You’ve likely heard of these situations or had them happen yourself where unfavorable things (negative comments etc) are being blogged online and those entries start to rank well on search engines. When a “your brand sucks.com” web site or blog post starts to rank in the top ten on Google, it can be a very unsettling situation. People are empowered to publish content online now more than ever. More blogs are being created every second.

Blog search engine Technorati is currently tracking over 100 million blogs. What is a small blog owner or blog marketer to do when blogs or other publishing platforms start to post negative comments or information that affects your brand reputation in a negative way?

Within the fields of search engine marketing and public relations there is a discipline called online reputation management. Through a combination of optimizing content on and off site along with link building and online PR efforts, a brand, company or person can “own” Google’s top ten search results.

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