First off, businesses are becoming more aware of the need to manage their online reputation. That’s great, because it keeps me busy.

Celebrities have also caught on, and are seeing the need to do something about maintaining a positive image online. It’s bad enough to put up with what the tabloids print. In the online world, things can get even nastier.

Now we’re seeing a trend where ordinary individuals are looking to hire reputation management specialists to burnish their online “brand.”

I’ve addressed the issue of personal online reputation management for executives and college students in other blog posts. In most of these cases, the concern isn’t about handling negative reviews or criticism online, but rather establishing a presence online to build a reputation.

A lot of people are now waking up to the fact that some online information about them may not show them in the best light. Even if the information is absolutely, 100% correct, they still may not want it popping up in a search.

Perhaps they were accused of something (but not convicted), and their names appear in news stories. In these days of trial-by-media, everyone feels entitled to offer their opinion and pronounce a verdict on the scantiest of information. Never mind due process of the law. Public accusations are as good as a guilty verdict in the minds of many.

Typically, only the most sensational or celebrity-related stories get prominently reported in the main media. However, even if a story is buried on page 37 of a newspaper, it can still appear at the top of an online search about the person of interest.

Also, public information that used to take some effort for someone to find is now easily accessible with a quick online search. This includes information about your mortgage, property purchases and sales, bankruptcy, court filings and nearly any public documents about you.

You may also find yourself on lists of donors to charities or political parties. That may not bother you if you still proudly support these organizations. But if your donation was ten years ago and you’ve since changed your views, you may regret being associated with something you no longer believe in.

Not surprisingly, the undesirable content is not always something posted by another person or organization. I was contacted recently on behalf of an actress (somewhat well known, but not a huge star) who was concerned because a search turned up some images of her posing in a bikini in her earlier days. She thought this bit of “youthful indiscretion” was damaging her reputation.

This isn’t the type of client I typically work with, so I turned down the assignment. But it shows where we’re headed.

We have to face a new reality: More and more information about you is finding its way online, and it’s going to stay there a long time. The internet never forgets.

It reminds me of the song “Every Breath You Take” by Sting:

Every breath you take

Every move you make

Every bond you break, every step you take

I’ll be watching you

Your online reputation consists of everything ever posted by you or about you. Every step you take, the world is watching. That’s why it’s easy to predict that online reputation management companies will be approached more and more by individuals who want help with managing what shows up about them in online searches.

But what about an individual’s online reputation?

If you’re a corporate executive, you want to make sure that anyone doing a search on you will only get a positive impression. It might be a headhunter, someone you’re interviewing with, or even your current boss who wants to see what the online world has to say about you.

Here’s what I generally find. Unless you’re a public figure or big-name celebrity, you probably won’t have any negative reviews online or a blogger spilling the dirt about you. Instead, there may be very little about you — and that can be nearly as bad as having negative postings about you.

Why? Because a prospective employer wants to know something about you — that you’re knowledgeable about the industry, active in the field, a good citizen — all the stuff you’d put on a resume. If a search on you reveals nothing about your professional activities, they may wonder whether you’re a good candidate.

To manage your online reputation, you first need to get your name out there, making sure it’s associated only with positive content. Here are some ways to do that:

1) Participate in online forums or discussions related to your field. Just remember to keep your posts professional. Avoid personal attacks, complaints about your company, or whining about your job. Constructive criticism about your field is fine, but always consider what a prospective employer would think about what you say — because once it’s posted online, it’s there forever.

2) Having a LinkedIn page is pretty much standard these days for any kind of professional. If you haven’t set one up, do so, and make sure to keep it up to date.

3) If you’re involved in charities or non-profits, see if they have a website page that includes short bios of people who contribute their time and efforts. If you’re on the board of directors of a charity, they should have this information online somewhere, so make sure that information on you is correct and up to date.

Also be aware that if you donate to political organizations, that can show up on a search about you — even if the donation was ten years ago.

4) Your own blog site. This takes a bit more work, and it’s not for everybody. But if you’re knowledgeable about your field, you can set up a blog site relatively easily using a product like WordPress. You’ll naturally make sure to include your name on the site and only write posts you’d want a prospective employer to read.

5) Finally, monitor yourself in the search engines. It’s not vain to Google yourself if you’re concerned about maintaining a good online reputation. Once a month or so should be enough for a regular “checkup” on your online health.

Well, I agree that the appropriate use of graphics, video and animation can add a lot to a website. A picture is worth a thousand words, as the saying goes. And nothing beats a video demonstration to show how a product works.

The trouble comes when you’re trying to rank a site higher in the search engines, but you give Google very little text to work with. How does it know what keywords to rank your site for if those keywords don’t appear on the site — or if they only appear in the meta tags?

More to the point, how will your graphics-heavy site compare to one that is full of articles, blog posts, information and other text containing the desired keywords? Sure, you can label your pictures, add captions, title your flash animations, and name the web pages with the keywords — but you’ll still fall far short of a site full of text.

I’m not saying you should replace all your graphics with text only. I’m just cautioning against letting the design get in the way of your site’s ability to rank in the search engines.

For search engine optimization, you need to include a lot of text on the website, and that text needs to include the keywords you want to rank for.

When I work with clients, I give them some terms to use in their text, but tell them not to feel obligated to use them. You’re writing for the customer, not for the search engine. However, if you have about 250 words of text on a page, it’s more likely that you can include the search terms a few times without making it sound forced to your readers.

Your site can include press releases, blogs, articles, information about your products or services, and company info. And on pages that have a flash presentation or a large picture, you can always tuck a paragraph or two of text below it. Your designer may complain about how it ruins the look of the page, but Google doesn’t rank sites based on page design — not yet, at least.

While graphics-heavy sites may be nice to look at, they are not always good for search engine optimization. Remember, Google reads text, it doesn’t watch flash animations.

Simple and straightforward, though it takes some effort and is not always easy.

One of the biggest issues is how to fill up the first two pages of a Google search with websites that only have good things to say about your company. That’s why your company should have multiple websites where you can control the content.

Sure, we can get your main website to rank at the top position for a search on the company name. But we also need several more separate websites that we can get to rank high. If they already exist, rather than having to create them from scratch, so much the better.

Here are some ideas of other websites you can develop, and which don’t take a lot of effort to build and maintain:

1) Charitable giving. A site devoted to the charities your company supports.

2) Photos. A site with pictures from corporate events, picnics, conferences, or other company activities. But no pictures of drunken Christmas partygoers, please.

3) A blog. While it’s good to have a blog on your main site to keep the content fresh and up to date, you can also have a separate blog about some other aspect of your company’s activities, or about its products or services.

4) Recruiting. If your company hires door-to-door salespeople, or if one of your main efforts involves recruiting people to join your organization, you would probably want this separate from the website that customers see. It can be off-putting to a customer to read about a company’s aggressive approach to sales, or to see what kind of compensation is offered to its sales force.

5) Testimonials. Of course you’ll have customer testimonials on your main site, but there’s no reason you can’t create another site devoted to customer stories.

Look at each category currently on your main corporate website and see if it would work as a separate site. You want a good handful of websites that can rank high for a search on your company name, and which you can keep filled with positive content.

With enough websites associated with your company, you can own the first page of a Google search, which is what it takes to maintain a positive online reputation.

I doubt that any students are reading this blog, but if you know of any you might want to pass this article on to them so I can talk to them directly (and if you’re their parent, they probably won’t listen to you anyway).

Do college students need to worry about their online reputation? Well, not all employers will perform a Google search when hiring, but enough do nowadays to make it a concern of anyone looking for a job. And since you’ll soon be starting on a professional career, it would be wise to consider the image you present online.

I’m not talking about posting embarrassing pictures of yourself on Facebook, since those shouldn’t show up on a Google search (unless Facebook once again changes its privacy settings). YouTube videos are another matter, and if you’ve posted something that shows you in a less-than-professional light, you may want to consider taking it down.

Now, what will a prospective employer find when they do a search on your name? Is there anything they would see that says “Here’s a person worthy of hiring”? If not, it’s time to start building an online image so that the first page of a Google search is full of websites that paint a positive picture of you, both as a person and a potential employee.

Here are some ideas to consider:

1) Online Forums

Post to online forums in your field. By the time you reach your senior year you should be knowledgeable enough to participate in discussions about your field of study, even if it’s merely to ask intelligent questions. And keep it courteous — no personal attacks or complaining. Show yourself to be a thoughtful, informed participant.

And don’t use a clever pseudonym like “webhacker347”. Use your name — the one someone will enter in a search engine. You’re in the professional world now, so no more hiding behind an online handle.

2) Published Papers

If you’ve published a paper with your professors, find where it is online and start creating links to that page. Put a link to the paper on your Facebook page, and get as many people as you know to do likewise.

This will help boost it in the rankings, as long as the anchor text for the links includes your name. That is, the link someone clicks on to go to the website should be your name and the title of the paper, not the name of the website. This way, Google will know that the page should rank higher under a search for your name.

3) Blogs

Create a professional blog about your field of interest. This would be separate from the blog you now have about college life, partying, your family and friends, weird things you like, or anything else you’ve been sharing with the world. It could be a simple as observations about what’s going on in the industry, or what you’ve learned about the history of your field.

It doesn’t matter if you’re an electrical engineer or a classical literature major, you can find something to write about. One idea is to sign up for Google Alerts to get daily or weekly news articles about some aspect of your field that interests you. Read the articles, then simply write a synopsis or your own observations about what’s happening. That shows an employer you’re keeping up to date on the latest developments in the industry.

Again, your name needs to be associated with the blog so that it shows up near the top of a search for your name.

4) Your Own Website

If you don’t own the domain name www.YourName.com, it may be too late, since someone else with the same name as yours may have already taken it. But go register something as close as you can, perhaps including your middle initial or full name. And go for the .com version, rather than .info or .name.

You may already have a website through the university, where the URL is something like www.univ.edu/student/personal/pages/your-name.html. It’s time to get your own site where you own the domain name and can choose where you want it hosted.

What do you put on your site? Whatever you want a prospective employer to see. A brief bio, your interests, your resume, a link to your blog and other online info about you. And think of this as a site you’ll be continually updating over the years. Someday you’ll be looking for another job, and your next employer will do a search on you. Let them find a website that makes a good impression on them.

5) LinkedIn

By the time you graduate, you should have a LinkedIn account. Unlike Facebook, LinkedIn pages show up on Google searches. This is where professionals post information and make contact with others in their field, so keep this info up to date.

I know there are thousands of ways to participate in the online world and get your name out there. Trouble is, you don’t always have control over how your name is associated with these sites or how well they rank on a search for your name. The ideas above are the most straightforward ways to build a positive online reputation, and which give you at least some control over the content and search engine ranking.

The advantage of doing all this is that as these sites start to rank higher, they will push anything else about you off of the first page or two of a Google search. That makes it less likely that a prospective employer will see those embarrassing party videos of you that someone posted, and which you’d like to bury.

You don’t have to do this all at once. Just do a little bit each week or each month and keep checking the search engine results to see how your pages are ranking. Before you know it, you’ll have established a presence online that shows you to be a person someone would want to hire.

But I’ve found that some companies are afraid to talk to their customers. Once these companies start to get a bad reputation online — that is, negative reviews and complaints — they just assume everyone hates them, including their customers.

They’re afraid of hearing more bad news, so they don’t even bother asking for feedback from customers who may well be satisfied with everything the company does. That’s a shame.

After all, if you’re afraid of what your customers will say, why are you in business?

Just because a few people complain — or just because someone with a chip on his shoulder posts a rant about your company — it doesn’t mean everyone feels the same way. In fact, the critics tend to be in the minority, and generally only people with a  complaint will take the effort to post something about you. Your satisfied customers have no reason to post a review.

Don’t let a few bad reviews keep you from asking for feedback. Make it a habit to keep in touch with your customers and ask them for comments. In the first place, this is how you keep improving your products and services. In the second place, this is an excellent way to elicit positive reviews that you can use in your marketing.

You can use the positive comments as content in the websites that you’re trying to rank high in the search engines, assuming you get permission from the customers who wrote them.

You can even create a website dedicated to positive testimonials from your happy customers. Imagine the impact that will have on anyone doing a search on you when that pops up on the first page of the results. That’s a great way to boost your online reputation — and it will encourage you to ask even more customers for their feedback.

If you own a lot of properties, you can collect more rent and get ahead. If the other players have more properties than you, you suffer every time you go around the board, because the rent you pay out is more than the amount you collect.

An ideal situation is where you own nearly an entire side of the board, because it’s less likely that anyone will skip over your properties by a lucky throw of the dice.

Now think about when someone searches for your company name in Google. A page of search results pops up. The question is, who owns this “real estate”?

If there are too many websites with negative reviews on this page, they can discourage people from buying from you. That’s potential revenue you’re not getting, which in Monopoly terms is like rent going to someone else.

Your goal is to own all the top ten spots on a Google search. The only sites that show up here should be either your company’s websites or sites that have good things to say about you. That’s the “monopoly” you want to have, because now no matter which website a prospect clicks on they’ll have a positive impression of your company.

Fortunately, there’s no law against having this particular type of monopoly!

Who is your competition for this space? More often than not it’s the review sites that post customer complaints and consumer warnings, or bloggers posting criticisms about one thing or another. These tend to rank high in the search engines, so elbowing them off the first page is not always easy.

However, with persistence and a sound strategy there’s a good chance you can eventually own the first page of a search. No guarantees of course. But the more properties (i.e., websites) you have in this space, the better for your company’s online reputation, and the more likely you are to prosper and win the game.

In previous blog posts I’ve offered some ideas on how to create new content. In this post, I’m going to give you one of the brain-dead easiest and quickest ways to add new content — every day, if you choose.

First, it’s not always easy to come up with something to write about — though in my post “Article Ideas for Your Website” I give you some ways to generate ideas.

Here’s a solution. Find news articles related to your industry and post excerpts from them on your site, with links to the full articles. That takes very little effort on your part, it gives your website visitors some added value by informing them of something that interests them, and it gives you a constant stream of fresh content.

How do you find these articles? Let Google do it for you.

Sign up for Google Alerts (www.google.com/alerts), enter the topic you want to monitor, then select “News” under the Type option along with how often you want to receive updates. Google will email you the latest relevant results based on your choice of topic.

Now what? Create a webpage called “Breaking News” or “Industry Updates” or something similar. When Google sends you the results of your query — once a day or once a week — sift through the articles to find a few that are appropriate for your website. Then either write a brief synopsis of the article (a few sentences should do it), or take a brief excerpt, such as the first paragraph of the article and place that on your webpage along with the link to the full article.

Of course, you shouldn’t put the full article on your site unless you have permission from the publisher.

If you’re concerned that placing a link to an article will encourage people to click away from your website, you can have the article page open in a new browser window. Just let your webmaster know that is what you want to happen with these links.

Also, it doesn’t hurt if the synopsis your write or the excerpt from the article contains a relevant keyword or two that you’re trying to rank for. After all, that’s why you’re adding content in the first place.

Try it out. I think you’ll agree this is one of the easiest ways to add new content to your site and help with your SEO efforts.

But there’s a catch …

On all those other websites, each link will have some kind of label. That is, there will be some text that is clickable and which links to your site. This is called “anchor text”, and what it says is crucial to successful SEO.

The trick is making sure the anchor text includes your keyword phrase, and not something vague like “click here.” You want the link to tell readers and the search engines what your site is about.

Let’s look at an example.

Say you sell bronze plaques that are used for signs and awards. If I were building links for your company, I would have those links say “bronze plaques,” “bronze signs,” “award plaques,” “engraved plaques,” or something similar. It would depend on exactly what search phrase we’re trying to rank for. And we may use different terms to link to different pages on your website.

What about your company name? Well, consider that you’re typically trying to rank for a phrase people will search on that has to do with what you sell. Typically, this is not your company name.

Case in point: One client of mine that offers home automation was using their company name as the anchor text in their back links. It was not surprising that they weren’t ranking well for the search term “home automation,” even though that phrase appeared all over their website.

When we changed the text in the back links from the company name to “home automation” they quickly started to rank for that — simply because Google saw that a lot of other websites were acknowledging that the website was indeed about home automation.

The lesson is that the links back to your website should contain relevant search phrases — anchor text in these links should clearly indicate what your site is about, both to users and to the search engines. Taking care of this one little detail can make a world of difference in search engine optimization.