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Controlling or managing search rank for your own name is fairly easy for an SEO (search engine optimizer), but what can the average person do? Below I outline a number of free, quick, easy and effective ways to populate the first page of results for your name. I highly recommend people start creating content for their name now as it will be much more difficult after waiting for someone else with your name to muddy the search results to spur you to action.

1) Create a Blog Even if you build just a one-page site using your name on a free blog network, you can quickly use your blog to create pages about yourself and link to other pages you are going to create on this list. Use your name in the blog name. Estimated time to complete: 10 minutes Free Options: Blogger (blogspot), WordPress, LiveJournal

2) Create a Wiki Several wiki platforms have done a great job of creating publishing tools that are even easier to use than most blog technology. Though wikis are best suited for group collaboration, the will also work well helping you link to your blog and other pages. Use your name in the wiki name. Estimated time to complete: 10 minutes Free Options: Wetpaint, Wikia Wikia

3) Register your domain If you are lucky enough to have [insertyourname].com (or .net, .org, .info) available, snatch them up. The $8 a year fee is well worth it even if you don’t actively build a site using it because, at the very least, you are preventing your competition (other people with your name, or people who don’t like you) from ranking high for your name. Even better, use your domain for the site or wiki you are going to create. Estimated time to complete: 5 minutes Cheap Options: GoDaddy, Yahoo, 1&1

4) LinkedIn Set up a LinkedIn profile and make it publicly available. Add background info like education, employment history, awards or certification (or anything else you are proud of). Add links to your other sites/pages. Estimated time to complete: 5-10 minutes

5) Jobster Some people are a little shocked when they find out their profile shows up in search. Not you, because you want it to! Create a jobster account, allow it to be publicly available, fill out a little employment info, answer a couple questions, but write it keeping in mind that your current employer could come across it. Estimated time to complete: 5 minutes

6) Myspace pages tend to show up in search as well. Though Myspace has probably ruined more people’s reputations than helped, you will create a clean Myspace page for your name and, if you feel the urge, put the racy stuff on a different profile. Estimated time to complete: 5 minutes

7) Flickr accounts and images have a great chance of showing up in the engines, especially for image searches. Creat an account, upload a few photos you like and label them with your name. Estimated time to complete: 10 minutes

Comment on Popular Post Sometimes I see a commenter’s name show up in search. Find a popular blogger site or newspaper site that allows comments, and find a post that you feel comfortable commenting on. Use your real name for the name field. Try this on a couple sites. Estimated time to complete: 5 minutes

9) Employer Site If your employer features profiles on their website, ask them to add one for you. If not, talk them into it or author a post on their blog (if they have one). Estimated time to complete: 5-30 minutes, depending on your company

10) Join a Forum Do a search for a forum that you might want to participate on. For example, if you are into guitar, you should search for “guitar forum.” If it looks like a place where it would be easy for you to make five or six posts, then sign up and use your name for your profile name. Make your five posts and fill out your profile page with information about you and use your name at least once in the profile description. Estimated time to complete: 15 minutes

*Disclosure: I work for Wetpaint, but honestly believe their wiki solution is the best option

In the future, Facebook might also be an option. They recently allowed profiles set to public to be crawled, but they are showing logged-out status of your profile, which is basically your name and picture right now. Eventually, I believe, Facebook will open it up to show your full public profile (probably in ‘08).

Keep in mind, Google usually only shows two results for any one site. That’s why I have you contributing on multiple sites. A couple more tips:

• If you ever receive a great interview or bio online, link to it from your sites.
• For online activity that you don’t want to be associated with your name, use a nickname or “handle” that is completely different from your real name.
• If you have stiffer competition for your name, you may need to spend more time building out and linking to the various options I list above.

Other options:

a) Wikipedia If you have a strong brand you can list your company in the Wikipedia online encyclopedia. Estimated time to complete: 30-45 minutes, depending on your company

b) Press Releases Press releases do well in news search, and if you point a few links at them it could also help them outrank other pages. PRWeb is popular. Estimated time to complete: 30-45 minutes, depending on your company

c) Writing Articles This is another easy way to create content that is highly relevant to your brand or name at places like Article City. Estimated time to complete: 60 minutes, depending on your company

Please email recommendations to improve this page to reputationprofessor@gmail.com

Search engine reputation is the the feeling a web surfer takes away when querying a search engine for a name, product, or service, regardless of whether the surfer clicks on any results.

Do it Yourself Reputation Monitoring  
While paying for monitoring can be very effective, individuals can use free tools to monitor their reputation online. Below is a number of free, quick, easy and effective approaches to monitor results for your name. 

Google Alerts  
You can configure Google Alerts by different areas: News; Blogs; Web search results; Google Groups.

RSS  
Create a folder in your RSS reader for reputation monitoring feeds. Create custom RSS feeds based on keywords: Technorati.com, Feedster.com, Google.com/blogsearch, Google News, Blogpulse.com, MSN Spaces, MSN News Yahoo! News, MSN News. Filter the feeds into one RSS Reader for easy monitoring options using Newsgator, Google Reader or Bloglines.

Create your own Search Engine  
Rollyo.com can track sites that do not offer RSS feeds for keywords such as Consumerist, Complaints.com, Better Business Bureau, RipOffReport, PlanetFeedback and ComplaintCenter.

Monitor This  
Monitor This allows you to monitor keywords across dozens of search engine feeds at the same time.

Key Words and Phrases  
Not sure what keywords to track? Use Google Keywords Tool for ideas.

Technorati  
One of the great search systems for bloggers is Technorati, which has a Watchlist feature.

URL Monitoring  
WatchThatPage, UpdatePatrol, and WebSite-Watcher monitor URLs.

Whois  
Research the background of bloggers and web site owners using domain name search tools such as Whois.sc.

Recommendations  
Please email recommendations to improve this page.

“A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” - Winston Churchill.

News traveled at a snail pace and methodically before the advent of Internet. The communication channels have radically transformed since then, Internet being the most conspicuous one. Internet has gained the distinction of becoming the most preferred platform for finding information and the same is provided at lightening speed. Internet has an abundance of consumer generated media (CGM) in the form of forums, blogs, review sites, opinion postings, and many more; on any topic imaginable. With a plethora of self publishing options available to users, nothing is inviolable, including online reputation.

Building reputation, both online and offline, demand years of hard work and millions of dollars. It would be justified to say that reputation management is critical to any organization. Your brand is not immune to comments (positive, neutral or negative) in the public domain. People enjoy the liberty to talk about whatever they want and wherever they want. A lot of these discussions involve brands, products and services. A vindictive content has the potential to start an avalanche that could sully your reputation forever and thus online reputation management becomes essential.

Researchers have found that negative comments always look credible, even if they are frivolous or unfounded. There are numerous sites such as Rip-off Reports, Epinions.com, etc. which helps people voice their concerns vociferously. Negative press, in the form of discussion pages from these websites can show in search results, worse make it to the top ten. For the same reason, reputation management that belonged to the PR (public relations) domain since time immemorial, is proliferating into the realm of search engine marketing.

The power of search engine optimization could be leveraged to counteract negative publicity. The strategy is simple – displace offending search engine listings by favorable listings. Easier said than done. An extensive analysis of keywords and brand terms would help in assessing the extent of damage done. Promoting company’s primary website in tandem with positive pages is a tried and tested technique and would delivery fruitful results. All these exercises (search engine optimization and social media optimization) could be coupled with efforts, to get the derogatory comments removed. Online reputation management companies also explore legal avenues or contact webmasters individually to accomplish this task.

‘Prevention is better than cure’ and preemptive online reputation management allows you to do it. Creating listening posts to track what is being said about your company, would help you in nipping trouble before it blows out of proportion. There are many online reputation monitoring tools which prove to be handy for doing this task and some of them are mentioned below:

1 Set up Google and Yahoo email alert for specified keywords.

2 Track message boards, forums and groups.

3 Use tools like Copernic tracker, Website Watchers, Watchthatpage.com to track changes made to particular web pages.

4 Create RSS feeds for designated keywords (Feedster, Technorati, Yahoo/Google news, MSN Spaces, Blogpulse, etc).

5 Use ‘MonitorThis’ that allows you to subscribe to results from 22 search engines and many more.

Companies should incorporate online reputation monitoring as a permanent function and not consider it as a counteractive measure only.

‘Online reputation management ethics’ is a widely debated topic. Is it ethical to help a business which is ‘guilty as charged’? Doing online reputation management for innocent people, whose names have been tarnished by disgruntled customers, unhappy (ex) employees, etc. is justified and not against business ethics. Unfortunately, many online reputation management companies don’t buy this argument and do business with anyone and everyone.