Using Google to Monitor Your Blog and Online Reputation

As bloggers we have to be careful what is ranking on the first page of the search results for our personal names, brand name and of course our blog name. At the end of the day it’s all about our readers, what they are saying about our sites and our reputation.

Reputation is a funny thing on the internet. It takes a lot to gain and build up over time, but it can instantly be lost with a bad decision of having someone rank on the main page of Google with a complaint or negative report.

Here’s what you need to know about online reputation and ranking in the SERPS.

• Everyone on the internet now has a voice… whether they are right or not
• People will believe what they read online, no matter who publishes it
• With over a billion people on social networks, it’s easy to have bad reviews and content go viral
• Google and review sites like Yelp love negative reviews, as it increases revenue and pageviews

So how can you use Google to monitor your online reputation and what is ranking in the search results?

As you can see, it’s quite easy to setup alerts through Google and do some sniffing around on your own to see what it ranking. Once you see what is out there you can focus on getting more of your sites and social profiles to rank along with your other content. If you can own the whole first page of results for your name of brand, that is best. The complexities on this will of course vary depending on the competition around your name.

For instance… I rank number 1 on Google (and various other main page locations) for “Zac Johnson” but there is a world famous golfer named “Zach Johnson”. This makes it tough for me to rank for the whole first page results as so many other people are searching for the golfer as well, but it’s still possible… but extremely tough. I could also try to rank for “Zac”, but this comes with even more competition, especially since “Zac Efron” is a world famous celebrity that has billions of searches and sites around his name every month.

So focus on your exact match on what people are searching for to find you. Do your best to rank number 1 and any other rankings on the page will also help. The end goal is to make sure that you can provide people with the most relevant and positive content to choose from when they are searching for your business or name in the search engines. Don’t let your competition be in control of your name brand andonline reputation.