Need help managing your Google reputation? Andy Beal offers Google reputation management consulting or buy his new online reputation management book.

Google is no longer just a search engine. With your potential customers, future employers, and members of the media turning to Google for information about your business, Google has become a reputation engine.

In helping clients with their online reputation, I’m consistently asked how they can push out negative results that appears on the first page of Google for a search for their name. Whether they were fined by the SEC, ridiculed by an ex-employee, or investigated by their local newspaper, they share one common goal: get that negative result off of the first page!

Of course, it’s near on impossible to make a negative Google result simply disappear—although there are some black-hat SEOs that claim to have that gift. Instead, your best approach is to provide Googlebot with a healthier diet of web content that shows your reputation in a positive light.

On that note, here are my recommendations for the best web content to fill up the first page of Google results.

1. Get your own web site.

It sounds simply enough, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, you’d be surprised at the number of individuals and companies that haven’t registered their own branded domain name and thrown up a web site. Registering yourcompanyname.com or yourpersonalname.com and adding a basic web site is a sure-fire way to occupy one of the top ten Google listings for your name.

2. Start a blog.

If you love and nurture a blog, it will likely become a great asset in your reputation management arsenal. But the great thing about a blog is that it tends to rank well, even when left un-watered. Blogs are the cactus of online content. Wordpress.com and Blogger.com both provide free blogs and free hosting. Add just a few posts, keep it targeted to your name—that means use it in the blog title, posts etc—add a few links and bake for a few days. It will be on the first page of Google in no time.

3. Add a sub-domain.

If you’ve put a lot of effort into growing your main web site, chances are there’s an opportunity to add a sub-domain. Sub-domains are great. Google considers them as separate from your main site, but they still include your main brand. There are a lot of great reasons to add a sub-domain: careers, corporate info, and product info. Take a look at jobs.marketingpilgrim.com as an example.

4. Create a social networking profile.

profiles can rank well for your personal or company name. When you sign-up, be sure to use your real name—using a nickname won’t help with your Google reputation—and enable the option that lets you pick the URL of your profile. myspace.com/companyname works a whole lot better than myspace.com/12345678.

5. Create your own social network.

If a social networking profile ranks well in Google, how much more so your own social network? Ning.com will let you create your own customized social network. Better yet, you can pay just $5 a month and point your own domain name at it. Take a look at www.marketingpilgrim.tv for an example.

6. Create a business profile.

because it’s a great tool for networking with your peers. You should also join LinkedIn as it allows you to talk about yourself, link to your other Google-friendly web content, and customize your profile URL. Wouldn’t you rather your potential employer find your LinkedIn profile on Google, than that run-in you had with your last boss?

7. Share your photos.

Flickr.com is very Google friendly. Upload photos of you, your company logo, your products, etc, and label them using your name. Add some comments to each photo (including your name) and Voila! You’ve just added a dozen pages of content, each labeled with your company name! Be sure to do the same when selecting your profile name for Flickr too.

8. Claim your identity.

Naymz.com is a blessing for those looking to control their Google reputation. It effectively lets you create a profile and then link out to all of your other profiles. Whereas LinkedIn is heavy on the networking-side, Naymz is more of a holding-tank for your brand. Best of all, Google seems to love it!

9. Create your own Wiki.

If you’re facing a Google reputation nightmare, you may be tempted to create a Wikipedia profile for yourself. After all, Wikipedia ranks all over Google, right? Bad move. Not only is it hard to get one approved, but they’re totally unbiased. That DUI incident, you’re trying to cover-up, will likely make its way on to your profile. Not good. Instead create your own wiki and build your profile that way. Wetpaint.com is perfect for this. You can focus it on your personal name, or your company name. The best part is that you get to decide who contributes to it.

10. Get a free page from Google.

I’ve saved the best until last. Ok, I lied. While a free page from Google Page Creator (googlepages.com) isn’t the best web content for managing your Google reputation, there’s something satisfying about having Google help mend your reputation.

So, there you have it. While these shouldn’t be used as a “get out of jail free card”—you should avoid a reputation nightmare to begin with—they’ll at least help you re-build your Google reputation.

(This article was first published by Andy on Gooruze.
Dont miss other great articles, join Gooruze today!)

source : marketing pilgrim

Case study : Broadband Wireless Exchange : www.bbwexchange.com

Business
Robert Hoskins is what you might call a subject-matter expert, and the subject is the fast-growing world of broadband wireless. His extensive meta-site, Broadband Wireless Exchange (BWE), www.bbwexchange.com, comprises 12 individual sites targeting specific areas including the various 802.11 standards, free space optics, and the valuable slices of broadband wireless spectrum. Each site provides industry news, stories, analyst reports, and product directories. Appealing to a growing audience of technical and business readers, Hoskins, who is Editor and Group Publisher, is getting 30,000 to 50,000 page views each day.

Approach
"At BWE, our mission is to help readers find information on the products and services they want to buy," says Hoskins. "Accordingly, our goal is to provide the most targeted advertising possible for our readers, and at the same time have it produce additional ad revenue for us." That's one reason he was pleased to discover that Google offers AdSense, a service that enables web publishers to display Google AdWords™ ads on their content pages.
"We have tens of thousand of pages that can now serve up advertisements directly related to the content our readers are researching."

Before Hoskins used the Google AdSense™ service, BWE was already serving ads, which the company's vice president of sales sold directly to vendors. But like many web publishers, Hoskins still had a lot of unsold inventory. Finding advertisers with ads that fit the specialized content of his site was not an easy task. Google AdSense seemed like the perfect solution.

Hoskins opted to use Google AdSense to run AdWords ads on pages of all 12 sites under the BWE umbrella. As an entrepreneur, he switched hats from executive to programmer, and implemented his own ad code to the site. "It was incredibly easy," he says, "and took very little time to copy and paste the HTML in the right places."

Results
"What we got from Google," Hoskins says, "was a much more sophisticated system that allowed us to effectively target readers who were researching specific equipment categories with advertisements, from companies that actually sold that type of networking equipment. So someone who was reading about 802.11 antennas would only see ads for vendors who sold 802.11 antennas."
"These ads run in places that would have gone unsold - and we get revenue we would not have otherwise."

As with any web publisher in a specialized market, this approach suits Hoskins' business model very well. In running a Google AdSense skyscraper (a vertical format that features up to four ads), Hoskins reports he's seeing an additional $3,000 a month in revenue. "These ads run in places that would have gone unsold – and we get revenue we would not have otherwise," he says. "Google has dramatically improved our ability to provide readers with extremely targeted ads. We have tens of thousand of pages that can now serve up advertisements directly related to the content our readers are researching."

For Hoskins, there's a second important benefit: Google advertising effectively doubles BWE's sales efforts. "Instead of spending money to hire an additional sales rep to sell ad banners to the correct target audience," he says, "Google ads have become a virtual sales tool for us, and it doesn't cost BWE a cent. Now we're able to reap thousands of dollars in additional advertising revenue each month that we would very likely have missed without Google AdWords."

In short, Hoskins says, AdSense is a "win-win relationship. BWE gets additional advertising revenue with little or no effort, and BWE readers see ads that interest them. And that enables our team at BWE to focus on our core business."

source : Adsense Story

PayPerPost (PPP) is a website which helps content creators such as bloggers, videographers, podcasters and photographers find advertisers willing to sponsor specific content. The advertisers create opportunities ("opps") that describe the content they are looking for (e.g. feedback, reviews, buzz, creative, video). The bloggers (sometimes referred to as "Posties") then choose opportunities in their area of interest.

Once the blogger has written a blog post or posted a video that matches the requirements, PPP then reviews the post against its requirements (e.g. topic, tone, length) and PPP terms of service (e.g. disclosure required, no adult content), and handles payment.

The company recently (as of April 2007) introduced a segmentation system whereby advertisers can limit which bloggers qualify for their opportunity. The system uses criteria such as Google Page Rank, Alexa rank, blogger quality rank, RealRank and blog categories. They can also exclude blogs on certain domains.

The company sparked controversy in its first year, with critics claiming that sponsored blogging was unethical.It has received sustained criticism from technology blogger Michael Arrington and sustained support from technology blogger Andy Beard. Some supporters claimed that sponsored blogging helps "blue-collar bloggers", and PayPerPost members claimed that there is room for all views in the blogosphere.

PayPerPost was founded by Ted Murphy, who also founded the interactive agency MindComet and the "BlogStar Network", designed to connect advertisers with bloggers in a manual, non-marketplace fashion.

Source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay_per_post

ConsumerSearch is an English-language search engine for consumer product reviews, plus a database of reports on consumer products and services, published and updated only online. (Thus it's an example of Online journalism.) ConsumerSearch does not review products and services directly, nor does the site publish reviews from users. Rather, ConsumerSearch writers review the print and online reviews of products and services, using a set of objective, published ratings criteria.

From the reviews judged most credible, information and product recommendations are then analyzed and summarized in the product report. This report also identifies the best products for specific uses or prices ranges, again based on the most credible reviews. Although the Fast Answers section that presents these products is published at the top of the report, this section is actually the culmination of the reporting process.

Source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ConsumerSearch

AdWords is Google's flagship advertising product and main source of revenue. AdWords offers pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and site-targeted advertising for both text and banner ads. The AdWords program includes local, national, and international distribution. Google's text advertisements are short, consisting of one title line and two content text lines. Image ads can be one of several different Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) standard sizes.

Google's AdWords division is based in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adwords

• To put ads on a web page, the webmaster inserts JavaScript code into the page.
• Each time a page with an AdSense tag is visited, the JavaScript creates an iframe and sets its "src" attribute to the page's URL.
• For contextual advertisements, Google's servers use a cache of the page to determine a set of high-value keywords. If keywords have been cached already, ads are served for those keywords based on the AdWords bidding system. More details are described in the AdSense patent.
• For site-targeted ads, the advertiser chooses the page(s) to display ads on and pays based on CPM (cost-per-thousand-impressions, or the price advertisers choose to pay for every thousand ads displayed).
• For referrals, Google adds money to the advertiser's account when visitors either download the referred software or subscribe to the referred service.
• Search ads are added to the list of results after a user performs a search.
• Since the JavaScript is sent to the web browser when the page is requested, it is possible for other site owners to copy the JavaScript into their own web pages. To protect against this type of fraud, AdSense customers can specify the pages on which ads should be shown. AdSense then ignores clicks from pages other than those specified.

source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adsense

Google AdSense is an ad serving program run by Google. Website owners can enroll in this program to enable text, image and, more recently, video advertisements on their sites. These ads are administered by Google and generate revenue on either a per-click or per-thousand-impressions basis. Google is also currently beta-testing a cost-per-action based service.

source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adsense

Affiliate marketing is a form of online advertising where advertisers place campaigns with a potentially large number of small (and large) publishers, whom are only paid media fees when traffic to the advertiser is garnered, and usually upon a specific measurable campaign result (a form, a sale, a sign-up, etc). Today, this is usually accomplished through contracting with an affiliate network or CPA network, such as Performics, Hydra Network, Motive Interactive, Commission Junction/BeFree, LinkShare, Primeq, Consorte Media or Azoogle.

Affiliate marketing was an invention by CDNow.com in 1994 and was excelled by Amazon.com when it launched its Affiliate Program, called Associate Program in 1996. The online retailer used its program to generate low cost brand exposure and provided at the same time small websites a way to earn some supplemental income.

source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affiliate_marketing

Email marketing is a form of direct marketing which uses electronic mail as a means of communicating commercial or fundraising messages to an audience. In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered email marketing. However, the term is usually used to refer to:

• Sending emails with the purpose of enhancing the relationship of a merchant with its current or old customers and to encourage customer loyalty and repeat business.
• Sending emails with the purpose of acquiring new customers or convincing old customers to buy something immediately.
• Adding advertisements in emails sent by other companies to their customers.
• Emails that are being sent on the Internet (Email did and does exist outside the Internet, Network Email, FIDO etc.)

Researchers estimate that US firms alone spent $400 million on email marketing in 2006.

Source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-mail_marketing

Online advertising is a form of advertising that uses the Internet and World Wide Web in order to deliver marketing messages and attract customers. Examples of online advertising include contextual ads on search engine results pages, banner ads, advertising networks and e-mail marketing, including e-mail spam.

A major result of online advertising is information and content that is not limited by geography or time. The emerging area of interactive advertising presents fresh challenges for advertisers who have hitherto adopted an interruptive strategy.

Online video directories for brands are a good example of interactive advertising. These directories complement television advertising and allow the viewer to view the commercials of a number of brands. If the advertiser has opted for a response feature, the viewer may then choose to visit the brand’s website, or interact with the advertiser through other touch points such as email, chat or phone. Response to brand communication is instantaneous, and conversion to business is very high. This is because in contrast to conventional forms of interruptive advertising, the viewer has actually chosen to see the commercial.

Source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_advertising

Pay per click (PPC) is an advertising model used on search engines, advertising networks, and content websites/blogs, where advertisers only pay when a user actually clicks on an ad to visit the advertiser's website. Advertisers bid on keywords they predict their target market will use as search terms when they are looking for a product or service. When a user types a keyword query matching the advertiser's keyword list, or views a page with relevant content, the advertiser's ad may be shown. These ads are called a "Sponsored link" or "sponsored ads" and appear next to or above the "natural" or organic results on search engine results pages, or anywhere a webmaster/blogger chooses on a content page.

Pay per click ads may also appear on content network websites. In this case, ad networks such as Google AdSense and Yahoo! Publisher Network attempt to provide ads that are relevant to the content of the page where they appear, and no search function is involved.

While many companies exist in this space, Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, and Microsoft adCenter are the largest network operators as of 2007. Minimum prices per click, often referred to as Costs Per Click (CPC), vary depending on the search engine, with some as low at $0.01. Very popular search terms can cost much more on popular engines. Arguably this advertising model may be open to abuse through click fraud, although Google and other search engines have implemented automated systems to guard against this.

source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay_per_click

Internet marketing, also referred to as online marketing, Internet advertising, eMarketing (or e-Marketing), is the marketing of products or services over the Internet. When it applies to the subset of website based ad placements it is commonly referred to as Web advertising (Webvertising), and/or Web Marketing. The Internet has brought many unique benefits to marketing including low costs in distributing information and media to a global audience. The interactive nature of Internet marketing, both in terms of instant response and in eliciting response, are unique qualities of the medium.

Internet marketing ties together creative and technical aspects of the internet, including design, development, advertising and sales. Internet marketing methods and strategies encompass a wide range of services such as search engine marketing (SEM)which can be broken down into search engine optimisation (SEO) and pay per click (PPC), display advertising, text-based advertising, behavioral marketing, software-based ads, e-mail marketing, newsletter marketing, Customer Relationship Management Marketing affiliate marketing, web press releases, interactive advertising, online reputation management(ORM), online market research, and also Social Media Marketing Methods such as blog marketing, and viral marketing.

Internet marketing is the process of promoting an organization using online media, typically with the goals of increasing sales and boosting profits. Internet marketing does not simply mean building or promoting a website nor does it mean simply putting a banner ad up on another website. Effective Internet marketing requires a comprehensive strategy that synergizes a given company's business model and sales goes with their website function & appearance, focusing on their target market through proper choice of advertising type, media, and design.

Source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_marketing