LookupPage Blog | Professional Web Presence and Visibility

How to Increase Traffic to Your Site Using Social Bookmarks

If you have a blog or article that you'd like the world to know about, you have to do your best to market it online and get people talking about it. There are several ways that you can market your articles and blogs online to attract new people to your brand and improve your online reputation. One of the best ways to do this is by submitting your blog or articles that you write to social bookmarks sites.

Digg is one of the largest social bookmark sites online, covering a range of topics from news and sports to current events and technology. As a site with thousands of inbound and outbound link, it has an extremely high rank on Google and can help bring your site to the top of the list. To submit your page is extremely simple, all you have to do is register for a free digg account, submit your url and see you’ll see your website or article show up on one of the top pages.

The second part of digg, or other social bookmarking sites, is the ability for other people to be able to “like” or “digg” your submission. This means that if other people like your article or web page that your submission will quickly start ranking at the top of the social bookmarks page, getting you increased traffic, links and weight in Google.

In addition to digg, there are several smaller social bookmarking sites like Choowawa.com or niche related social bookmarking sites. You can easily find social bookmarking sites related to you or your brand by searching on Google. Most of them work the same way, with free registration and easy ways to submit your articles or web pages. This easy, online marketing trick can quickly get your article or website to the top of Google with little effort and increase your page rank with healthy links for your online reputation.

How to Use Facebook Privacy Settings to Improve Your Online Presence

While facebook privacy settings have certainly been at the top of the news lately, most of the buzz has been about sharing private information worldwide without facebook users consent. Of course this is very troubling, especially for people who use their facebook as a private platform to communicate with their friends and family. However, keeping your facebook private is becoming increasingly difficult, as the social network provides more and more ways for strangers to network online and it becomes increasingly socially acceptable to get to know someone virtually. That’s why it’s extremely important that you know not only what your facebook privacy settings are, but have a clear strategy for using them. 

Create Groups of facebook Friends

One of the most important things that you can do to manage your online reputation on facebook is to separate your different friends into groups. Have family members that you want to have access to pictures of your new house, kids and family vacations? Create a family group for your most intimate connections. Don’t want to remove your album from the last night of college? Share it just with your friends from school. Grouping your friends allows you to determine who sees what and where so that you don’t have to worry that all your different contacts will have the same view.

Preview Your Profile

Unless your facebook profile is set to a very private setting, it’s most likely that you’re name comes up when someone searches you either online or in facebook. Make sure you know what information is being shared with the public at all times. For some people, especially entrepreneurs, politicians and other public figures,  it’s important that your profile can be found on facebook -- it’s one of the best ways to let people know what your company is up to or what is the latest piece of work you’ve published. On the other hand, it’s important to know what content is being shared publicly so you don’t mix your private life with your public life online.

Previewing your profile can also be extremely helpful if you’re interested in how a specific person may view your facebook page. Luckily, facebook has built a special feature into facebook’s privacy settings that allows you to see how each individual views your page -- simply type in their name and you’ll be able to see their exact view and capabilities.

Limit User Capabilities

Part of your privacy settings, which is typically overlooked, is the ability to change how your friends can interact on your profile. For example, perhaps you want your profile to be very professional, so you limit your facebook friends from posting to your wall, but allow them to comment on your posts. Another option is to give specific people the ability to post to your wall, while restricting the ability of other people who may post spam or irrelevant posts / private information.

How to Connect Your Online Identities and Optimize Your Brand

Today, most people have several online identities online and in different social networks like LinkedIn, facebook, LookupPage and Twitter among others. However, many people rarely make the effort to effectively connect their online identities -- making their online identity appear incomplete and disconnected. Today, we’ll share with you some tips about how you can connect your online identities not only to improve your reputation, but also to help you build your network.

Blogs

Blogs are a great way to improve your reputation. Writing articles, or having a ghost writer, produce relevant content for search engines means that new people who are interested in the same areas and interests as you will be able to find you and your work easily online. If you consistently update your blog, two to three times a week, you’ll be able to maintain momentum and continue to draw new readers to your blog.

However, the power of blogs doesn’t stop there. Today, blogs severe as a extended business card where people can google your personal and company brand and find additional information about you online. In addition, a blog should be connected to your other online identities, for example facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, so that readers of your blogs have a casual way to get to know you a bit more intimately.

Social Networks

Social networks are a great place for you to connect with new people and improve your online reputation. While facebook used to be a social network for real friends to connect, today it’s become much more professional and even serves as a micro-blogging platform for many high profile personal brands.

For people who are a part of more than one social network, facebook allows you to add the urls of additional websites that you are a part of so that your facebook friends can connect with you on other social networks like LookupPage, LinkedIn, Flickr and others.  By connecting your online identities it makes it easier for people to find you and follow up with you online -- expanding your network and building your brand across the web.

Guarding Against Online Sabotage

With the growing importance of online reputation, it makes a great deal of sense that an entire industry would have developed around sabotaging the reputations of competitors. The tactics used ranged from the simple to the incredibly ornate, but because of the nature of the internet even the simplest attacks can be very difficult to protect against. One of the most common tactics, and the most potentially damaging, is that of impersonation.

Online Impersonation

The vast majority of blogs and services allow users to register under any name, without any verification that you are who you say you are. Of course, this makes sense – with the exception of systems such as that used by Amazon, which requires a credit card to confirm your identity, it is virtually impossible to know who someone is online. But it creates an enormous potential for unscrupulous individuals to easily pretend to be you, and do and say whatever they want online under your name.

The first step, if someone has impersonated you online, is to contact the authorities. In most jurisdictions impersonating someone online for negative reasons is against the law. In many jurisdictions there are specific laws protecting your identity on social media sites, blogs, and other specific online forums, and in others more general umbrella statutes against impersonation will protect you. Many areas have special cyber crimes divisions, which can hunt down your impersonator to bring them to justice.

You may also wish to try to track down the impersonator yourself, to inform them that what they are doing is illegal, and to give them the opportunity to reverse the damage themselves. If you contact a blog on which an impersonator has posted, for example, you may be able to explain the situation to them and receive the poster’s IP address, which can help you track them down.

You’ll also want to find out the extent of the damage. A number of services, such as NameChk.com, exist to help you quickly determine whether your name is registered on an enormous range of social media sites. If it is, and you haven’t signed up there, you may want to investigate and see if it is simply someone else with your same name, or if it is a competitor pretending to be you to undermine your online reputation.

Once you know the extent of the damage, and you’ve informed the authorities so they can pursue the impersonator, you can either start to approach websites about removing the negative information, or have an online reputation management company work for you and create positive information to bury the negative results.

The Value of Online Profiles

Online profiles are a powerful tool in managing one’s online reputation. Because many of the sites that allow users to create their own profiles are well established, with a great deal of weight with search engines, the short amount of time it takes to set up a personal profile can be an incredibly efficient way to get a listing on the first page of search engine results, assisting in managing one’s brand.

Amazon.com Profile

Amazon.com is one of the most trusted sites on the internet, from the perspective of search engines. It has literally hundreds of millions of links pouring in from across the web, updates constantly, and has been around since 1994. It’s hard to imagine a more search-engine lucrative site, and thankfully all of this power can be used to help manage one’s online reputation.

The site actually gives users a number of different ways to get their name on a page, making it ideal for online reputation management. The easiest way is to create a personal profile. Users can create a profile under their Real Name or under a Pen Name; in either case the user’s identity will be verified by using a credit card, helping to guard against identity theft.

To create a profile, one need only log in, and click the Your Profile button underneath the upper search bar. The profile features the real name prominently, as a page title, a header tag, and as many times as one wishes to list it in the content of the page. This, combined with Amazon’s search engine weight , makes it an ideal vehicle for optimization to grab a first page listing for reputation management. A link can also be attached to the profile, giving a strong inbound link to another site used for reputation management.

LookupPage Profile

LookupPage is another excellent site that can be used to build a front-page listing for reputation management. Unlike Amazon and many other older sites, LookupPage is actively designed to get listings on the first page of Google for their clients. This means that a LookupPage profile is optimized explicitly for this purpose, and has an extremely high probability of yielding a front page result.

A LookupPage profile features not only personal information, but also links to sites of the client’s choosing. The service also includes analytics so that users can see what searches led visitors to the profile page, how many arrived, and other important data to help analyze what people are looking for.

Finally, LookupPage offers a Pro level which includes a number of premium features. These include inclusion in a LookupPage directory, a direct messaging system, and a higher level of optimization.

Social Media Profiles

Virtually any modern social media site allows users to create profile pages of varying degrees of comprehensiveness and be used for online reputation management. Even at their most minimal, these pages still allow for multiple listings of a person’s name, and at more advanced levels they may allow extensive bios, embedded links, and more, all helping one to better manage their online reputation.

Manage Your Social Media Reputation

As you become more involved in managing your reputation via social media sites, you may find yourself overwhelmed by the sheer amount of time spent going from site to site every time you want to make an update. It is in your best interest to have the highest visibility you can by being present on as many sites as possible, but with each one adding another few minutes of update time, that might not seem viable. You may find yourself wondering how so many successful internet businesspeople are able to post updates to fifty or a hundred sites every few hours. The answer is simple: ping.fm.

Ping is a tool that allows you to send a single update to dozens of sites where you want to establish an online presence. This includes major sites like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Flickr, Blogger, WordPress, TypePad, and Delicious, as well as lesser-known presences like Koornk, Diigo, Ning, FriendFeed, Brightkite, Posterous, hi5, and Xanga. To use Ping, you simply make a free account, and go through and add each service you want to be updated through Ping. It takes less than a minute to add each site, and you’ll only need to do it once.

Once you have the sites added, you’ll have a dashboard that allows you to update your various profiles all at once. And this isn’t good only for status updates – you can add pictures, songs, and links as well. You can choose which sites you want updated, or can just update them all at once. Ping also allows you to make updates via virtually any mode of transport you can image, from your cell phone to email to various IM clients to Skype. With a robust application development community, Ping is always adding new features and plugins as well, all designed to make it easier for you to manage your online identity in whatever ways the new web demands.

The Google Buzz Backlash - How to Make Sure Your Backlash Isn't Larger Than Your Buzz

Last week when Google released its new social networking feature, Google Buzz, to compete with other popular social networking and micro-blogging services like Twitter and Facebook, the media giant set up their new social network to automatically enroll tens of millions of Gmail users. While having millions of new users instantly is a competitive advantage the only online giants like Google can enjoy, the company's unilateral actions have resulted in a large and vocal Google Buzz backlash.

As angry users have noted online, automatically opting-in people and intimately connecting them with their email contacts oversteps the social boundaries that many users have worked to create online. Today people have multiple identities online that they manage through distinct avenues--they know that they must carefully craft each of their online reputations depending on what social network or online community they are a part of. For example, many people use facebook to connect with their friends and LinkedIn for establish relationships with professional contacts. When Google Buzz stepped in and suddenly, without much of a pre-buzz, intimately connected users with their distant and disorganized email contacts, users responded by giving Google buzz a reputation management problem that they’ve been scrambling to correct ever since.

What’s to be Learned from Google’s Buzz Backlash?

As internet companies continue to provide powerful technology and communication solutions for businesses and individuals, they must keep a balance between meeting their users needs and their needs. It’s also very important, as Google’s users noted, to understand the social distinctions between different types of media--social bookmarks are clearly less intimate than social networks, and social networks far less intimate than email. Each type of media has different social norms that companies must recognize and attempt to blend slowly. Coercing millions upon millions of users to allow their private information to be used by a new technology that breaks the current online social norms is bound to result in a backlash bigger than your new products buzz.

How To Prevent Buzz Backlash

If you want to prevent buzz backlash or are looking to manage your own online crisis, LookupPage can be one of the best places to find highly effective online reputation management strategies, brand reputation tips and crisis management tools.

How To Manage Your Google CV

As nearly everyone knows by now, Google is one of the most powerful search engines and providers of online tools. When people are interested to know about you or your business, one of the first things they do is search Google. That’s right, your Google CV is the first impression people have of you, so it’s important to know how to manage your reputation in Google effectively. Here are a few tips to get you started:

Know What’s Crawled Before You Sign Up 

Every day dozens of websites ask visitors to register with their names, create a username, and establish identities in online communities. While it’s illegal to share your email with third parties, many websites and social networks have no problem sharing your name or username with Google and you can be sure that many of these websites will be some of the first results on your Google CV.

Before you sign up to a website, check to see if the website is crawled on Google. See what kind of content is showing up and then determine if you should register to the site and what information you can list there.

Keep Track of Where You’re Registered

As people register to more and more websites everyday, it can get challenging to keep track of all the separate accounts and identities that you or your business may have online. If you have a Google Account you can easily sign up for Google Docs and use a spreadsheet to keep track of all your usernames and passwords. This is a highly effective way to make sure that as you establish more online identities, that you’ll be able to update them with you or your businesses’ information easily and not leave any old information on your Google CV.

Register to Websites that Improve Your Google CV

Most people and businesses have an idea of the image they would like to portray online or an image that they’d like customers to associate with their brand. The best way to craft your Google CV is to register to high ranking websites that will improve your online image. Today there are thousands of niche social networks that rank high on Google and can improve your online identity. Some social networks, like LookupPage, rank especially high on Google and are built for helping users create a positive image online. 

Take a Pen Name

While in some social networks, like Facebook and LinkedIn, is it expected that you will use your real name, many websites give you the option to use a nick name or pen name. You should only register your real name to social networks and websites that improve your online image and brand. For other websites, take a pen name or nickname so that you don’t risk having the website connected to you or your company’s Goolge CV. 

Sign Up for Google Alerts

If you have an account with Google, you can register for Google Alerts and get an email every time Google indexes a new page with your name or your business. Setting up Google Alerts is easy, and helps you to know immediately as your reputation is being built online. One tip: Make sure that you place quotations around your name when you are searching or setting up your Google Alert, this way you’ll get very targeted results.

Online Reputation Management - What Can You Do With a Negative Review?

In mid December Google was ready to pay $500 Million for the user review website Yelp.com. The site has been around since 2004 and it is based on user-generated content in the form of online reviews of different services such as restaurants and mechanics located across the US and the United Kingdom. Yelp is also a social network; it allows users to interact with one another.

Yelp along with TripAdvisor.com and Ripoff Report are just three (out of many) examples of sites that have become extremely successful because of how valuable dynamic content (i.e. the user reviews) have become. The fact that both services allow readers to follow and rank previous reviews of every commentator adds an additional element of credibility to each review. Search engines have noted this credibility as well, reviews of a hotel that were submitted to TripAdvisor often rank highly within the Google Resume of that hotel. 

Option 1 – Respond to the Negative Review

Now that it is easier to establish that specific users within these social network / review sites are somewhat “experienced” critics and do not have a specific vendetta against a specific establishment  we can discuss  the consequences of replying to a bad review online.

There is certainly an upside to monitoring what is being said about you online. Feedback of this kind should be taken into consideration, as customers do not always express their dissatisfaction with a product or a service immediately. The above mentioned review websites allow the business that is being reviewed to respond.  A general rule that we believe to be true is that most customers who feel that they have been wronged, are primarily looking to vent their anger.  

The fact that a business takes the time to respond to a negative review online is something that is looked upon favorably in the eyes of potential customers. Simply showing concern that a customer was dissatisfied is already a step in the right direction.

Reaching out to such a customer and apologizing could often mean the difference between a negative review online and a neural one. It is also important to remember that the same customer could always post a follow up comment to his or her review and state that he or she tried the service again and were satisfied.

Option 2 – Try to push down the ranking of the negative review

Search engines are in constant competition with each other for presenting the most up to date and relevant content on the web for every query.  Creating additional positive results for a business name could essentially burry a negative review of that business. Google has a history of preferring diverse and unique content.This means that creating a Youtube video, a profile on a social network and uploading a PowerPoint presentation to Slidshare all for a single business name, may reach better web visibility than creating three new results of the same kind. 

While it is imperative for a business to try to keep clients happy and be responsive to comments and reviews, unhappy customers or negative reviews are bound to emerge at some point. A mix of new and positive results along with positive reviews by clients who are happy with the service should be able to overcome negative results that may emerge.  

Building a Brand Using Free Social Media Tools

Traditional online email accounts are getting less traffic than in previous years. The reason for that is simple, people are emailing their friends directly from their social networks so they do not need to enter Gmail as often as they used to. Social networks are becoming stronger and are no longer used by a specific age group. 

Although there is an argument among different search engines on what is the most searched word of 2009, we feel that the most explosive and important word for 2009 is Twitter. Apparently, we are not the only ones who think this way. Only recently, Google unveiled its real time search option that will incorporate status updates from popular social networks among other real time results.

If you need any further proof on how seriously Google is taking twitter accounts create a fictitious account on twitter and conduct a Google search for that name 48 hours later. Odds are that this none - existing person will rank on the first page of Google thanks to that twitter account. Because of the fact that social media profiles usually receive indexation by Google and other search engines, creating a brand using free social media tools is certainly achievable.

Facebook

companies such as Coca Cola, Pizza Hut and U.S based restaurant Chain  T.G.I Friday’s have achieved considerable success by creating a Facebook Fan page. This can be achieved on a smaller scale by getting your friends and clients to become fans of your service. 

A solid Facebook fan page needs to be able to provide information about the business and possibly provide an added value to the fans of the brand. The Pizza Hut fan page is currently offering a 20% discount on all orders made with the Pizza Hut iPhone application as well as other coupons. 

Twitter

As written above, Twitter is currently enjoying the respect of major search engines. Although getting a large following on twitter takes time and effort, it is certainly achievable. Ranking well on Google for a twitter account is certainly easier if the account is active and tweets on a regular basis. The CEO of Zappos , an online shoe retailer  is using Twitter in order to engage and be reachable by Zappos customers. By being readily available, he is strengthening the brand of his company as being attentive to what the customer wants    

LookupPage.com - while it is not a social network, creating a LookupPage for a business or a professional can have tremendous return on investment (ROI). LookupPage enjoys excellent indexation by Google and creating a profile can help you establish additional positive results that often rank extremely well and contribute greatly to one’s Google Resume.  For example, you can check out Oxford Car Service which created a LookupPage for their business and their LookupPage is ranking extremely high on organic search. 

Celebrity Twitter of the Month – Lance Armstrong

 Seven time Tour De France winner Lance Armstrong is a unique athlete. Not only is he the only person to win the Tour De France more than five times, he is the only person to have won the tour seven consecutive times after recovering from advanced stage cancer. When Armstrong was 26 years old, he was diagnosed with testicular cancer that at that point had already spread to his lungs, abdomen and brain. He underwent several operations and opted for alternative form of Chemotherapy and that led to the remission of the cancer in his body.

By 1998 Armstrong was already deep into a training regiment that would spark his return to the Tour De France, The fact that Armstrong won seven tours in a row starting in 1999 and participated in yet another race in 2009 marks him as one of the greatest athletes of our time.

Lance Armstrong describes himself in the short Twitter Bio as “7-time Tour de France winner, full time cancer fighter “. Armstrong is tweeting on a regular basis about his daily life, travel, cycling and of course, the Lance Armstrong foundation, LiveStrong, a non profit organization which strives to inspire and empower those who have been affected by cancer. Armstrong has over 2.3 million followers on Twitter. He is using Twitter to engage his fans about topics that are important to him and to promote his organization via the micro blog.    

Lance Armstrong is an exceptional athlete that could get the attention of the world media in many ways. The Fact that he chose to have an ongoing relationship with his followers via Twitter is a complement to the technology and the recognition of how ground breaking it really is. Businesses and professionals are choosing to use Twitter as a part of their marketing effort because it is currently enjoying solid web visibility from search engines, meaning that a Twitter account could often rank highly within the Google CV of a professional or a business. Please Follow LookupPage on Twitter to learn more about online visibility social media optimization and online reputation management.