A Business's online reputation is vital to doing business on the web. It is much easier in the online world for a dissatisfied customer or a disgruntled former employee to spread negative information about a company than it is in the traditional brick and mortal business setting. Once a negative review or blog entry about a company is posted on the web it can spread like wildfire. It becomes even more problematic if these negative postings start appearing on the first page of the Google Search results for your company's name. It is almost impossible to get these negative search results removed. But negative reviews of a company that appear in search results can be dealt with and your online reputation can be managed and even cultivated. The key is to create your own positive content (or find existing positive content already available on the web) and boost the rankings for that content. The idea is to leapfrog the negative search results with positive search results.

One of the most helpful tools for doing this is to maintain a blog for your company separate of your corporate web site. Here is an example: http://acremortgageblog.com. The great think about blogs is search engine love them. Just google the name of your favorite television show and see how many of the search results are for blog postings. And they tend to rank well even if you don't update them frequently. Just a make an occasion post about your business or the industry you are in, create links to other positive content about your company that you wish to boost the search rankings for, and before you know it you should start to see the sites you linked to climb in the search results for your company's name. Another great idea is to create a site or blog specifically for the charitable endeavors your business participates in. Post a blurb or photo about these charity events and you have some powerful positive content that can be used to squeeze out the negative from the search listings.