Building Your Reputation on the Internet

February 24, 2011 Destroy a life with your keyboard - Part 1" This is the background story behind the need for reputation management on the 'net, published by Dave Chappelle, of IT In Canada

For most people, their 'reputation' on the Internet doesn't matter to them, or does not affect their daily lives (or, at least, that they are aware of). However, for those who are more publicly exposed as a part of their daily life, or those looking to have their name be associated with positive things in a Google search, reputation on the 'net is important, to say the least.

Understanding the Basics of Your Reputation on the Internet

Basically, your reputation on the internet is all about how many things are linked, or attributed to you. Whether this reputation is good or bad is more or less simply a matter of more "good stuff" than "bad stuff" linking to your name.
So, picture two pages: One that says "John smith is a great guy" and the other that says "John Smith is not a great guy". If there are three other websites that link to the one calling John a great guy and only one linking to the one that says he is not, the first page will appear higher in the search results.

So How do I Take Advantage of This ? Getting Started

The first step, obviously, is creating content with your name associated to it. This means getting a website, a blog or a social media site that is accessible to the public.¹

So:

1. A domain name
2. A website

So what to put up ? Simple! Write about what you know. You can either write about your professional knowledge (This is a good choice if the reason for your reputation building is for your career) or your hobbies and talents.

Many make the mistake that no one is interested in what they're good at - This mindset could not be more wrong. People will search for ANYTHING on the 'net. Don't believe me ? There are 17,600 results for a Google search for How to sweep a room.

If you do not know basic HTML and how to write simple web pages (And believe me, HTML is really easy - You can literally learn the basics in under an hour), you can use your word processor, like Open Office or Microsoft Word to write your articles and then "save as" HTML. There are also many HTML editors classified as WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get), where it looks just like a word processor, but is specifically for makeing websites. You then upload³ them to your webserver for the public to find, read and benefit from.

As you continue to build your site, you will learn how to make it more readable and easier to navigate. One quick hint up-front, though: It's what appears on the first page that counts: You do not want to create a massive, scrolling document with hundreds of articles in one page. Ideally, your welcome page will briefly describe you, the overview of your site and a linked list of your articles.

How Do I Get the Rest of the World to See Me ? How Do I Get People to Link to Me ?

Most search engines will find your page automatically after a few days, using a process called spidering. Their automatic programs will crawl through your site, looking for keywords and content for display on relevant searches.
One method for getting other people to link to you is to find other websites with content that is similar to yours and ask them to link to you. You can also offer them your articles, so long as there is a link back to your site, crediting you as the author.
In fact, finding good, relevant content is always the number one priority for many websites, so finding people willing to link to you, or host your articles with a link to you as credit is a lot easier than you may think (It's a lot easier than trying to get your articles published in a traditional magazine, for example).
There is nothing wrong with asking friends and family to link to your site/articles in their own blogs and social media sites as well - After all, that counts as link back popularity and will help you establish yourself even faster.

Once your website is up and running, it then makes sense to run similar content on the free blogs and social media pages, but with excerpts, rather than your full articles, always linking back to your site for the full versions.

Running this type of site is not only rewarding in terms of increasing your visibility and reputation, but it can also help you in your job search or career advancement. Being able to put the fact that you have an established website with thousands of visitors on your resume is almost always a plus.

How Long Will it Take to See Results ?

This, of course, is one of the most frequently asked questions. The answer pretty much depends on how much your are willing to invest, time-wise, into this venture. As with any popular website, barring spending millions on a PR campaign, it will start slowly and, if your content is interesting and useful, snowball after that. Remember, even Facebook started off as a college experiment between a couple of friends.
From my own experiences, not only with my own sites, I have seen popularity grow as quickly as six months (CanadianISP.ca is my project and was actually taking paid advertising in the sixth month since inception) whereas some other sites can take a little longer, especially if they are focused more geographically (PennyPincherNewsPaper.com is another project of mine, but is more focused in the Ottawa Valley of Ontario, Canada, so it took about a year to really gain traction). Personally, as of this writing, I am running another project, MasterHostList.com that I am following these same principals. This is a for-profit project, which I expect to be able to make money by September of 2011 (It is August, 2010 as I write this) - Why a year, when CanadianISP did it in six months ? Because MasterHostList targets a global audience - There is a lot more competition for "eyeball time" than just a Canadian market.

This Looks Really Hard and Time Consuming...

This is the most frequent reason people don't do this: They think it's too hard or will consume their life.

The reality is, if you are already somewhat familiar with setting up websites, this process (domain registration, basic website setup) can all be done in an afternoon. If you are starting from scratch and have to teach yourself a few things (basic HTML, how to upload web pages), you can get it all set up with a few evenings of reading and experimenting.
After that, the "hardest" thing is creating the initial website. It doesn't have to be super-fancy (though it doesn't hurt if you have a friend who is able to whip up a nice, clean and aesthetically pleasing design). After that, you add articles as the mood strikes you, although a committment to yourself to two articles a week would be a good idea, if you are serious about getting recognized online.

Boot notes

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