Transparency online is key, but it is not everything. It is just a small piece of the overall online reputation pie. This article lays the entire meal out pretty vividly.

I’ve attended a few webinars recently and they all emphasized, for employers, that managing your online reputation isn’t just about transparency, but branding. Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts are easy tools to use that not only reinforce your organization’s brand, but create a voice or personality. When done right, this can be an extremely valuable asset for recruiting and can make your brand more dimensional.

It is important to fully develop a brand, not just smooth over its rough edges. Online reputation management is about the former, not the latter.

Everyone always wants to do the online reputation management themselves, so here are some great tips for do it yourself web reputation management.

For many business professionals your online reputation is sometimes more important than your offline one and regardless of how you manage your reputation in real life, your online reputation is made up in large part by your digital presence. You therefore need to make sure you are investing time in making sure your reputation on the world wide web is a positive one.

Creating and maintaining a positive online reputation is about being vigilant. That means being proactive, instead of reactive. Protecting yourself against online defamation is, as the article describes, just the first step towards being secure in your online reputation.

Travel marketing is an ever expanding industry that has become increasingly competitive in recent years. Much of the travel marketing industry takes place online now as people look to websites to compare ticket prices for flights and car rental rates.

The world has gone digital: there is a host of resources on the web to fit just about any consumer need. While this digital shift has opened countless doors for consumers, it has resulted in a loss of control for marketers in many industries – especially travel & tourism. That is why those in travel marketing cannot hope to compete in this challenging marketplace without a comprehensive online reputation management strategy in place.

No longer do consumers research, plan and book travel offline. Instead, they turn not only to travel brand websites, but more increasingly to information provided by peers, such as consumer reviews, ratings, forums, conversations within social platforms and more. According to eMarketer, by 2012, 61% of Internet users will be researching travel online, while 51% will be booking travel online.

It’s easy to see why this article suggests google reputation management is so incredibly important to the industry. Travel companies need to be able to avoid online defamation and search engine reputation management is really the only way to do that.

Being able to attract the best prospective employees is a key part of being successful as a company–this article details how a negative internet reputation can harm a company’s ability to attract high quality employees.

Candidates are closely scrutinizing the online reputation of potential employers and changing their minds based on what they read online. In a Q3 2011 Corporate Executive Board survey of 4,000 people who were looking for jobs in the previous 12 months, 66% responded that they lost interest in a potential employer because of something they learned online. Applicants are frequenting company review sites and checking with people in and outside their social network to get a better sense of what it’s like to work at a particular company.

Companies should pay attention to their search engine reputation for a lot of reasons and this is but one small reason amongst a host of better ones, but it is worth considering. Google reputation management is necessary in some cases.

There are so many good reasons not to use spinning software. While it occasionally comes in handle to suppress online defamation by covering it with positive publicity, it really should not be used for general purposes.

The problem with article spinning software is that it often produces low quality content, even unreadable versions of an article. Instead of using article spinning software, you can simply re-write articles manually. You might be surprised that it takes the same amount of time to write a freshly created article than editing a spun one. Manual re-writing may take time not to mention skill and effort, but it’s all worth it.

Online defamation is a real problem and it requires a real solution. Spinning software has its use, but it should not be relied on too heavily.

There are many reasons to fear online anonymity. One of the best reasons is that anyone can post any statement about you, true or false, all over the Internet and people will believe it unless they know otherwise. This can be quite detrimental to your personal reputation.

Removing The Offending Material
This is why the services of a company that can quickly remove negative comments about your organization from the top pages of search engines must be employed as soon as possible. As already mentioned, high quality, informative SEO writing and digital content is the best way to remove comments that could damage your company’s reputation. You need an organization that can issue press releases, write fresh articles and blog posts, create social awareness and post videos onto sites like YouTube. An all-out SEO assault will help you quickly regain your favorable reputation.

Google reputation management can certainly fix the situation and save people lots of time, effort, and frustration.

This article is well worth reading for any hotelier or member of the hospitality industry who is having trouble with false reviews posted online. The fact is that a lawsuit is not likely to help you, but more likely to hurt you. The online world does not operate the same way as the rest of the press. First of all, the online review can be posted in hundreds of locations in just a few hours by completely anonymous people from outside the country. In situations like these, there is very little the legal system can do for you here in the United States. Even if it is done from here in the United States, though, and the case is a solid one–it is actually likely to spread the defamation around rather than shut it up.

Now, of course, others will say, “but what else could be done” in situations where a false and potentially very damaging review is posted. It seems here’s a situation where “more speech” should be the answer. The details laid out in the filing are very clear and quite convincing to me (again, not having heard the other side).

My main point would not even be the ethical issues involved, but the practical ones. Filing a lawsuit often catches the attention of the press and blogosphere–which means the defamation charges will be all over the place, legally, in a matter of days. Reputation Management must then be contacted to clean up the mess. While online reputation management is certainly effective, it isn’t usually something you want to have to deal with.

Wong is a dentist who felt that he was defamed online–but the judge disagreed, quite vehemently in fact. So much so that in addition to dismissing Wong’s case against Yelp (citing anti-SLAPP laws) he ruled that Wong was to pay over $80,000 in attorney’s fees to Yelp and the patient.

The Wong case made blog headlines back in November 2010, when a California appellate court dismissed Yelp.com from Wong’s lawsuit. That court ruled Yelp had protection from Dr. Wong’s lawsuit, because Yelp was publicizing information about mercury in dental amalgams–an issue of public interest.

This is going to become more common, not less, online review cites are extremely popular for a reason. Yelp is certainly easy to game for anyone who puts their mind to it, but most people don’t. For most people, it serves as an incredibly useful review for various businesses. Those people would otherwise be in the dark. Search engine reputation management has a big role to play in these issues too. Internet reputation management helps to correct some of these issues where Yelp and other sites are misused or gamed.

If you haven’t heard the story of Kiki Kannibal, I highly suggest you google the name and read about her now. The Rolling Stone profile is the best one–so read that. Essentially, though, this is the cautionary tale about a teen whose online persona has put her in real physical danger, not to mention damaging her mentally and emotionally. This article, though, does a good job of debunking the idea that online protections against defamation are non-existent.

That immunity applies only to the online publisher or ISP, however. According to attorney Michael Page of Durie Tangri, an expert in the CDA, people who are smeared online can still sue those who post the offending comment, image or video for defamation and, if state law allows it, intentional infliction of emotional distress. “The CDA won’t give the poster any defense, but it should give the website on which they’re posted pretty broad defenses,” Page said.

Reputation management services can help to nullify the effects of online defamation. What online reputation management does is to promote positive content online.

The developments in New York are something every online defamation nerd has been following. The top court in New York, for those who don’t know, is about to hear a case regarding online defamation. The issue is between a two realty companies in New York. Instead of giving a brief synopsis, I’ll let the Wall Street Journal do that.

The state’s top court is considering whether to reinstate a real estate broker’s defamation claim against a rival business over anonymous comments posted on its website that said the broker mistreated his agents, failed to pay bills, made racist and anti-Semitic remarks and committed adultery.

The situation is obviously one which is understandably frustrating for the plaintive. Federal law pretty much exempts the website and the business that runs it from being responsible, but it will still be interesting to see how New York’s highest court will handle this issue. The outcome of the case could, obviously, have major implications for the google reputation management industry. Those individuals who once used reputation management services might later decide to litigate the issue instead.