8 steps to clean up your online reputation

Negative reviews, untrue comments, and trolls are pushing their way to the top of search rankings. Here’s how to clean up what’s being said about you online.

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One day, he Googled himself to discover an adult movie called “The Fluffer” had been released and the star character’s name was none other than, you guessed it, Sean McGinnis.

An SEO expert and Web strategist, he set about to take back the rights to his name on Google. As you can imagine, it wasn’t easy.

Negative reviews, untrue comments, and trolls are pushing their way to the top of search rankings so, when someone Googles you, they find all of these negative things said about you online that might be 100 percent false.

Cleaning up your online reputation is now a very real thing—and just one person, or one movie, can ruin for you fairly quickly.

The proper process goes a little like this.

Conduct an online audit

Likely you already know what’s there, but it doesn’t hurt to do a Google search, see what is being said, and where it lands in search results (second listing, first page or third listing, second page).

Do this both logged into your Google account and logged out (or you can open an incognito window in your browser without having to actually log out; do this in Chrome by going to “file” and then click on “new incognito window”).

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