Reputation is important because you or your company want to have access to the best opportunities. A great reputation will open doors a bad one cannot gain entry to. Here are just a few of the benefits of a good reputation:

• More business opportunities
• A better selection of prospective employees
• Higher company value
• Lower marketing costs

People want to make the best choice, and they base their selection on the person or company that seems to be superior. Whether applying for a job or attracting business opportunities, a good reputation affects your bottom line.

Why does it take six months for a website to rank? We get asked this quite a bit. For the most part, it's because there is a lag time of between 10 and 20 weeks before listings start to improve in search results. The exception to the rule is viral content—if users signal content is of superior value, and they do so quickly, search listings can improve in hours. Unfortunately, not every piece of content is going to go viral. Spammy, low-quality SEO can have a quick effect, but it tends to rapidly off again and will more often than not make things worse.

Some PR agencies specialize in destruction rather than enhancement of reputation.

Some of these agencies work for governments or political parties, others are private contractors, all have a similar agenda: Lay false trails, generate fake news, and use social media to weaken or decimate rivals by manipulating public opinion for nefarious purpose.

It isn't just fringe groups, but the apparatus of large governmental institutions like the National Security Administration (NSA) and the UK's Joint Threats Intelligence Group. It's even said that the NSA has apparently used negative online reputation management to discredit some peoples search results as was revealed in the "Disruption: Operational Playbook".

An online reputation management (ORM) firm isn't a public relations firm. PR firms tend to be more relationship-based, whereas ORM firms tend to be more technical and content-oriented - the best online reputation agencies use PR firms as a go-between with publishers while they work their magic behind the scenes. ORM firms also tend to operate in stealth mode, often quietly supporting PR campaigns in the background.

While reading the new book by Cyrus Farivar entitled Habeas Data we began to think about what an honest privacy policy might look like. Then things quickly got out of hand. Enjoy.

Step by step directions on how to remove your data from data aggregators like Radaris, Spokeo, MyLife, PeopleFinders and Intelius. 

Content marketing is a marketing strategy focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a target audience. The key words here are ‘valuable’ and ‘relevant’. Each content piece should communicate your message in a way that adds value to your readers, answers their real questions, piques and expands their interests, and makes them trust you and your brand.

Sometime negative search results take the form of images. Most often negative images cannot be removed from the internet. When they can be removed it is usually from the blog post, mugshot site, or article on which they reside and they must be removed by the publisher. Google will remove some images from search results under certain circumstances, but it is rare. Here's what to do when an image cannot be removed from the source or from search results.

The genie is out of the bottle. In this day and age, everything is public and visible. A plethora of information floats around the internet and trying to control who posts what feels like boiling the ocean. To make it worse, it takes so much time to build a reputation and only one bad moment to tarnish it.

Reputation management strategy is part of brand building, and it's not just making sure your company has great reviews. This guide will help you navigate the world of reputation strategy in the online environment. Online reputation — that intangible asset, that electronic chimera — is hard to assess let alone fix. And when it comes right down to the exact techniques to repair a reputation, many CMOs, publicists, or executives are downright nonplussed.