According to Boss Magazine, if you want to fill Google with results relating (in a positive way!) to your company, then here are some simple steps you can take:
Step 1: Create or Improve Your Company Website
If you don’t already have a company website, then it’s crucial to get one in place. Even tiny businesses can manage this: A website doesn’t need to be fancy or expensive. You could build a free one using WordPress.com if you pay a small annual fee for a domain name.
If you already have a website, make sure it’s pulling its weight. That may mean working on your communication skills: ensuring that you’re talking to your potential customers in a way that makes it clear you understand their worries and their goals.
Step 2: Create Social Media Accounts on All the Major Sites
While you may not want to use accounts on half a dozen or so different social media sites, it’s well worth creating those accounts. This prevents competitors or trouble-makers from poaching your name and posing as you … and it also gives you innocuous results to fill Google’s front page with.
Some key sites to create accounts or pages with are:
- LinkedIn: create a company page, and encourage employees to list your company on their profiles
- Facebook: create a “page” for your company, not a group or a personal profile
- Twitter: create a company account and come up with guidelines for its use
You’ll also want accounts on YouTube, Instagram, and Pinterest.
Step 3: Tackle Negative Results
If you’ve got a good company website, plus several social media accounts, you may find that negative results get pushed out of the top 10 Google results.
If not, tackle these results. Contact the site owners and try to resolve any problems if possible (e.g. if it’s a customer service issue). If the information is blatantly false, you may want to seek specialist legal advice, as it may be possible to get it taken down — in the EU, this can often be done under the right to be forgotten.
Online reputation management is critical for the success of your business. Your competitors will be paying attention to it … and you should too.