April 12th, 2010 by Mike

When trying to get exposure for their sites, many people turn to search engine reputation management services. Often run under the umbrella of an SEO company, these look at ways to give your site a more positive image. As well as search engine optimisation, they may offer link building services such as SMO (social media optimisation) to broaden your appeal.

It is best to target one or two well-known sites, than send the same link out to dozens. A good SEO company will create a plan that will ensure plenty of links, without spamming the social networking sites. We all know what spamming is, and it spells death to any online reputation management plan. You may be desperate to get those links, and you may even be pushing an extremely unfavourable product; this is acceptable, so long as your link building strategies are genuine.

A large number of companies have tried using high profile social media sites like Digg and Twitter to promote their business. However, obvious links quickly get taken down. The sites are diligently policed by their users, and nothing gets people’s goats more than blatant self-promotion. It’s okay to give yourself a little subtle kudos, so long as the link is of benefit to the internet community in a non-commercial way. If you feel your site is not achieving the search engine coverage it warrants, use an SEO firm to do a bit of groundwork, especially if you’ve recently embarked on an aggressive social media marketing campaign. You may well discover you’ve kicked off a flame war; you may even have been kicked off the site. This will quickly affect your search engine rankings, get you blacklisted on industry forums, and destroy any positive online reputation you may once have had.

When submitting content to news sites like Redditt, Newsvine or Digg, do a little pre-prep work. Become a familiar “face” on a few relevant web forums or blogs, and send some personal emails to some of your online contacts before you submit the content publically. This will get you a few initial links, and will get things rolling when your link goes live to the wider community. Doing a little groundwork ahead of schedule could have a big impact in your search engine optimization campaign.

Although many webmasters discourage people from using the same web identity on different sites, when it comes to e-Commerce it can pay dividends. Using the same username on different social networking sites develops an internet presence and helps get you known faster among the various communities. Remember, many members track freely between the sites. This will help establish your online reputation and give you a trustworthy image, rather than turning you into a “fly-by-night” character who’s just out to make a fast buck on link returns. People are far more likely to react to a name they recognise.

To begin with, you may think that all the search engine reputation management SEO tools in the world won’t get you the results you desire. However, it takes time to get the ball rolling. Follow the rules, and pretty soon you’ll find you’re getting more links than you can handle.

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