A guide to managing your online reputation before a crisis hits

Online reputation management (ORM) is usually front and center when an executive, professional or brand notices an unflattering item on the first page of a search result.

In reality, you should carefully manage your online reputation before you get to that point, but it’s fairly typical for people not to pay attention until it becomes a necessity.

ORM is a semi-specialized niche within search engine optimization (SEO). The goal is to gain control of the first page of search results.

As you’ll see, this discipline goes well beyond SEO to include aspects of PR and external communication, blogging, copywriting, and social media.

Below is a list of steps to take when you embark on an online reputation management campaign.

1. Take an inventory. Audit all the online assets available to you. Sign out of Google and run a search for your name. Go three to five pages deep. Grab the URL of every result and classify each one as positive, negative or neutral. Do the same on Bing and Yahoo.