According to Search Engine Journal, reputation management is a lot like the airbag in your vehicle — you hope you’ll never need it, and if you do, you’ll be thankful you have it and pray that it works in time to minimize damage.
This is an often misunderstood facet of digital marketing because the fact that someone needs to change what shows up in the search results for either their personal or business brand doesn’t always mean that they are unethical, dishonest, or trying to hide something.
More often than not, it’s a single upset customer, or in some cases, even a shady competitor causing a problem. Unfortunately, either case can result in tremendous loss of revenue and opportunity.
In other words, it’s an essential part of modern digital marketing.
Act Before a Problem Arises
Because it relies on SEO, reputation management tends not to be a fast process. That’s why it’s critical to be proactive.
If you can take over the first page, or better yet, the first few pages of the search results ahead of time, you’ll be in a much stronger position if and when a crisis does strike.
The importance of controlling how you are perceived online is obvious. The only real question is whether you should handle it yourself or hire a firm.