203Getting Proactive: The Best Defense Is a Good Offense
? Other User-Created Content Sites. Sites like Flickr, Webshots, and
YouTube allow users to create and share photos and videos.
These sites also allow users to comment on content, to create
short profiles, and to socialize with each other. You can use these
sites to your advantage by uploading relevant and positive con-
tent (photos or videos) and prominently including your name in
the subject or description. Take care to not be overly aggressive
or self-promotional, but use the sites to your advantage.
? Professional Directories. Many professions offer free online direc-
tories of members or similar sites for professional networking. For
example, professors and other academics can use the free “Social
Science Research Network” (SSRN) to create short profiles and
to share working papers. These sites are often ranked very highly
in search engine results because they contain a large amount of
relevant content and are very heavily linked. If there is a directory
appropriate and relevant to your profession, use it.
Get Others to Help
One way to substantially boost your efforts is to get somebody else
to help. Other people often have access to different websites and a
different perspective.
If you have already been a victim of online reputation damage
(accidentally or maliciously), reach out to friends and co-workers to
explain the problem. It is likely that you know sombody who keeps
an active blog or other website and will be able to assist you by link-
ing to positive and neutral content about you. By linking to that pos-
itive and neutral content, that person will make it appear stronger
and more “popular” and thus more likely to displace any negative con-
tent in your online résumé.
Even if you have not been a victim of online reputation damage
yet, you can still reach out to others and preemptively improve your
Google insurance. There are thousands of local and microbloggers
who write about the happenings in local neighborhoods, small pro-
fessions, and other very narrow topics. If you reach out with a rele-
vant story or comment, you may be able to get yourself quoted by the
author of one of these blogs. Any article with your quotes in it be-
comes relevant positive or neutral content that you can then use to
fill out your online résumé.
If you are a professional or a small business owner, this might be
a good chance to increase your PR exposure. Try to get mentioned by
name and become a go-to source for reporters who write about your
area or industry. Practice providing useful quips and interesting story
leads; these can make you a resource for reporters.
Bolster Existing Positive or Neutral Content
When false or malicious information starts to spread online, it often
shoots to the top of a Google search. From there, its popularity be-
comes self-sustaining because many people see it and link to it. But
it is possible to defuse this danger in advance: If there are a number
of well-established and popular positive or neutral sites at the top of
a Google search, then the new false information is less likely to make
it all the way to the top. By strengthening existing positive and neutral
content, you can help make sure that false information fizzles out
before it can harm you. This is one of the most powerful forms of
Google insurance.
You can boost existing content by linking to it and encouraging
others to link to it. Don’t get out of control—Google’s algorithm can
detect attempts to force content by overly aggressive linking—but
place legitimate and relevant links to existing content in your various
blogs and profiles.
There also may be plenty of existing content about you online
that is not very visible: Often, this includes old news articles that
mention you—from business news to a bake sale to a marathon to a
church bulletin. You can bolster the strength of this content and
make it part of your online defense. When you conducted your on-
line reputation audit, you may have discovered a number of hidden
gems: websites that mention your name positively but that do not
Wild West 2.0204
currently appear on the first page of Google results. By linking to
some of this content, you can help elevate it and strengthen it as a
form of defense.
Use Common Names to Your Advantage
If you have a relatively uncommon name, like one of the authors,
you will have a chance to shape the totality of Google results to fit
the image you want to create. But, having a relatively rare name also
means that negative content about you will be more visible, and it
may be harder to protect your privacy. If you have a very common
name (or share a name with a celebrity), as does the other author,
then you will have less control over the first few results for your
name, but you will also be more protected from negative content
because negative content about you will often be hidden by content
about other people. For example, if you are named “Mike Jordan”
but you are not the former basketball player with a similar name
(also known as “his airness”), the odds are good that it will be dif-
ficult to find any negative information about you in a Google
search.
If you do share a name with someone famous (or just with a lot
of other people), you can protect your privacy by carefully and deli-
cately bolstering existing content about the other people. Any false or
negative information about you will get lost in the shuffle, without
you having to disclose any information about yourself in the process.
Privacy-through-obscurity is an effective strategy in a world with so
many people who share the same small number of names.
Calling In the Professionals
It is often difficult and time consuming to create properly balanced
and well-linked content online. Some content can be created without
any technical knowledge, but other content takes an understanding
of at least HTML and possibly other technologies.
Thus, for many people, it makes sense to call in the profession-
Getting Proactive: The Best Defense Is a Good Offense 20 5
206 Wild West 2.0
als when building positive and neutral content in order to create
Google insurance. Professionals have built thousands of websites and
know exactly how to optimize them to rank the highest in Google
and other search engines. They often know the right tone to strike
and the right balance of links to create. And professionals often have
an arsenal of deals with specialized websites that allow rapid im-
provement in search results.
Just as with many other specialized tasks (ranging from oil changes
for city dwellers to haircuts everywhere), sometimes it makes sense to
call in a professional who does the job every day. The authors, of
course, recommend the MyEdge service by ReputationDefender, but
please perform your own research and check the special offers cur-
rently available to readers at http://wildwest2.com/specialoffer/.
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