You’ve worked hard to build your business.  You’ve done everything ethically and legally, you’ve made enormous efforts to provide your customers with good service, and you poured your heart and your money into building your company.  Now it is all being threatened by some hostile comments on the internet.

As a business owner, you are particularly vulnerable to cyberbashing.  It could be a disgruntled employee, a conniving competitor, or a genuinely distressed customer that started the negative onslaught against you.  Now you have to figure out how to do damage control.

Where There’s Smoke, There’s Fire

If you catch even a hint of negative info about your business turning up online, be on the lookout for more to come.  The first comment may be only a small spark.  It could even burn itself out before any damage is done.  Uncontrolled, however, it may begin to grow and spread, blistering your good name as it ignites a firestorm.

One tried and true method for putting out the flames is the use of SEO techniques.  You may be familiar with search engine optimization from your marketing efforts.  The same theory applies to online reputation management.  The goal is to bury the smoldering negative info deep in the search engine rankings beneath higher ranking affirmative data.

Strategic Use of SEO is Smart Reputation Management

There are a number of ways to use SEO strategies to heal wounds to your online reputation.  You can write guest posts at blogs focused on your industry, learn link-building techniques, and post articles at popular sites like Squidoo, Hub Pages, and other online publishing spots.

If you don’t have one yet, you’ll definitely want your own website.  In fact, it is a smart move to have more than one.  For instance, you can start a website named mybusiness.com, and one called mybusiness.net, and so on.  Use these sites to post helpful articles, testimonials from satisfied customers, and other upbeat information.

Learning SEO techniques does take time and effort.  Some people build entire careers on perfecting SEO skills, so it isn’t something you master overnight.  You can learn the basics with a little research, however.  If you don’t have time to do these tasks yourself, consider using the help of a reputable online reputation management provider.  It’s worth the effort.