What is online reputation management?

When you start a website, you will instantly begin developing your online reputation. The internet has many tools that will help you to manage this reputation. Unlike the real world, it is often easy to find what others are saying about you on the internet. A simple tool such as google Alerts can help you to find out when people are talking about you, and gives you the ability to nip any problems in the bud. Reputation management is a tricky field, and many times things can get out of hand before people even understand what's going on. Getting information about what others are saying as quickly as possible will help you to keep your reputation under control.

Search Engines like activity on websites, freshness and links to authority sites. Assuming you are not paying google and Co to push you up the top seven paid listings, then those three elements, as a generalisation, push you towards or onto the first page. Managing your on-line reviews actively (Reputation) not only provides links to authority sites (reviews in google, Yahoo etc) but shows freshness and activity. Couple that with a good on-line reputation and visits/hits from potential/customers all adds to the search engine algorithms' that determine your place on their page. Start by finding your on-line reviews and then manage them 'actively'.