Your online reputation can make or break your business. If in the past it played only a secondary role, today it has become a key metric of your success online and beyond. Learn more about how you can consolidate and improve your online reputation using content marketing, organic SEO, and other proven long-term strategies.
Optimize Your Website
Your website is the foundation of your online reputation, and every aspect of it counts. From the design and speed of your web pages to the value of the content you publish on them, you can’t afford to neglect anything. A fast, elegant website that works perfectly across mobile devices sends the right message. Here are some of the ways to optimize your website to improve your online reputation:
- Redesign your website if needed, updating your theme and content.
- Optimize your website for search engines, improving page titles and meta descriptions.
- Create a more engaging About/Team page, featuring a real image of your team for more credibility.
- Create a Portfolio/Testimonial page and add to it customer photos/logos.
- Add badges that boost your credibility, such as those for secure payments or that prove compliance in your industry.
- Team up with a content writing company to create more high-quality content.
Get on the First Page of the Search Results (For Your Main Keywords)
This is the proactive approach to dealing with reputation problems before they arise. Being at the top of the search results makes a great first impression on visitors and customers alike. Depending on your niche, however, climbing to the top of the search results could be challenging. Still, there are plenty of things you can do to boost your SEO ranking:
- Focus on the right keywords, those that not only bring you traffic but that help you differentiate yourself from competitors.
- Create a better organic content marketing strategy that focuses on on-page SEO.
- Team up with an SEO expert to optimize every page on your website.
- Use article writing services to create more SEO friendly content that can help boost your SEO ranking.
Improve Your Social Media Presence
Today, the quality of your social media presence plays a key role in how you are seen online. Many people will judge you by your Facebook page. If you have low-quality images, a poor description, and bad reviews, it will be very hard for you to maintain a positive reputation. The good news is that social media content marketing can help you improve your social media presence.
- Optimize your profiles across social media, ensuring that location and contact information is accurate and that your description and images are engaging.
- Post better quality content more often – if you don’t have the time to create it yourself, consider using a content creation service.
- Interact more with your audience by assigning or a hiring a social media manager who can respond to comments and answer questions fast.
Get Published on Reputable Publications in Your Niche
Publishing articles in journals, magazines, or authoritative blogs can be a time-consuming process. First, you need to identify relevant publications, then you need to create the content, and finally, you have to monitor the reaction to it. But this strategy is worth the time because it consolidates your online reputation like few other strategies can. At the same time, it can improve your SEO ranking and help you build valuable new connections. Getting published on authoritative websites becomes easier if you:
- Pitch outlines to publications before writing the whole article.
- Spend time reading the best publications in your niche to better understand what type of content they want and what has been covered already.
- Work with a content writing company who can create the content for you, saving you time which you can invest in researching topics that will increase your chance of being accepted.
Earn More Positive Reviews
If you are selling products or providing a service, few things can consolidate your online reputation better than positive reviews. However, generating positive reviews isn’t all that easy. You can’t just pay for reviews – well, you can, but that can backlash against you and it’s not something you should do. It’s far better for your reputation in the long-term to earn positive reviews. This gets easier when you offer something valuable to your customers. Once your customers are happy, you only have to make sure that they are actually leaving you reviews:
- Constantly remind customers to drop you a review – many won’t without a reminder.
- Use email reminders to encourage more of your customers to leave you a review.
- Request reviews using a call to action on your social media page as well as in your email newsletter.
- Make sure you have a Facebook business page, a Google My Business listing, and that you are listed on any other network or service where customer reviews are popular.
Localize Your Website into More Languages
Even if your primary audience speaks English, localizing your website into multiple languages can make your content more accessible to other audiences. More than that, there will be more search engine indexing, which could boost your SEO ranking. Although localizing a website can be a serious investment, it helps to consolidate your credibility and can boost your reputation.
Develop a Mobile App
A mobile app that makes it into the Apple App Store or on Google Play can be a big thumbs up for your online reputation, provided of course that it receives positive reviews. Often, mobile users prefer using a mobile app to using a website, and many expect you to offer them an app. By bringing to mobile the services and functionality your website offers, you’re sending your audience the message that you want to make their lives easier. And, of course, you’re consolidating your online reputation in the process.
Start Your Own Podcast
Does the idea of starting a podcast make you uneasy? It doesn’t have to. Podcasts today can be very creative, and finding the right host for your podcast may not be so hard. If you don’t have someone in your team that’s right for this, you can always invite an expert in your field to host the podcast for you. Apple Podcasts alone feature over 550,000 active podcasts across 100 languages – that’s how big podcasts are. Creating a podcast can differentiate you from competitors and give your online reputation another boost.
Invest More Time into LinkedIn Marketing
Being active on social media is important – we’ve already touched on that. But there’s one network that can really boost your online reputation, and that’s LinkedIn. Many professionals and brands use LinkedIn to build new connections. And when they do, they are often in “business mode”, which doesn’t often happen when they surf a Facebook page or check their Twitter stream. That’s why having a professional LinkedIn page with plenty of connection can help you build trust online.
Create More Visual Content
When you look at the content marketing campaigns of successful brands or experts, a lot of their content is visual. Visual content attracts attention more easily and is more memorable. Not only that, but it connects faster with online audiences on mobile and beyond. Infographics, presentations, slideshows, and animated explainer videos help you to convey an emotional message. And appealing to your audience’s emotions is one of the best ways to consolidate your online reputation. Here’s how to make visual content creation easier:
- Team up with a visual content creator who can give your visual content a direction and help you establish themes and guidelines.
- Invest more of your marketing budget into high-quality stock photography and other visual media.
- Turn data and statistics into charts, graphs, or infographics.
- Make your newsletters more compelling by making them more visual.
- Use a video creation service to produce simple, cost-affordable videos that will enhance your content marketing.