Reputation Management FAQs

A reputation management strategy is a roadmap for fixing, protecting, maintaining and promoting your presence in Google search results. Generally, reputation strategies are designed to improve what people see when they search your name or business online, and to ensure you maintain a positive reputation for the long term.

More often than not, reputation strategies involve multiple layers and methods of attack, each coming together to give you control of your digital image. The best strategies are centered on your online presence and work to remove threats while empowering you to achieve your online goals.

Reactive strategies focus more on removing threats and repairing damage, while proactive approaches center on strengthening your image, identifying threats and preventing attacks for the foreseeable future. A good strategy will often help unlock opportunities for personal and professional growth.

Reputation management typically includes a combination of monitoring, negative content removal, search engine suppression, asset creation and various link-building techniques to improve your appearance on important search results pages (SERPs). Each strategy depends on the unique situation, needs and goals of the individual or business at the center of the effort.

While each strategy is unique, standard ORM may involve:

• Online analysis and strategy development
• Negative content removal
• Personal information removal
• Content suppression (from Page 1 and 2 of Google)
• Custom content creation & promotion
• Wikipedia page editing and creation
• Business listings creation and development
• Guest posting strategies
• Claiming your Google Knowledge Panel
• PPC and Google Ad strategies
• Search engine optimization
• Profile development
• Ongoing monitoring & maintenance
• And more

Learn more about our reputation management process here.

A good reputation management strategy begins with in-depth research and analysis of your online footprint. This phase includes:

Step 1: Monitoring the web for all good, bad and neutral mentions of your brand.

Step 2: Analyzing your search results, including for all brand and industry-related keywords

Step 3: Comparing your brand with competitors on major search engine results pages.

Step 4: Scoring overall performance of your brand online, including user/customer sentiment

Step 5: Determining your short- and long-term online goals and the best way to achieve them

Using the data, NetReputation builds a strategy for mitigating negative results and positioning your brand for success as quickly as possible. This strategy may adapt or pivot based on new online activity and threats that present the need for a new course of action.

On average, improving your reputation and getting long-term results takes anywhere from 6 to 12 months or longer, depending on your online situation and needs. While some content removals may take just a few days or weeks, suppressing unwanted search results and building a strong, threat-resistant online presence can sometimes take 1-2 years, if not longer.

Each reputation management campaign is different, and requires a different combination of tactics to ensure success. With varying degrees of difficulty, an evolving threatscape and sometimes unpredictable changes to Google’s search algorithm, working with an experienced reputation professional to manage your online presence is most likely your best option.

How long will it take to repair your reputation? Learn what goes into your reputation campaign and what you need to defend and define your brand online.

Online reputation management is one of the best ways individuals and businesses can monitor, protect and shape public perception on the internet. ORM provides an effective tool for removing items doing serious damage to your image and customer sentiment, and offers a process for influencing opinion and making a positive first impression on employers, customers, and the public.

For individuals, ORM helps create a positive online footprint that highlights and reinforces their best qualities and professional experience. In an age when hiring managers, colleagues, landlords and college administrators research applicants online, this “digital resume” offers a critical advantage that can unlock opportunities and ensure successful outcomes in nearly every aspect of your life.

For companies, the right ORM strategy helps eliminate the online negativity that can do lasting damage to brand opinion and scare away customers. With so much of the buyer experience taking place on the internet, reputation management provides an essential tool for strengthening customer relationships, brand awareness and industry authority, fueling growth and bottom-line revenue.

Reputation management combines numerous technology, strategy and process elements to repair and improve your brand over time. While some removals may be completed in weeks or even days, ORM is a long-term approach that utilizes aspects of content removal, SEO, profile building and monitoring to strengthen results for important search phrases.

Negative content can’t be suppressed overnight, nor can positive assets move up in search results and provide long-term protection in just days. Cutting-edge search engine optimization provides the boost positive assets need to take over search pages, an effort that sometimes takes months, a year or longer to achieve.

But while SEO is vital, each ORM campaign has a different level of difficulty that requires a unique combination of processes to deliver results. A reputation specialist can walk you through what’s needed to take control of your online search presence.

Reputation management costs vary depending on many factors, including your unique online situation, campaign difficulty and the services needed to improve your online standing. Anything from monitoring and content removal to long-term suppression, content creation, public relations and guest posting are often essential elements of ORM and ultimately impact the cost of online repair.

While monitoring and reputation management software companies may promise a cheap and easy way to fix your reputation, they don’t include the resources or expertise needed to solve online problems or provide long-term protection. In fact, using such services will likely leave your brand exposed to threats and even make the situation worse, putting you in a highly vulnerable position that creates even more damage to your reputation.

Comprehensive reputation management solutions require the ongoing work of removal and brand-building experts to ensure long-term success. A reputation team has the experience, knowhow and relationships not just to stop threats in their tracks, but to build a brand that offers protection and peace of mind for the foreseeable future.

Investing in reputation management allows you to manage and minimize negative content hurting your online image. It helps you clean up search results while giving you more control over your digital narrative, providing the strategy needed to shape your brand, market your value and build stronger connections with your audience.

Individuals who invest in ORM can create a more positive search engine presence that makes a powerful impression on employers, coworkers, loan officers and college advisors. Doing so can result in better job, career and educational opportunities that increase happiness and your quality of life.

Businesses who focus on reputation management can remove negative articles and consumer feedback damaging their brand while increasing brand awareness, growing their reach and compelling more customers to action - a powerful way to increase impact and profitability.

With so much research, communication, education and business done on the internet these days, the costs of not investing in ORM are significant, and can lead to serious consequences for your livelihood and your brand.

With a 4.9/5 rating and dozens of reviews from employees, NetReputation is known throughout the ORM industry as a great place to work.

More importantly, the company has helped thousands of business and individual clients take charge of their online reputations since 2014. Great ratings and positive feedback from clients is only part of the picture; NetReputation has been recognized by leading business publications for its outstanding quality and selection of customized online reputation management services.

In the digital environment, your online reputation tells others who you are and what you stand for. Your reputation is a consensus public perception of you and your brand. This perception CAN be managed with the practice known as online reputation management. NetReputation leverages cutting-edge strategies to establish your online reputation, build brand awareness, and repair reputations damaged by negative search results. Our services are designed to help you control the online conversation while positioning you and your company as leaders in your industry.

If you are an individual or business owner, you know that your online reputation can help – or hinder – your ability to achieve your goals. With the help of online reputation management and a reputation manager, you can create a positive perception of you or your brand.

A reputation manager analyzes your current reputation, then develops strategies for expanding your digital footprint. This can include creating and maintaining social media accounts, sourcing writers for content development, working with digital marketing and SEO teams to improve your online visibility in search results, and so much more. Your reputation manager oversees the day to day tasks that are required to create and maintain a positive online reputation.

Online reputation management is a proven strategy for developing and maintaining a positive public perception in the digital environment. One of the essential components of this strategy is search engine optimization, or SEO. SEO in reputation management adds the ability to manage what people find in search results when looking for information on you or your company.

In a reputation management campaign, SEO tactics may include:

• Optimizing websites for improved search visibility
• Crafting impactful news articles, blog posts, and social media posts with the keywords people are using to find information about you.
• Creating listings for you in business and industry directories
• Optimizing your digital footprint for local searches, helping you land a spot on Google Maps

Together, ORM and SEO work in concert to position you at the forefront of your industry and to build trust between you and others online.

Social media has revolutionized the way we interact with others. Whether you are a business owner or an individual, your social media profiles help to define and refine your online reputation.

Reputation management in social media is crucial for building and maintaining a positive public perception. NetReputation’s team of professionals creates social media profiles, monitors social media mentions, engages with customers on platforms like Facebook and Twitter, and develops impactful social media posts to help you share information about you or your business.

Brand reputation is the public perception of your organization or company. This brand perception or reputation is based on available information in the digital environment and can include your website, positive news articles, social media posts and comments, and feedback from customers in the form of reviews and ratings.

Brands gain valuable competitive advantages by managing their brands online. NetReputation’s team of brand management professionals applies digital marketing and ORM practices to position you in the best possible light.

In order to remain competitive, brands must be able to manage public perceptions of their companies, products, and services. Online reputation management is an essential solution, allowing companies to build and improve their brands across the digital landscape. ORM helps to build trust, fend off negative reviews and ratings, and improve search visibility.

Brands are under constant threat from negative reviews or loss of trust between them and their customers. ORM supercharges the digital footprint in a proactive way by shaping and refining how customers view brands. With ORM in your toolkit, you can respond to negative news or emerging crises quicky and effectively. Grow and protect your brand with the ORM services by NetReputation.

A winning brand reputation is built on how you and your company are perceived in the digital environment. Brand management professionals use a wide range of tools and strategies to build brand awareness and to strengthen your online reputation. These strategies include:

• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Crafting responses to reviews and customer feedback
• Expanding a brand’s digital footprint with web property and content development
• Engaging with followers by leveraging social media
• Public relations and content promotion

Each of these strategies works together to help put you in front of the people who matter most: your customers. With a strong brand reputation, you gain the ability to explore new business opportunities, helping you to increase revenue and market share.

If you’ve ever been arrested, chances are that your mugshots have been posted online. How did they get there? In most states, law enforcement agencies are required to make your arrest records and mugshots part of the public record. Websites containing these reports and images are available to anyone with an internet connection. Whether or not you have been found guilty of a crime, your mugshots may be discoverable in online searches, potentially putting your privacy and online reputation at risk.

Data brokers and mugshot websites scrape public records, then repost the data they collect. Mugshot sites are prominent in search results because they share embarrassing photos of celebrities, sports figures, and everyday people just like you. These sites aren’t breaking the law; they are merely republishing records found in publically-available online databases.

When your mugshots appear online, you may wonder what you can do to get them taken down. The content removal professionals at NetReputation can help. Our team uses proven strategies, including:

• Negotiating with website owners/webmasters for mugshot removal
• Formal takedown requests to Google and hosting websites
• Legal options (DMCA/Terms of Service violation) takedown notices
• Reverse SEO
• Data broker opt-outs

Our team has been successful in removing thousands of mugshots and arrest records for our clients. With our help, you can restore the online reputation that was damaged by these negative items. Let us handle this complex and time-consuming process for you.

NetReputation has over a decade of experience in helping our clients preserve and restore their online reputations. Negative information in search results – including mugshots, unflattering news articles and blog posts, arrest records, and personal details – can all be removed with our proven strategies.

We work hard to get your negative content removed. If that information can’t be pulled down, we use search suppression techniques to push negative content off the first page of search results. With our help, thousands of clients have been able to take charge of their online reputations, free of the risks associated with negative search results.

Google My Business (GMB) is a free business listing service launched by Google. Business owners can claim their listing by following a series of straightforward steps. By claiming a GMB listing, businesses can get their locations listed on Google Maps and improve visibility in local searches.

Although GMB is free, this listing service can be challenging to set up. NetReputation’s team of business and local SEO experts can help you get the most from your GMB profile. Our team adds the details your customers need to make smart purchasing decisions, optimizes your profile for improved visibility in Maps and general searches, and creates engagement with your customers.

When you create a Google My Business profile for your company, you are provided with a wide range of tools to help customers make purchasing decisions. The Google business dashboard is accessed by logging into your account and adding or modifying information.

If managing your profile is too complex – or you want to supercharge your digital footprint – NetReputation can help. Our team has the experience and skill needed to boost your visibility in locally-oriented searches, get you on Google Maps, and build out your profile to suit your unique needs and goals. We even handle review management on the Google platform for you, allowing you to focus on what you do best: growing your business operation.

Review management is an essential part of the modern business environment. Online reviews are read by over 90% of all consumers, and the quality of reviews and ratings can influence purchasing decisions.

By managing reviews, you gain valuable insights into consumer preferences and can respond quickly to any issues. Review management consists of:

• Creating business profiles on popular review sites
• Review monitoring
• Removal of negative reviews, including reviews that are fake, defamatory, or misleading
• Response strategies to rebuild trust between you and customers
• Creating a positive reviewing environment for customers

Review management can be a challenging and time-consuming process. By using NetReputation and our team of review management professionals, you can focus on what you do best: delivering quality products and services to your customers.

Businesses gain impressive control over their review profiles by creating a Google My Business (GMB) profile. This free service helps you to share important information with your customers and improves visibility in Google Maps searches.

Within the GMB business dashboard, company owners can flag false, defamatory, or misleading reviews for removal. They can also create responses to customers’ reviews, helping to establish or rebuild loyalty between customers and your company. For review management services designed for your business needs, NetReputation is ready to assist.

Many businesses wish they could eliminate negative reviews from their Google My Business profiles. Unfortunately, you can’t simply delete reviews just because you don’t agree with what was said. Google has strict requirements for review deletion; reviews that can be deleted must violate Google’s prohibited and restricted content policy, which includes:

• Spam and fake content
• Off-topic reviews
• Illegal content
• Sexually explicit content
• Derogatory/defamatory review content
• Impersonation
• Offensive review content
• Conflict of interest

NetReputation can help you manage your Google reviews. We have years of experience in working with Google’s review deletion policy; our review monitoring and negative content removal professionals can get false, defamatory, and misleading reviews removed quickly and permanently.

Monitoring your online reviews is a mission-critical step for the modern business owner. With so many people reading – and trusting – online reviews, any negative reviews can quickly damage your online reputation.

NetReputation uses powerful automated review monitoring tools to identify negative reviews. Once they have been spotted, our review management professionals work quickly to flag and delete fake, defamatory, misleading, or offensive reviews once and for all. With our help, you can protect your online reputation and restore the trust your customers have in your business.

Crisis management is the practice of preparing your organization for reputational threats in order to minimize the impact of natural disasters, organizational misdeeds, or industrial accidents. By creating a crisis management plan, you gain advantages like:

• The ability to identify current and potential threats before they can cause damage to your organization.
• Strategies to communicate clearly and confidently in the face of a crisis.
• Recovery efficiency, allowing you to get back on track quickly after a crisis occurs.

NetReputation is an expert in helping companies develop crisis management plans. Our team creates a roadmap for your organization to use before, during, and after any crisis. This improves your resiliency and protects your digital reputation.

Organizations prepared for crises tend to recover more quickly and regain trust more rapidly than their competitors. NetReputation’s team of crisis management experts know that there are three distinct phases in any crisis preparation plan:

• Pre-crisis – preparing your organization for internal and external threats that can damage your online reputation. This can include identifying existing and potential threats before they occur.
• Crisis response – the set of actions and communication strategies used during a crisis.
• Post-crisis – steps taken to speed recovery and keep stakeholders informed of issues during the recovery phase.

Crisis management is a valuable addition to your organization, allowing you to shine even when threats have the potential to damage trust between you and your customers. NetReputation can help you develop a plan that meets your current and emerging needs.

Crisis management is a strategy to help organizations deal with natural or industrial incidents, helping them to communicate with stakeholders and restore the trust lost in the wake of a crisis. The five major components of crisis management are:

• Threat identification
• Reduction of risk factors
• Damage containment
• Recovery
• Learning from incidents

Before, during, or after a crisis, a roadmap for what to do and how to communicate effectively is essential. NetReputation’s crisis management services are designed to help you thrive even if a natural or industrial accident occurs.

With Google’s broad range of products and services available on the web, technical issues sometimes require contacting the company for support. Google has two mechanisms for contacting support, first by visiting the Google Help page at https://support.google.com/ or by calling the Google HQ at (650) 253-0000.

Bing offers help for a large number of topics on its help page. If you cannot find the answer you are looking for, you can either message support by clicking here or by calling the company at (425) 882-8080.

The Google Customer Support line at (650) 253-0000 is your best bet to connect with a live representative if you cannot find answers to the issues you are having with one of Google's many products and services.

Facebook provides several contact telephone numbers for support. The main customer service line can be found at (650) 543-4800. You may also try dialing (650) 308-7300 or (402) 543-4800. In most cases, these phone numbers will redirect callers to use the online Help Center at https://www.facebook.com/help.

Instagram has an online support Help Center accessible by clicking here. Because Instagram is owned by the same company that owns Facebook, the Meta customer service phone line can be accessed by dialing (650) 543-4800. Be advised that in most cases, callers will be redirected to the online Help Center.

If you need help with Bing and have been unsuccessful in using their support website or email contact features, you can call the company at (425) 882-8080.

If you’ve already claimed your business profile with Google’s free Google Business Profile (GBP) platform, you may periodically wish to update your profile. To do so, first log into your profile account.

If you’re using search, log in to the account you used to initially set up your profile. Then search for your exact business name. Once you’ve located the correct profile, click “Edit Profile”, then “Business Information”.

After you make each change, be sure to click the “save” button to ensure your changes will appear for other Google users. For more details on editing your Business Profile in Google, visit the GBP support page by clicking here.