If you make or edit online content, you are are a content creator. As a content creator, you’ll need to strike that balance between SEO (search engine optimization) and a positive user experience. To make sure everyone is on the same page, here is a list of the different elements that combine to create an engaging and well optimized piece of content.

One of the biggest mistakes people make when performing online reputation management is to build a bunch of different web profiles and fill them with sloppy content. Worse, all these properties often can't be effectively maintained over time, and so lose relevance. The best way to manage reputation is to understand prospective customers, similar companies, and what search engines are looking for.

One of the first steps is to perform a form of competitive research called the search result audit. Here's why. 

Why do some web pages show up "above" the first search result? This is called a Featured Snippet, or "position zero" in the SEO field. It's important because as voice search becomes more and more common, Google uses the featured snippet or "position zero" result for its "one true answers" response to voice searches. For instance, we searched "featured snippet" in Google and here's what happened:

What's the difference between branded and non-branded content? Branded content is clearly about you or your company. Non-branded content is not necessarily about you or your company at all, but it contains references to either.

Both types of content include your branded search phrase and assist in your online reputation strategy, but are structured differently. Both types of content require freshness updates.

If you've ever wanted to learn search engine optimization (SEO) but don't know where to start - here is a list of the best resources we've found to learn SEO. Most of the steps below are free, some cost money, most just cost a lot of time. You'll also need a website to practice on and a good degree of patience.

ORM, PR, and SEO -- what are all of these acronyms for? Let's break them down, and then delve deeper into how they all fit together.

1. ORM: (Online reputation management) is the repair and maintenance of a person, company, or other entity's online image.
2. PR: (Public relations) is the how organizations, businesses and people communicate with the public and media.
3. SEO: (Search Engine Optimization) is the effort made by online content creators (of words, images, videos, or other media) to help a website rank higher in search engine results.

PR, SEO and ORM are all specialized disciplines of online marketing.

There was a time when you couldn't get a chicken soup recipe while sitting on the toilet. Strange but true! It used to be that you asked your mom, or your friends, a book, or your local librarian for information. Today, instead of picking up the phone, everyone from bearded urban millennials to grandmas and dairy farmers turn to one place above all others: the Internet. How do people search? The three search types "do", "go", and "know" and how people use them are explained in this article. 

So you want to contribute to a blog? Awesome! Enjoy this growing  list of sites that we're pretty sure accept guest blogger articles. The sites in the list below most likely accept third-party posts or in some way help bloggers by providing things like syndication. We haven't tested every one of these for writing opportunities, but we have tested to see if they are live. We update and grow the list on a 'fairly' regular basis. Summaries are mainly those of the websites themselves. 

Today there are least 18 different ways for a business, or person, to be seen in search results - and that doesn’t even count social channels. Different types of search results include Adwords at the top or bottom of the page, the Knowledge Panel in the upper right, images, reviews, news, shopping, videos and of course normal blue link search results.

Negative content can damage a company or person worse than the author often realizes. Sometimes it can be taken down, but most times it must be pushed down or suppressed. An online reputation suppression strategy works to move newly created and existing positive content higher up in search engine results in order to move down or 'suppress' negative search results.

The further down you can push negative content, the less likely a reader is to see it. In fact, most people don't look further than the first page of Google search results anyway.

We have created a list of proven techniques to help keep your negative content where it belongs: several pages deep in Google search results. 

Sections

• Choosing the right strategy for negative content
• The case for removal
• Can search results be manipulated?
• What if bad content is really strong?