17 Search Engine Reputation Management Optimization Tips

I recently got this e-mail from a friend of mine. The tips listed below are very true for increasing your website to be in the top of search results when searching for keywords related to your site. I followed several of these tips when I worked for a software automation company. In one to two weeks I started noticing that the bots were checking for often the company's website and the keywords searched in Google were listing the company's website to the top.

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17 Search Engine Reputation Management Optimization Tips
by Rob Garner, Wednesday, November 7, 2007

AS IT IS BECOMING MORE commonly accepted that Google, Yahoo and MSN are reputation management engines just as much as they are search engines, more folks are seeking information on how to increase positive visibility for a personal or corporate name. Here is a quick list of 17 different ways to optimize for positive visibility for your personal or brand name:

1) Add your profile to LinkedIn, and build a real page with real connections.

2) Create a site with your exact keyword or name domain, and add useful and unique content.

3) Use paid search to enhance your site visibility. The engines give you two basic opportunities for placement -- paid and natural. Consider using them both if it will help achieve your end goals. This does not mean that a defensive stance is required in the copy, but it can help increase visibility, if needed.

4) Take inventory of all of your existing sites. Determine if they are properly optimized for your target brand or name keyword set. If not, start filling in the gaps with optimized pages, and optimized title and meta elements.

5) Use various optimized digital assets -- particularly video. Video and image results can attract eyeballs away from everything else on the page. Make it useful, funny, or otherwise unique and entertaining.

6) Write useful content and establish yourself or your company as an expert, either for your own site, or for other blogs. Good content naturally finds itself at the top of the search results, and its creators are often rewarded with link citations, writer profile pages ! and high rankings as a result.

7) Link strategically. I don't want to sell this one short, as it is one of the most important elements, but leverage your on-theme sites and link to other relevant sites to help push them up higher in the results.

8) Leverage your good domain for search benefits by creating a subdomain for your target term. Add valuable and useful content. Corporate sites should seriously consider architecting around subdomains, as they are treated as separate domains by the engines.

9) Create a profile on various social media sites like MySpace and Flickr. Also note that content entered into Flickr is entered into a Creative Commons license.

10) Start a blog on WordPress. Plan on investing time and making it a real blog.

11) Start a WordPress blog on your own domain.

12) Avoid putting out any material that you wouldn't want in your primary namespace. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

13) Create a Naymz profile.

14) Send out a press release, or two. Or twenty (over time, of course).

15) Have someone interview you about your passion. Publish the interview on your site.

16) Create a search roll at Rollyo of search engines and topics you really like.

17) Be very, very patient.

Post your response to the public Search Insider blog.

See what others are saying on the Search Insider blog.

Rob Garner is strategy director for interactive marketing and search agency iCrossing and writes for Great Finds, the iCrossing blog. He is president-elect of the Dallas/Fort Worth Search Engine Marketing Association, and also serves on the board of the Dallas/Fort Worth Interactive Marketing Association.