We all know just how important it is for businesses to protect their identity online and one of the most effective ways of doing that is controlling what people find when they search for your company or even for you as a person. You may not always be able to control it 100%  and there are some companies who return very negative results but there are some good practices that you can put in place so as people get a good first impression when they search for you on Google. Here are our 5 tips for controlling your image online…

1.Link to a friendly post

Chances are that somebody has written about you or your business in a favourable way at some stage so you want to make sure that people find this credible review of your business when people search for you. Build links to this page and promote it as you would one of your own. Link to it from your media section and your own blog to help it’s authority as a page that will help it to climb the search engines. This is much better than tooting your own horn and will make people think that you are even bigger than you actually are. If you are lucky enough to have multiple articles about your company repeat the process accordingly.

2.Buy your own name with Google Adwords

This may seem like a waste of time as the logic is that if people are searching for your name or business they will find it but you have to remember that most people click on one of the first couple of results on Google. The paid for search term will stand out and mean they don’t see any of the other negative stuff further down the search page.

3.Get a blog

Blogs rank incredibly well for SEO as they are updated daily and are search engine friendly. Write an authoritative blog on your area of expertise and it will almost certainly attain the first or second ranking on Google. Make sure to keep the content fresh and relevant though as there is nothing worse than somebody finding your company blog only to see that you haven’t updated it in a year.

4.Get a Facebook page

Facebook ranks really well with Google and you will usually see a businesses page in the first handful of results if it has been updated on a regular basis. A Facebook page allows you to add a fun, friendly and warm side to your business although you should keep it professional with all the relevant contact details so as your potential customers don’t have to go any further in search of your contact details.

5.Use YouTube video

You’ll often see Youtube video indexing very well with Google and the good news is that they are putting a huge amount of resources in to making their ability to search even better. You don’t need to have a massively produced corporate video if you don’t have the budget as all you will need is a simple interview with your founder or CEO talking about the company and tag and describe it correctly on Google.. This could be just the engagement that your potential customer needs to form a connection with you that could lead to a sale or partnership further down the line.

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