It is important to manage your company’s online reputation, to see what is being said about your company and also to make sure your competitors aren’t doing anything shady with your brand name.  We can stress the importance of monitoring and managing your online reputation all day long but what are some actual things you can do to own branded search queries?

Branded Search Queries

If you’re not already monitoring your online reputation proactively, think long and hard why not…  If your not try an exercise for me.  Do a handful of branded searches in the search engines and spend some time looking into the results.  It is best to test different variations of your brand name to get an all encompassing report.  Test your domain name, abbreviations of your company name and misspellings.  What are your findings?  Any surprises come up when searching for your brand name?

In an ideal world your brand  would own the first page of branded queries in the SERPs and any/if at all negative coverage would be buried past the 3rd page of results.  So, how do you own the first page of results in the Search Engines?  Follow these 6  tips for owning branded results to get you started.

1. Claim your local listing
2. Start a blog – For WordPress blogs, make sure you download the All in One SEO Pack
3. Create a Facebook Fan Page
4. Create a company Twitter account
5. Add your company in LinkedIn
6. Add your site to relevant directories

All of the above examples will help your claim more real estate in the SERPs for your brand name in a timely manner.  If you have already done some of the above examples, when was the last time you updated them or added more content?

It’s best to start monitoring and owning  your online brand image now, before you have to.