Identify Whether Your Business Needs Online Reputation Management Services

Online reputation can be a company’s greatest asset or a big liability. That is why as a business owner you should pay close attention to what is said about your brand on the internet.

Do a search on Google and see what results appear for your company name. Negative feedback, bad press, defamatory claims from competitors or other disgruntled parties can constantly affect your profitability. This can be mitigated with active management of your online reputation. Here are signs indicating that you might need to do just that.

Signs of a Poor Reputation

You have a reputation issue if:

• Searching for your brand name, you see negative reviews of articles popping up on the first pages of search results.
• When you input your company name in search, you find results with your competitors on the first page of Google.
• Searching your company’s name gives you irrelevant results that are not even mentioning your brand.

Online reputation management is closely related to your online marketing efforts. The end goal of reputation management is to be present in as many of the top search results as possible with accurate and positive information about your brand. Every negative result that appears greatly affects your perceived image as a brand.

When you observe a significant drop in number of generated leads that can’t be explained by common SEO metrics like traffic volume or rankings, then it’s highly likely that the reason for this might be a negative mention of your brand in the search results.

According to studies, every negative result on search pages poses a significant risk for any business activity. You could lose 22% of potential clients with just one negative search result, and up to 70% if you have 3 or more negative listings on the first page of Google.

Managing your presence on the internet and maintaining a positive image for your personal or brand reputation is an active and on-going process. Besides time and effort, it requires a well executed reputation strategy to make sure that your company is accurately depicted on the internet and that your online communication is at the highest level possible.

If you feel like your online reputation is not up to the desired level, consider undertaking active steps towards better management. If you feel like it’s overwhelming, you can always choose to outsource this to agencies or specialists in online reputation management.