According to Yahoo News Presidential Candidate John McCain is using Google to check potential running mates for any potential skeletons in their closets. Well, at least someone on his campaign staff is doing the checks as John McCain has stated that he doesn’t know how to use a computer, even ‘the Google’, instead relying on his wife for help.

At DONE! SEO our team has compiled a list of specialized strategies to assist with Political Online Reputation Management.

The DONE! SEO team is very excited that our Search Engine Reputation Management (SERM) services have been featured in Newsweek’s February 18, 2008 issue. The article, entitled “Google Yourself —And Enjoy It”, discussing the growing importance of managing your digital footprint. Also see the sidebar story here.

Thanks to Lorraine Ali for the coverage and congratulations to Jeff Henderson!

I came across an interesting article in ComputerWorld.com today that’s about six weeks old, but very relevant to the topic of online reputation management.

“Businesses need to be more proactive when it comes to managing their reputations online, according to Gartner Inc. … Gartner predicted that by the end of 2010, criminals will routinely use the Internet to extort funds from organizations, threatening corporate reputations by ensuring that routine online search requests will return negative or even libelous results.”

This is EXACTLY what we tell our clients when we talk about the importance of preemptive search engine reputation management.

The best defense is a good offense!

As I blogged about a couple of weeks ago, people are Googling you, whether you like it or not! But what do you do when the results are less than ideal? One negative comment, a mean-spirited blog, or a listing on a so-called “consumer advocacy” site such as RipoffReport.com can really harm your business.

Our Search Engine Reputation Management (SERM) strategy is very simple: Displace — push down — the negative listings that appear when a person or company’s name is searched with favorable ones and ones that we can control or influence. We provide SERM services to a growing number of clients and were featured on MSNBC.com in September.

We advise individuals or companies to be proactive in managing their reputation online rather than being forced into “crisis management” or “damage control”. Some things one can easily do include:
* reserve additional domains associated with their name or website (.net, .org, .biz, .info, .us, etc.) and create micro-sites with unique content on each of the URLs;
* create profiles on free sites such as LinkedIn, Squidoo, ZoomInfo, and ClaimID;
* start a blog — there are free services like blogger.com, wordpress.com and livejournal.com, for example –- which will have a strong likelihood of ranking well on a person or company name.

When people hire DONE! SEO to help with their Online Reputation Management, we apply such tactics as well as our own methodology to help give neutral or positive websites an equal chance for high positioning. We create original websites, profiles, press releases, blogs and do extensive submissions and link popularity in an effort to positively influence pages and websites that paint a person or company in a more positive light.

While 2007 was the year of the “subprime” mortgage crisis, the American Dialect Society selected “Googleganger” as one of the other most important terms for ‘07. A play on the word “doppelganger,” your “Googleganger” is “a person with your name who shows up when you Google yourself,” according to the society. “Read the full story here.” is

Seth wasn’t very complimentary about “Online reputation Management” in a blog entry back in September, but he’s telling people now “the first thing to do this year” is “google yourself”. He writes:

If you’re a salesperson, your prospects already do.
If you’re looking for a job, your prospective employers already do.
If you’ve got a job, your co-workers already do.

He also provided some very helpful tips on how to “fix” your Google footprint if you don’t like it. “Start a blog … make sure you’re represented on HubPages or Squidwho or write an article for ChangeThis. You can be finished by tonight. It’s worth it.

Pretty ironic advice from a guy who essentially said journalists covering companies such as ours who claim they can help with online reputation management aren’t telling the truth. “As soon as a company starts to push the bad stuff down, someone writes about it or new bad stuff shows up and on it goes,” Godin wrote last September.

Maybe it’s all of Tim Russert’s political coverage I’ve been watching that’s encouraging me to point out the inconsistencies here. I would NEVER divulge the names of my SERM clients, but I can say with 100% confidence that we make a substantial impact.

A study that came out this week from the Pew Internet & American Life Project entitled “Online Identity Management and Search in the Age of Transparency” points to some very interesting trends:

* 47% of Internet users have searched for information about themselves online
* 53% of adult internet users said they had looked for information connected to at least one of these groups: 1) family and friends, 2) romantic interests, and 3) business colleagues

Ultimately, people are becoming more aware of their “digital footprint”. A key take-away from the Pew report is that unlike footprints in the sand that get quickly washed or blown away, our online track often stick around for a long time! A summary of the report can be found here. Or download the full report.

Exciting stuff for the team at Better, Inc., as it points to the growing market for our SearchForMeOnline.com product and our Search Engine Reputation Management services.

I’ve seen lots of posts over the years about how political campaigns should be using SEO principles as part of their overall effort. I’ve always agreed that would be a good idea if done tastefully and ethically, but dismissed the idea as those ideals are very rare in the political circles.

Now, with the Presidential Election fast approaching we’ve decided that we will offer our services specifically to political campaigns, with the stipulation that we will not do anything unethical or otherwise ’shady’.

So what can we search engine optimization actually do for political campaigns? Quite a bit!

Our main focus in these campaigns will be working to ranks our clients for keyword associated with big issues for the 2008 election. We already know the Iraq War, and the War on Terror will be a big part of this. Another hot button issue is Universal Health Care. Working with politicians to promote certain listings relevant to these searches can be a great way to increase the level of communication between the representatives, and the represented.

I’ll be giving updates about projects related to this post as we move forward. We’ve been in talks with some campaigns, and if all goes well we’ll have some interesting stories to tell.

Search Engine Reputation has become quite a buzz word in the last year. What used to be a small problem affecting a limited group of people has quickly become a widespread issue, affecting everyone from individuals to Fortune 500 companies. With the growth of search engine’s indexes and the huge increase in the amount of personal information being posted on the internet, through social networking sites, governments, and companies posting their records online I think it’s safe to say we’re just beginning to see the tip of the iceberg with this issue, while those still in school now will see the huge implications from our technological growth in the information age.

This leads to the main topic I want to address. Should people work on preventative measures now, making sure they control the first 10-20 results for a Google search for their name? If you don’t put any work in now, any unwanted or outright negative information that pops up will go straight to the first page. However, with proper planning and implementation one could theoretically position relevant positive information on the top of the first page, and optimize those listings through link building and social bookmarking, firmly securing those all so important top spots, preventing any newly posted negative information from showing up at the top.

We are proud to announce that we will now be offering Preemptive Search Engine Reputation Management as one of our services. We will be targeting two basic groups with this service. The first would be young people, usually college students, that want to make sure that when they leave college they will have no problem with potential employers digging up negative information on them. The second group will be companies that deal directly with consumers on a regular basis that want to protect themselves from the possibility of potentially harmful posting making it to the top of Google.

To find out more about these services, or any of our other offerings, please contact us today!