Remove Rip Off Reports
• ReputationManagementFor.com
• Andy Beal
• OnlineReputationManager.com
• SentimentMetrics.com
• Levick.com
• ReputationProfessor.com
• RemoveRipoff.net
• 97thfloor.com
• DoneSeo.com
• ReputationAdvisor.com
• Reputation Repair Center
• SEOP.com
• Reputation Firewall
• SenderScore.com
• Reputation Management Consultants
• Internet Defense Group
• CustomScoop.com
• CustomerMagnetism.com
• RepRX.com
• Credo Media Group
• ChatterGuard.com
• Elixir Interactive
• eRepute.com
• RatePoint.com
• ManageYourNews.com
• RepuClean.com
• BigBlueRobot.com
• ReputationMedia.com
• TrackUR
• Netsmartz
• BrandRevitalize
• Kent Campbell
• Softline Solutions
• Tsavo Agency
• TruReputation.com
• Zallas.com
• GuardMyRep.com
• ReputationManagers.com
• DefendMyName.com

Reputation Management Firms

I came across a new website that lists almost all Reputation Management Firms and allows users to post a review about the companies listed. The website features about 50 or so Reputation Management Companies and the list is surely to grow as the industry grows. It appears the site was just created over the holidays, most likely by a reputation management company. Either Way it is a good idea to have a review site for this industry, there is a lack of reviews online about Reputation Management Companies.

If you are in the reputation management industry or want to review a reputation management company, check out the site here: http://www.iReputationReviews.com

There is a company called Reputation Armor (ReputationArmor.com) that specializes in manipulating the search engines in your favor.  Reputation Armor is one of the leading online reputation management firms that can help protect, repair, and build your online reputation.

No company is immune to getting negative comments or complaints online. Some of the largest brands in the world have negative information that appears high on Google search results.  A great example of how a 1 website or negative entry can tarnish your online reputation is the website PayPalSucks.com. This website ranks in the top 10 results on the first page of Google when you search the term “PayPal”. There are also dozens of other online negatives that appear when you search for “paypal” online.

The point is no company is perfect and every company has someone out there that does not like them.  In some cases people go far out of their way and invest a lot of time to ruin another company’s online image. Having negative information online about your business is not the end of the world and it can be corrected or at least made less damaging.

The Reputation Armor solution is to usually bury these negative items deeper within search results. By pushing negative comments and mentions of your company deeper within search results you will regain your positive image. The fact is only a small portion of internet users go past the first 2 pages of Google when they search for something or someone. If you can maneuver the negative links to go further down and the positive links up, then you have accomplished the most important feat of reputation management.

Do you need reputation protection?

The best way to view your online reputation as potential clients will is to simply search your name or company name on Google. See what shows up on the first 2 pages of Google, if there are negative mentions of your business that might make a potential client think twice about doing business with you, then you may need reputation management help.

Reputation Armor is a company that can assist you with protecting your online images and repairing your online reputation.  For more information on Reputation Armor and the services they offer visit them online here: Reputation Management

Here is a list of my favorite Press Release Distribution Sites with their PageRank details. All of these press release distribution sites have served me well this year and should continue to do so. Enjoy!

1. PRLog.org - PageRank 6 

2. PR-Inside.com - PageRank 4

3. PR.com - PageRank 5

4. Merinews.com - PageRank 5

5. 24-7pressrelease.com - PageRank 4

6. BigNews.biz - PageRank 5

7. ClickPress.com - PageRank 5

8. NewsWireToday.com - PageRank 5

9. OpenPR.com - PageRank 5

10. PR-USA.net - PageRank 5

11. free-press-release-center.info - PageRank 5

12. PowerHomeBiz.com - PageRank 5

13. TheOpenPress.com - PageRank 4

14. USPRWire.com - PageRank 4

Free online classified ad sites.

Here is a list of over 80 free classified ad sites where you can post a free classified ad. Some of these sites are good for SEO and Reputation Management use. Many of them have been tested but I have not tested them all out. It should be a good list for you to use.

PorkyPost Free Classifieds
USFreeAds
Kingdom Classifieds
E-Page Classifieds
Business Classifieds
Yahoo Classifieds
Best Mall Classified Ads
1AmericaMall
The Ad Net
Access Business Online
Five Star Classified Ads
Classifieds 2000
1America Mall
American Business Classifieds
Gateway Classifieds
The InetExchange
American Internet Classifieds
The Ad Net
AmericaNet Classifieds
Ads4Less
BizHotline Classifieds
BizClassifieds
Classifieds Online
Clockwatchers’ Classifieds
#1 Classifieds
Cool Cash Free Classifieds
Adland
America Shopping Mall Free Classifieds
4 Star Classifieds
SA 2000 Virtual San Antonio
Clockwatchers Classifieds
Free Links for All Businesses Big or Small
Holton Free Classifieds
AZ-Guide Free Classified Ads
Virtual Classifieds
Connelly Classifieds
Free Newspaper Classifieds
Business services and products in Broadway Marketplace
1-NET Advanced Ads
The Enterpreneurial
Kiosco clasificado - Guadalajara & Puerto Vallarta
Source of free advertising and more…
Free Classifieds
Classified
Alcancia de Ahorros
Write Now! Free Classifieds
Semiweb’s Classifieds Free listing
Online Springfield Free Classifieds
OilOnLine: Profesional Services Registration Form
WebVentures Free Classifieds Warranty
Micro Images - Free Classifieds
Ontario Click Classifieds
Free Newspaper Classified Ads
The Classified Page!
Truly Free Classifieds
Free advertising and Personal ads. 100’s of listings.
Computer Classifieds Free Ads
The Kingston Net-Times Classified Ads
Boston Classifieds
American Internet Classifieds
Internet Classifieds - International
UC Classifieds - New And Exciting
ThreeBrothers MusicBook
Aardy Aardvark’s Amazing Ads
NightFlight Classifieds
Virtual Adnet Cyberbahn Mall
Gay/Les-Bi Classifieds for FREE!
The CyberMarket Classifieds
Internet Classifieds
Banana Pages Classifieds
Services/Opportunities Ad Placement
FREE - PLACE YOUR AD HERE - FREE
AmericaNet - Classified Ads
Free Real Estate Opportunity Classifieds
The Exchange - Will Open July 1st
Hyper AD
Kamaaina Classifieds
ABC Ads
Coolest Store In The Web
NetScream!
Internet Classifieds
Business Assistance Free Classifieds
EPages Internet Classifieds
Mexplaza’s Classified Ads
Public Service Announcements
Adxis Internet Classifieds
Asiabiz Classifieds - Asia Only
Bizpro
Icanect Free Classifieds
Classified Marketplace
Commerce Corner
Place FreeAdz Classifieds
Del Net’s Free Classified Ads

Please link to this page to share it and drop us a comment also! (We are DoFollow) but manually scan each comment to avoid spam.

Google endorses reputation management and tells people “Publish positive content about yourself” and “get stuff that you want people to see to outperform the stuff you don’t want them to see.” This has always been the foundation of a reputation management campaign.

The advice is basic: Create a Google Profile (free and easy also not effective for pushing down stuff). Ask happy customers to review your business online (may create more negative items). *Publish positive content about yourself (*this is the good advice is our opinion).

It is motivating to see Google offering tips on how to “get stuff that you want people to see to outperform the stuff you don’t want them to see.” Reputation management can sometimes be a controversial issue - some people think it’s disreputable to create and optimize content for the express purpose of displacing negative content surreptitiously. Google’s endorsing it in today’s blog post, and offering suggestions for how to make it happen.

Google seems to be trying to do some preventative customer service here also. You can visualize the quantity of emails (and maybe phone calls) Google gets from businesses and individuals who are displeased about what they see when they Google themselves. The blog post by Google basically says, would you stop asking us to clean up the search results you don’t like about yourself?

“Rather than immediately contacting Google, it’s important to first remove it from the site where it’s being published. Google doesn’t own the Internet; our search results simply reflect what’s already out there on the web.”

Not only is Google possibly trying to slim down the amount of email and phone requests but maybe they are also attempting to prevent any future law suits files against them for results they display.

In closing it seems that Google has endorsed reputation management and using reputation management companies to help you gain control of what people see about you.

With the arrival of online tools that make it easy to share information, meet new people and keep in touch more rapidly than ever; online reputation has taken on a dual facet. Individuals and businesses no longer have to be troubled about their reputation in true life but in the virtual planet as well, making it two times as hard to keep up with what’s being said. There are a few ways that you can work to manage your online reputation. The resources listed below offer tips and tools to make it easier to track, control and manage your online reputation so you stay on top and in control of your personal and professional image.

Reputation Management Tips

Here are some general tips when managing your online reputation.

1. Create official online profiles. Don’t let just anyone talk about you online. Create your own profiles and websites complete with the type of information you really want to be available online about you.
2. Check what people are saying about you online. Whether good or bad you can do yourself a kindness by finding out what is being said about you online. Use some of the tools mentioned further down in this article to stay in the loop.
3. Stay on the ball. Don’t get sluggish about monitoring your reputation. If necessary, perform weekly checks to see if there’s any information about you that could possible be harmful.
4. Google yourself. The easiest method to find out where you or your company’s online reputation stands is to Google (search) yourself. See what kind of results pop up first. If they aren’t what they’d like them to be, you’ve got some work to do.
5. Presume everything can get on the web. Equally in your personal and professional life, what you say online and off can come back to bite you. Be safe and assume any emails, conversations or photos out there can eventually end up on the Web.
6. Select your words carefully. If you are blogging, running a website or just have a social media profile, be cautious what you post. Unless you’re looking for controversy what you say may cause you tribulations in the future.
7. Know your weakness. If you know your business has a particular weakness or are just familiar with your tendency for getting untamed on the weekend, keep this in mind and have it as your top priority for checking on your online reputation.
8. Protect yourself from hackers. This may look as if like it goes with no saying, but many people fall short to adequately securing their online information. Make sure yours is as safe and sound as it possibly can be.
9. Keep social networks private. One way to prevent snooping eyes is to keep your social networking profiles confidential to all except those you approve. This will keep informal viewers from seeing your information, good or bad.
10. Consider pseudonyms. If you do want to keep a blog or take on arguments on internet message boards, create a name for yourself to hide behind so you can’t be easily tracked.
11. Be proactive. Instead of waiting until you have a problem with your online reputation, stay ahead of the game. Search for what’s being said about you regularly so you’ll stay up-to-date.
12. Act quickly. If you do find something said or posted about you online that you feel could be particularly damaging to you, take action immediately. Whether it’s your friend posting photos from your bachelor nigh out or someone you don’t know slandering your business, taking care of it more rapidly rather than later is best.
13. Keep your cool. You may be irritated at what someone has said about you online, but don’t let it illustrate. Keep your fury to yourself and off the internet where it can do more damage than good.

Articles

Here are some good quality articles about reputation management that are nice reads….

1. Protect Your Online Reputation: This article from SEO Chat lays out some basics for monitoring and protecting your online reputation.
2. Ten Tactics That Could Save Your Online Reputation: The CEO of Trakur gives some great advice in this Mashable article on how your company can avoid reputation meltdown.
3. How to Manage Your Online Reputation: This article goes through a number of tools and how to use them to keep your reputation intact.
4. Social Networks Become Powerful Tool in Online Reputation Management: Find out how social networks are playing a bigger role than ever in online reputation from this short article.
5. How to Create Online Reputation Tools for Your Brand: Worried about the online component of your company’s brand? This article gives some advice on creating custom tools to monitor and control your online rep.
6. Online Reputation Handbook: You’ll find just about everything you ever wanted to know about online reputation in this helpful handbook.
7. Manage Your Online Reputation: Lifehacker gives some great tips and pointers, as well as links to tools that can help you get control of your reputation.
8. Free Online Reputation Management Beginner’s Guide: If you’ve never done much with online reputation before, or haven’t even considered it, check out this business-geared article.
9. How To Protect, Fix Your Online Reputation: From keeping problems from arising to fixing them when they do, this article is full of helpful advice.
10. Using Social Media to Manage Online Reputation: Find out how social media can be a help, not just a hindrance, to online reputation.
11. Basics of Online Reputation Management: Here you’ll learn the basics of getting your online reputation in order.
12. Managing Your Reputation Online: Technology Review provides this informative article that can help you understand and take action when it comes to your virtual reputation.
13. Online Reputation Management for Individuals: Online reputation isn’t just a concern for businesses, and this article explains how individuals can keep their name in good standing as well.

Websites and Blogs

These sites are dedicated to helping you keep an eye on and manage online reputation, providing the basics, suggestions for security, and much more.

1. Online Reputation: This site has articles on everything from brand reputation management to monitoring your reputation online.
2. The Reputation Blog: Business owners and leaders can take advantage of the advice offered by this blog.
3. Reputation Advisor: Here you’ll find advice and articles that provide essential information on keeping your business’ rep and your own looking good.
4. Reputation Management: From information on slander protection to posts about using search engines to monitor your reputation this blog is full of great info and insight.
5. CopyBrighter: Get some new insights into online reputation management and social media from this blog.
6. StepRepBlog: Find out just what social reputation is or get tips on connecting positively with customers from this site.
7. OnlineReputation.com: This site provides more in-depth explanations on how to use reputation tracking software, advice on building a solid online rep, and much more.

Personal Identity

These tools can help you manage your numerous online profiles, monitor your personal reputation and more.

1. ClaimID: Check out this program that uses OpenID to manage your personal identity over several sites, meaning you only have to remember the password for one, not numerous ones.
2. FindMeOn: Want to connect your identity over several sites? FindMeOn lets you do that while keeping your information private and secure.
3. FreeYourID: Make maintaining your online identity easy, with this tool that bases it directly on your name.
4. Garlik: If you’re worried that your identity may be more than marred and straight out stolen, give this tool a try. You’ll be able to search for mentions of you on the web that might involve identity theft.
5. myOpenID: Don’t worry about having multiple logins with this OpenID site.
6. SpyShakers: Try this tool to get access to any of your profile passwords remotely. It specializes in protecting your information from spyware.
7. TypeKey: TypeKey allows you to integrate your blog into your OpenID, allowing you to manage pretty much everything with one main profile.
8. Realmee: Here you can create a personal profile that will allow you to more easily control what others can see of you online.
9. LookUpPage: Want to control what people find when they search for you? This site helps out, by giving you a central page that comes up at the top when your name is searched for.
10. MonitorThis: Try out this site to monitor and track keywords over multiple search engines, giving you clues about who’s talking about you.

Professional Identity

Keep your business’ name out of the mud by protecting it with these helpful tools.

1. Trust-Index: Find out how well your business is trusted with this tool.
2. Google Alerts: With Google Alerts you can get email updates of the latest google results based on your name or other topic of your choosing.
3. BoardTracker: Whether you post on boards yourself or want to see if anyone else is talking about you, this tool makes it easy to filter to threads.
4. Vanno: Get an online reputation the democratic way, with this site that allows others to vote on the stories, videos and blogs about your company.
5. Serph: Use this search tool to look up your company and find out just what kind of buzz is going around the web about your company.
6. Searchles: This social search engine can help you keep up with the news out about your business.
7. Omgili: Search through the numerous forums out there to find out what people are saying about you using this helpful tool.
8. BoardReader: This tool is especially useful, allowing users to search through forums, videos, Twitter conversations, IMDB and more.
9. Joongel: Zoom in on the type of media you’d like to search with this online tool. Choose from videos, photos, shopping sites, and more.
10. Techrigy: This company makes it easier and simpler to monitor your business’ reputation online.
11. Keotag: Match blogs with tags that reflect talk about your business or related topics using this tool.
12. UpdatePatrol: This tool makes it easy to watch websites for updates and changes, which can sometimes be useful when you want to know what a particular site is saying about you.
13. BrandsEye: Hook up with this company to get stats and other information on where your business or blog reputation stands online.

Blog Tools

With the great proliferation of blogs out there, it’s worth your time to keep track of what’s being said about you on them. These tools make it easy and convenient to do just that.

1. Zuula: If you want to get posts just from blogs, try out this search engine. Users can also limit results to photos or videos.
2. SezWho: Follow who’s important in the blogging world and what they may be saying about you with this tool. Also useful to find out where your personal blog may stand.
3. Technorati: Whether you’re blogging personally or professionally, listing your blog with Technorati can be a big help in managing your online reputation. You’ll get updates whenever someone links to your blog so you can keep tabs on what people are saying about you or your business.
4. BackType: BackType is a service that lets you find, follow, and share comments from across the Web, allowing you to keep track of where you’ve been and what you’ve said on blogs.
5. TweetBeep: TweetBeep will let you keep track of conversations on Twitter than mention you or your business or anything else you’d like to track.
6. co.mments: When you sign up for an account with this site you’ll be able to track comments and conversations that can influence your online reputation.
7. Blogpulse: Keep your finger on the pulse of what’s going on in the blogging world, especially in relation to your business using the tools offered on this site.
8. Trendpedia: For businesses, this can be a valuable tool to track when and what your business is getting attention for and how you’re doing compared to your competitors.
9. Twist: Twist allows users to compare mentions of several different topics and view recent tweets about each one, making it easy to track info about businesses.
10. monitter: This tool lets you do much the same as Twist, but you can monitor topics in real-time or by geographic region.
11. Buzzlogic: Track buzz in the blogging world with this site, and find out just who’s word matters when it comes to blogs.

Profile Management

These tools make it easier to keep track of your social networking profiles and your online reputation in turn.

1. Comwat: Use Comwat to organize your social networking profiles into one so that its easier for others to find and easier to control what they see.
2. onXiam: Here you can establish a central online identity, use this identity to link up all your other sites, and even promote this new online location as well.
3. OtherEgo: Show off everything that you’re involved in on the net through this centralized site.
4. Zoolit: Check out this landing page service that makes it super easy to manage all the social networks you’ve been using.
5. Venyo: From lengthy blogs to simple comments, this site allows you to access everything you’ve done online, building up a trustworthy reputation at the same time.
6. ProfileMat: Pull all your existing online profiles together into a “mat” and allow users to comment on this new singular profile instead.
7. SimplifID: This site allows users to organize the online world by creating one central place you can access your blogs, social networking sites and more, allowing you to categorize it by type of viewer.
8. SocialURL: Here you can connect all your online identities by linking your social networking profiles to one URL.
9. ProfileBuilder: Want to create a professional looking profile using material from your existing social networks? This site lets you do just that, keeping or blocking the elements you choose and giving you a super useful home page to visit.

Managing Your Reputation

These tools allow you to hunt down what’s being said about you and find out just what others think of you or your business.

1. Naymz: Give this site a try to get feedback from people you’ve worked with, customers and friends.
2. Rapleaf: Here you can look up your personal or professional reputation, rate other people and businesses and get your own ratings.
3. RepVine: Using a search engine is the easiest way for people who want to know about you to find out more. This site helps you to manage what they find when they do this.
4. Keotag: Manage the blogsphere with this site that allows users to find tagged blog posts over several blog search engines.
5. TrustPl.us: Are you trustworthy? This site works by analyzing your or more like your business’ trust scores and giving you a ranking.
6. ReputationArmor: If you’ve found information about yourself online that’s less than true or extremely damaging to you, try out the services of this company that helps you get things said about you online removed.
7. FriendFeed: Whether you want to keep up with what your friends are looking at or keep up with what’s being said about you personally, this site is a useful tool.
8. Social Media Fire Hose: This accommodating tool tracks your name, brand or product across sites like Digg, FriendFeed and others that specialize in social media.
9. Trackur: If you’re willing to shell out for a little help monitoring your reputation, Trackur is a grand choice with tools that will search through all kinds of sites from social media to video.
10. Radian6: This tool makes it easier to monitor social media, frequently to the benefit of businesses who can use the information to their benefit to build better reputations and products.
11. Cision: For a fee, this tool can help you keep an eye on “100 million blogs, tens of thousands of online forums, and over 450 leading rich media sites.”
12. Web of Trust: Make certain your website is considered trusted by joining up with this site. After all, no one wants to be associated with a dangerous site- it’s just bad for business.

General Tools

If you haven’t already, bookmark these sites which can be a big help in maintaining your reputation optimistically online.

1. Digg: Check out Digg often to see if anyone has submitted stories about your or your business.
2. Reddit: comparable to Digg, this site will allow you to see how much interest there is you on the Web.
3. delicious: This social bookmarking site is a excellent place to see if your webpage or information about you or your business is being passed around by others.
4. Flickr: Think there may be some less-than-impressive photos of you out there? Trying searching this photo site to see if you come up.
5. Facebook: Facebook can be a great place to network, just make certain you keep your profile free from things you wouldn’t want spread about you online.
6. MySpace: With millions of visitors, this popular social networking site can be a great place to get your and your business’ name out there.
7. LinkedIn: Here you can create a professional profile that will allow you to interact with others in your profession in a safe and positive manner.
8. Google: There’s no easier way to find out what your online reputation is than to do a simple Google search.
9. Rollyo: If you want a more customized option for searching, try out this great search engine that you can mold to your online reputation finding needs.
10. Furl: an additional social bookmarking site, here you can track who’s interested in your sites.
11. Twitter: Whether you want to communicate with others or follow the noise about you on the net, Twitter is an essential tool.
12. Wordpress: If you’re going to create a blog to be the face of you or your company, this site makes it easy to do so.

Here is a list of 25 high page rank web sites where you can post your content, create profiles, and link-up your site’s URL without any reciprocal link from your site. Once you create these high page rank backlinks, profiles, and accounts, they will be a source of web traffic for you. These sites are also great for reputation management campaigns. The sites will normally create a good ranking profile for your company name that in most cases willl appear witin Google’s search results pretty fast.

1. eHOW.com Write how to articles or videos. Post your link in your profile. Also a good source of information if you want to know how to do something.

2. WikiHow.com Same as eHow but you can edit existing wiki pages or create your own. Cleverly put your link in “Sources and Citations” section

3. 43Things.com You have to sign up for participation. Post your own goals or reply to posted “to do” list. Occasionally, insert your own link as a resource.

4. Squidoo.com This is one of my favorite. Build your lenses and you can add links to your site, embed your YouTube videos and flickr photos.

5. AssociatedContent.com You can add your link in your profile. Not a favorite of mine.

6. HubPages.com Another site like Squidoo and AssociatedContent. You can put links to your sites in the content you create here.

7. Digg.com The most popular news ranking site. If you have good blog posts you can post them here. If your article goes to the home page, you will attract thousands of high page rank backlinks and tens of thousands of visitors for a short period. Be prepared for handle the load otherwise you will bring down your server.

8. Reddit.com Another news popularity site. Same as Digg. Post your blog articles here but don’t submit your entire site.

9. Answers.yahoo.com Ask questions and post answers to others questions. You can post links to your site in your answers.

10. Xanga.com A community blog. Crete keyword rich contents and links to your sites in the posts.

11. Kiva.org A microfinance site. You lend to and borrow from individual entrepreneurs. Create a profile page and link to your site from your profile page.

12. Geocities.com One of the oldest site. Create a few mini websites and links to your web sites from the geocities pages.

13. Twitter.com Create an account using a keyword and post your link in your profile.

14. Propeller.com Another news popularity site. Put you site’s link in your profile page.

15. Tradebit.com A site where you can buy and sell digital contents. If you ebooks, your own recorded music, etc., put your keywords in listing pointing to your site’s URL.

16. Angelfire.com Another old site like Geocities. Create your mini sites and put links to your site on the mini site pages.

17. Weebly.com A web 2.0 site where you can create your own mini sites like Geocites. Use the same technique you use for Geocites and Angelfire for back links to your sites.

18. Blogowogo.com A blog aggregation site. If you are running a blog, add your RSS feed to their site and any time you post new articles in your blog, your page at Blogowogo will be updated.

19. Tumblr.com Post and share your photos, articles, links, music, and videos. Use you site’s link in the profile page.

20. StumbleUpon.com Discover great web pages and share with your friends. You can submit your site and individual pages to StumbleUpon.

21. eZineArticles.com The most popular article directory. Submit your articles with author’s box under each article. You can use up to two links to your site in each article.

22. Flickr.com The most popular photo sharing site. You can drop your site’s link on the profile page.

23. MyBlogLog.com Share your online activity on a single page. Link to your sites from the profile page.

24. FastCompany.com If you are passionate about business idea, you should sign up with this very respected site. You can use anchor text in your profile page to link to your web site.

25. YouTube.com The most popular video sharing site. If you don’t have an account with YouTube, you should sign up immediately. Upload interesting and funny videos. Create your profile and link to your site

A new way to protect your business online is sweeping the internet like a category 5 hurricane.  The newest and most rewarding marketing technique online is online reputation management or search engine reputation management. Online reputation management is used by many businesses off all types and sizes. The most frequent reason a company uses a Reputation Management company is to help them conceal or make online complaints less damaging. An example of a popular online complaint site is RipOffReport.com, which sole purpose is to allow consumers (anyone) file complaints against businesses and individuals.  Other sites that catch the attention of consumers to file complaints against businesses are Yelp.com and ComplaintsBoard.com.

These review and complaint websites provide an anonymous environment for consumers to file complaints. These types of sites pose a major risk for businesses because the fact is anyone can say anything they want, without verifying who they are or if the “complaint” is a real one. There have been hundreds of reports of businesses claiming that their competitors are the ones filing complaints in order to unjustly try to gain more business by discrediting others. Disgruntle employees, Ex-Lovers, Angry consumers, and simply anyone can make up anything they want on these sites and it will be published.  Many of these complaint and review sites rank extremely well (very high) within search results on search engines like Google, this guarantees that people will find these complaints. When someone searches for a business name or individual by name, if the search phrase is contained within the complaint chances are it will show up very high on the first page of search results.

Companies and individuals that are faced with these harmful listings will usually have the opportunity to reply or file a rebuttal to these online complaints. The problem continues, if a reply is added to the complaint (Good or Bad) it will rank even higher. Apparently Google and other search engines give complaints and reviews with comments a higher ranking.

There is usually only one option to fix a setback like this for businesses, hire a reputation management company. A reputation management company will in most cases commence an aggressive search engine optimization and reputation management campaign to displace, dilute, bury or hide these complaints and negative reviews. By publishing waves of new content about your company or several hundred websites and new domain names they in most cases can push these complaints lower within search results.

One Reputation Management Company called ReputionArmor.com states that there are numerous techniques and tactics used to suppress negative search results and sometimes you have to hurl everything against the wall and see what sticks. The majority of reputation management firms use the same methodology when trying to push down online complaints for their clients. For the most part their fees seem to be within the same price zone, although many reputation companies advertise different time frames of how long the course of action takes. Reputation Armor agrees that sometimes it takes longer than expected to get a complaint to fall off of the first 1-2 pages of search results, but it is worth the wait if you want lasting results.

In an interview with a client of ReputationArmor.com who wishes to remain anonymous we learned more on how the process can help a business. The client received 1 complaint but it was submitted to 3 different online complaint sites, ripoffreport, complaintsboard, and pissedconsumer. The complaints (all three versions) all ranked on the first page of Google’s results. After hiring Reputation Armor the client noticed a lot of online press releases, public directory and profile listings, blog articles and mini-websites about them popping up online. The complaints did not go down to far at first (the first week or so) but after about 3 weeks the fresh items start trickling above the complaints hence pushing them off the first page of results.

It seems that a reputation management company’s chief goal is to play the search engines and influence the search results in a clients favor.  The cost of reputation management can seem elevated when you get quotes from a company but when you factor in lost sales because of the complaints, it is a smart investment. In most cases a small number of sales will recover your reputation management investment.

With the internet and the anonymity of the World Wide Web inviting consumers to file complaints and reviews on just about everything, there is a very urgent need for the services a reputation management company can offer. The next time you plan your marketing budget you may want to factor in reputation management as a necessary ingredient to your online success.

Sources of information: Reputation Armor, Reputation Defender, Yelp, RipOffReport.com

Free press release sites are a great way to get more exposure for your business and online press releases go hand in hand with SEO and Reputation Management.

In June we posted a small list of free press release sites. Here is a larger list of free press release sites that you might find useful. Enjoy!

bignews.biz

afly.com

afreego.com/PressReleases.php

business.pagerelease.com

postafreepressrelease.com

tennessee-press-release.com

myfreepr.com

express-press-release.com

newyork-press-release.com

pr-usa.net

washington-press-release.com

express-press-release.net

press-network.com

pressbox.com

seenation.com

newsalbum.com

mediasyndicate.com

ukprwire.com

presszoom.com

pressportal.co.za

promotionworld.com

PageRelease.com

free-press-release-center.info

pressexposure.com

speedypr.com

prwindow.com

newsblaster.com

clickpress.com

pressreleasespider.com

freepressreleases.co.uk

pressreleasecirculation.com

prurgent.com

prfocus.com

newdesignworld.com

pressmethod.com

information-online.com

pr2work.com

illinois-press-release.com

prcompass.com

freepressrelease.co.cc

free-news-release.com

bizeurope.com/pressrelease.htm

massachusetts-press-release.com

pressflow.co.uk

indiaprwire.com

pressmediawire.com

ecommwire.com

pressreleasepoint.com

pressrelease.com.np

softarea51.com

techprspider.com

prlog.org

openpr.com

ohio-press-release.com

pressbox.co.uk

exactrelease.com

businessportal24.com/en

dir.free-press-release.com

1888pressrelease.com

live-pr.com/en

free-press-release.com

i-newswire.com

prfriend.com

Enjoy the list and if you have any to share or have something to say please post a comment and let us all know!