Repairing Your Online Reputation

Fallen pageant queen Liz says she’s been struggling to rebound from a scandal involving her topless modeling photos being posted on the gossip website, TheDirty.com. Michael Fertik, CEO and founder of Reputation.com, says there’s hope for repairing her damaged reputation, and offers these tips:

1) Have Your Own Website
Michael says it’s good that Liz has her own website, because she’s controlling her “Google real estate,” and there will be positive results when someone searches her name online.

2) Be Active Online
“You tweet a lot. You maintain your fashion and modeling profiles,” Michael tells Liz. This can help improve her image.

3) Pump Up the Positive (Sites)
Michael says Liz needs to build up other websites, like Linkedin.com, and heavily promote her Facebook fan page. He says the positive posts and websites will eventually push down the negative.

4) De-Index the Negative
Michael says one thing that would help Liz is if Nik, creator of TheDirty.com, de-indexed the page where Liz’s photos are posted on his site. “It stays on his website so that his commentators can continue to contribute and have their community,” he says, “But it’s no longer showing up in [Liz’s] search results.”