<p>Your online reputation matters and there are many things that will affect it. Everything you say will affect your reputation and could make you look bad. If you have a bad online reputation, you need to take some steps to make some changes. It can take time but you need to do it if you want to gain the profit that you have been dreaming about. Here are just some of the reasons to have a good online reputation.</p>
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<li><strong>Customers Start Their Search Online: </strong>The majority of people will start their search for a product or service online. If you have excellent SEO, you will often be the first company that appears. But the search doesn’t stop there. The customers want to make sure that you are reliable and trustworthy and will start looking for other information about you. You want to make sure that information is good so that people click on your website and buy from or through you.</li>
<li><strong>Customers Want to Know What Others Say:</strong> No matter how great your products are, customers will want to know what previous customers have said. They will search for reviews and will believe other customers over the company on more occasions. You need to make sure that the reviews are good. If there is a problem, you will want to show that you have done everything in your power to turn it around. One negative review out of 99 positives probably won’t affect you too much but 99 negatives and one positive will have customers clicking away from you.</li>
<li><strong>Investors Will Want to Know How You’re Perceived:</strong> This isn’t just about customers! If you’re looking for investors, they will take to the internet to determine if you’re a viable option. They will want to know how other customers view you and whether you stick to your promises. They will want to know about any lawsuits or how reporters view your company. A bad reputation is likely to lead to investors turning you down and opting for someone else – no matter how great your pitch is.</li>
<li><strong>You Will Help Your Company Grow:</strong> You may think that as a small company, having a negative reputation isn’t going to matter – you may think that having no reputation is even better. Why would any blog about you anyway? The truth is that your reputation will help your company grow. You will no longer struggle to gain one or two customers a month and have an influx so large that you need to hire more staff and expand your business further. Isn’t that worth the extra effort to maintain and manage a good online reputation?</li>
<li><strong>Reviews Help You Appear Higher in Search Results:</strong> Having reviews about your website is a good thing – it will help you appear higher in search results. The more reviews you have over everyone else in your area, the higher you will appear. Well, that would be a great thing as long as your reviews were positive. Having multiple negative reviews being the first things people see is not the best! People will look for another company and may trust someone with no reviews over someone with bad reviews. You want to be at the top of search engines but for all the right reasons!</li>
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Take some time to manage your online reputation and turn bad into good. It may seem like nothing right now but you will soon find that it directly affects your business. It will be harder to gain customers and investors, whereas a good reputation will help your business expand exponentially.<br />
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<span style="text-decoration: underline;">Author bio:</span><br />
<span style="text-decoration: underline;"> </span><br />
This guest post was written by <em>Idania</em>. She has worked for years to keep her online reputation perfect. When it started to dipped, she invested in <strong>online reputation repair</strong> and her business started booming again.</p>