When you Google your company name, what do you see? You may be spending a lot of money on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for your site and you may be offering a great product, but if your detractors are also using SEO, you may find that criticisms of your business rank just below or even above your own site. What can you do when Google results start ruining your reputation? You have several options:

Use your own SEO strategy to keep your site and your feeder sites high on the search engine rankings. Your web design firm can help you get …

Social networking sites such as MySpace and YouTube are virtually unavoidable today, when it sometimes seems that everyone you know is on some networking site. Already there are many news stories out about companies running Google searches on potential applicants – and not hiring those applicants with unsavory MySpace pages.

Even if your company’s official Web 2.0 presence is perfectly respectable, though, there are many ways that social networking sites could be damaging your business reputation:

Employees and team members may have unsavory pages on social networking sites – and may be identifying themselves with your company. Customers and even competitors may be …

Blogs have become extremely popular over the past few years. Web logs, or blogs, as they are more popularly known, are online journals that allow bloggers or writers to write about anything and everything. Setting up a blog only takes a few seconds and is generally free via services such as WordPress and LiveJournal.

Blogs can actually be a great benefit to businesses. Many companies are finding that these online sites can be a great way to project a more relaxed and friendly image. Some businesses are setting up not only company blogs, but also blogs for every team member and …

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was established to help protect investors by establishing fair markets. The SEC allows anyone to make a complaint about possible potential securities law violations. This means that if you are an investment manager or investment banker, someone could make a complaint about you to the SEC. If you are a publicly traded company and an employee’s job ends, that employee can also complain to the SEC if the job termination was the result of the employee knowing about and wanting to report potential shareholder fraud.

Unfortunately, anyone can make complaints to the SEC – …

Blogs are not just online journals, as many people assume. They can be a powerful way to send a message. Blogs have helped companies launch successful services and products and have helped shed light on news stories that traditional media do not cover. Blogs have even made the news in some cases. Although they can be free to set up and only take a few minutes to create, blogs can spread a definitive message about your business.

When someone uses blogs to spread a negative message about your company, though, the results can be devastating. Many bloggers browse other blogs and …

For businesses, virtual reputation does not always match real-life reputation. Even if you have a great reputation as a business in your local community, your online reputation may be terrible. If your company is generating negative websites, negative online comments, and negative blog posts, this sort of attack can eventually affect how many customers and clients you see in your bricks-and-mortar office.

If you are facing a bad reputation in cyberspace, these do’s and don’ts can help you regain control online:

Don’t forget to thank those that do bolster your reputation. Some companies get so hung up about the negative comments made …

A bad reputation on government sites or The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) website can be especially devastating for a company. While many businesses dismiss flame sites or negative comments made on blogs, forums, and newsletters, it is much harder to ignore government sites and a bad SEC listing. These sites simply carry too much cachet. These sites carry so much authority that any potential customer reading about your company on these sites will inevitably believe what they read.

Worse, government sites and SEC tend to have very good search engine rankings. Companies who have been listed with the SEC …

Browse through some pages on MySpace and other social sites and you may be convinced that these sites do not pose much of a threat to your business. After all, many pages on social sites are personal networking pages, containing personal pictures and listings of favorite books and movies. The conversations on these sites are often about personal, everyday things. Pretending that these sites don’t affect your business is a serious mistake, however.

People use MySpace and other social sites the way that earlier generations used the phone – to gossip and pass on information. You may not even be aware …

Of course, if you have a bad reputation on Google or other search engines, it is not really the search engines that are too blame. The search engines are merely reporting on relevant pages related to your company. The real problem is that high-ranking web pages, forums, and blogs are making negative comments about your company – and these comments are made highly visible thanks to search engines.

According to eMarketing, 41% of customers use search engines when researching a product or company before making a purchase. This means that if search engine results show negative comments about your company, your …

Many companies only start to worry about their online reputation when that reputation is threatened by negative comments online. However, that old adage – “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” – is very relevant to online reputation. Taking a few steps to ensure that your reputation stays positive is far more effective than trying to bolster a reputation under attack. If you want to maintain a good reputation online, simply follow these tips:

Be transparent and sincere. The best way to maintain a good reputation is to remain transparent in all your business practices and sincere when …