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Andy Beal talks about Google Reputation Management (6:37) Dr. Ralph F. Wilson , Web Marketing Today - Dec 15, 2009

When someone tries to trash your company on the Internet, there are some things you can do about it, that is, replace negative webpages about your brand, your company name, or your personal name with webpages and profiles that outrank them and push them off the first page of search engine results.

The best time to create positive content is before abuse occurs. Be proactive, do it now. Focus on the quality of content that is relevant to your brand. Acquire a domain, put up a website (if you haven't already), and link to it from official domains. One sources is a blog on WordPress or other highly ranked blogging site, with the URL http://yourname.wordpress.com.

Google limits you to two webpages from your domain on search results for any given keyword search. Also consider webpages on other websites and social media profiles. You can create a new domain, such as ILoveAndyBeal.com and proactively purchase negative domains with your name in them. The domain name or profile names you use should include your name in them to rank well, as well as in the title tag.

Write about yourself in the third person, recommends Beal. Then get people to link to those pages or websites. Since your company owns the "super brand" probably ranked #1 for its own name, a link to your other domains, profiles, and pages passes trust (and PageRank) to these other sites, helping them rank high, as well.

Google recently wrote a post encouraging reputation management techniques, since they don't remove webpages from their index that are objectionable to a particular person or company.

Andy Beal is the president and CEO of TrackUr.com, a reputation monitoring service, and the publisher of Marketing Pilgrim, an Internet marketing news service. Other projects can be found at AndyBeal.com.

This interview was taped at the Search Engine Strategies Conference in Chicago on December 8, 2009.