LECHTANSKI.NET

So, I admit it. I Google myself on a regular basis. It started out of curiosity; a demonstration of my self-absorbed nature and digital vanity. But now it’s just common sense. I want to know what other people are going to see when they type my name into Google, Yahoo or Ask.com (just kidding… no one really uses Ask.com).

Well, I can rest assured I am not the only one. I’ve recently been called upon to do a little online reputation management. Meaning, I’ve been asked to check the search results of a superior at work to see what we can do about presenting a more positive image. Strangely, the strategy and tactics for achieving this are rather straight forward and nothing new. I need to work a bit of SEO fashizzle, in combination with some public relations we should be doing anyway.

From the search engine angle, the strategy is to add more positive links, promote existing positive results and play down the negative ones. The goal is to drop any negative results below the top ten or further.

In general, Google calculates its search results with a mysteriously morphing algorithm that evaluates the popularity of a page (measured by backlinks) and develops a quasi-objective view of the value of the page.

Some pages are more difficult to downplay than others. For example, government web pages and sites like Wikipedia are going to rank highly, because they are ostensibly true, informational and of high value to the general public. The same goes for news web sites and weblogs. Spam and sales sites won’t rate so highly, since they are just selling stuff.

So the other factor to take into consideration is how popular a particular page may be. Government pages will usually not have many links, but to other government pages. News sites, however, may have tons of backlinks. But if you can create a few highly-backlinked pages or take advantage of other sites with good search engine performance, the odds are pretty good you can take over the top spots.

All of this is especially true if there are not many search results in the first place. If you’re lucky enough to have an odd name (Lechtanski, anyone?), you may have few results, and the most efficient way to take over even the highest of your results is to double the number of possible results. Create some more web content!

From a PR level, the strategy is this: write some press releases. Nothing huge is necessary. You are not trying to launch a company or a new technology. You just want some pieces to replace outdated stories.

Professional releases are easy: someone just got a promotion, celebrated an anniversary or something else of that not-so-exciting nature. These will work at dislodging old news, but they won’t take the next step of fomenting the positive image we all desire. So the next step is the personal press release. Add in some releases on the topics you wish people knew about you. Now is not the time to be bashful. Think about any associations, philanthropy or public events in which you participate.

Locate any news sites in your search results, especially the negative ones. Send out your releases and the new news will outweigh the old news. Soon, old news will go away. Well, not so much go away, as not show up on Google any more. The news site will still have it, but Google will only report the latest stories from that source.

A couple of notes:

• A sure-fire way to take over one of the top spots for your name is to start a weblog. You don’t have to be a novelist, or even a writer. You just have to say something. If you don’t want to write about your life, write about your interests. One post a week is plenty, and search engines will recognize it as the voice of the person. Therefore it is deemed important and accurate. Also, you get to take control of what you say and limit the comments of others. It’s important to be honest and try to avoid posts that will create too much controversy, because other weblogs that refute your assertions will also rank highly. To get started, proceed immediately to Blogger (it is part of Google, by the way).
• Be careful what you do with social networking sites. You are putting this information out there yourself, so everyone will take it seriously. For the first time in the hiring process, I thought about Googling some of the potential interviewees. And then there’s MySpace and Facebook. Was this out of line? Was I invading their privacy by checking the personal photos, crazy philosophies or resume discrepancies that they wouldn’t likely share at a job interview? I’m not sure. But I didn’t find anything that changed my mind about anyone. It just made me think about the content of my own Facebook page.
• Every time your name shows up in digital print, there is a pretty good chance it will show in your Google results. That’s kind of how the whole thing works. So, the Washington Post published an article on online reputation management a few months ago referring to this woman who hired a service to clean up here nasty, high-ranking Google results. In the story they reprint the very nasty phrases she was trying to cleanse from the Internet ether. Near as I can tell, that reprint now serves to reinforce the original postings of those phrases, giving those nasty results new life. It’s the front page of the frickin’ Washington Post.

Now’s the time to think about your online image. It may very well be your first impression. And besides, there might be a few people from High School checking up on you.