How to optimize your online reputation and boost your authority

SEO focuses on your sites optimizations to appeal to Google but something that is just as important is how you optimize your online reputation and boost your authority.

Why is this?

Because now more than ever Google cares about who is publishing content, meaning that you should too since having a good reputation can seriously increase your visibility on the Search Engine Results Pages.

Have you heard about the latest Google algorithm update called E-A-T?

If you are a regular reader of the SEO+ Blog then no doubt you will already have read Hazel Jarrett’s great explanation on what E-A-T is, how it affects you and what you can do to live in SEO harmony with E-A-T.

If not then you can read the full article here Your essential guide to the Google E-A-T algorithm update

Hazel’s guide to E-A-T pretty much inspired me to write my guide to avoid Google penalties

The E-A-T, algorithm update originally affected Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) websites

Examples of such pages would include:

• Shopping or financial transaction pages
• Financial information pages
• Medical information pages
• Legal information pages
• News Pages – Public information pages

Your Money or Your Life websites are those that have the power to negatively affect user’s finances or lives if they contain the wrong advice or information.

So, in other words, the E-A-T  is all about ensuring that Google sends you to the correct information to cover your user intent.

For example, if you have a heart condition and you Google something like “early warning symptoms for a heart attack” Google wants to make damn sure that they send you to the most reputable authority that they can on the subject.

So the E-A-T algorithm update is more to do with you proving your authority and reputation in your given niche.

In this article, I will be explaining how you can optimize your reputation and boost your authority.

So the BIG question is how do you prove your authority and optimize your online reputation with Google?

Well a lot of the boxes to optimize for E-A-T should already be ticked with the optimization of your site

Before you even have to worry about this update you need to make sure that you have covered all the basic on-page and off-page SEO basics because there are basic optimizations that should be in place that go towards proving your authority and boosting your reputation the main one being “do you have all the important pages?”

The most important being an About Me Page.

You then need to have a Terms Of Service page, a Privacy Policy page, Contact Page etc.

These types of pages are really the foundation of any good site.

They are not the most interesting but Google looks for them.

They are also required so that you are compliant with GDPR (Global Data Protection Regulation)

Creating an About Me Page

To write a great about me page you need to know your audience.

Who are you trying to appeal to?

Who are your customers?

People need to know the real you so show yourself.

Tell them who you are, your values, what drives you.

Don’t just hit them with facts

Explain what qualifies you, how you got to where you are.

Add a back story that people can associate with, show them that you understand their problems.

Creating a Contact Page

A contact page can be as simple as just an email, telephone number and an address on a site page but it is always a good idea too if possible add a contact form.

Adding a contact form to a WordPress blog, for example, is a very simple process.

Our friends at WpBeginner have a great step by step guide to setting up a contact form on your WordPress: How to Create a Contact Form in WordPress (Step by Step)

Creating a Terms and Privacy Policy Pages

These types of pages really are needed on all sites.

They just make you look more professional and that you are above board and have nothing to hide.

And that is the point of E-A-T, to prove your authority and reputation for Google to trust you.

Lot’s of webmasters shy away from producing these important pages because they can be a bit daunting to create.

The great news is that there are online sites and templates that you can use for free to very easily produce these pages.

If you want to know what you need to have in your Terms and Privacy Policy than just check what your competitor’s pages and if what they say is relevant then you need to adopt something similar in your pages.

To find online services to generate your pages then just do a quick Google search Free Privacy Policy and Terms Of Service Generator are good examples. (No affiliation)

You will also need to incorporate details on how you use Cookies for GDPR compliance.

How to optimize your reputation and boost your authority

So you now have all the important pages on your site and well on the way to optimizing your reputation and boosting authority.

The next steps are all to do with what you do off your site in the same way that off-page SEO is all to do with what you do outside your site.

Social media is a big influencer when it comes to optimizing your reputation online.

Actively engaging on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest are all great ways of showing Google that you know what you are talking about when done correctly.

If you want to post your online reputation then it may well be a good idea to make specific pages and accounts to just support your site or business.

Build branded pages and social profiles that carry your personal brand (who you are) or that of your business.

You can then set about building targeted followers to those channels.

Engagements within these channels then boost your online reputation and grow your expert authority.

If you can get those pages verified then that is a big plus point in proving reputation and authority (This is hard to do unless your a celebrity or a public figure in some way, though not impossible)

A very undervalued resource to prove your reputation

Have you heard of Google Plus right? 😉 Of course, you have!

Well, it is still around even though I bet you haven’t visited your profile in a very long time.

Here is the thing, we build about me pages, branded social channels but we then fail to do the simplest of things and that is put a Google Plus profile together and we do this to prove authority.

It is simple you create what is effectively an about me page with Google so in other words rather than letting Google find you to distinguish and prove your online reputation you actually tell them.

You add an informative bio, list all your sites. Tell Google of any guest posts or contributions you make on other sites in your niche (more on guest blogging in a bit).

You sell yourself and make it easy for Google to see what you are up to and what you have done.

Here is my About Me section on my Google Plus Profile

Question and answer sites

If you want to boost your site’s authority then what better way of proving your authority by asking questions and answering them.

Make sure that when you answer questions you write good long answers. We want Google to see that we do things right.

You should also ask questions, they are a great way to build some buzz around your content.

Quora is the stand-out site for this.

Here is a Question that I shared on Quora that applies to this post: How can I  optimize my online reputation and boost my authority?

Leveraging Content Curation

Leveraging content curation is a strategy that I am using more and more as a way of qualifying what I write.

Wakelet is a new content curation site, based here in the Uk in Manchester.

They are a little bit different than your Pocket’s and Flipboards in that rather than making individual shares you create what are known as Collections or Wakes.

And within a Wake you can add any number of posts.

So my strategy is very simple.

1. Create a new Wake / Collection for a new article that I am writing, giving it a working title to match your post.
2. Share your research and posts that you visit to your new collection
3. Add any notes, or ideas as text blocks
4. Add any images if you have them to hand.
5. Then you just go write your article and you have all your notes and qualifiers in one place.
6. When you have finished your article you share it to your new Wakelet Collection and change it’s visibility to public.

What you create is a very strong authoritative Wakelet share that points to your new article and shows all your research, ideas and the pages that you visited.

Here is the Wakelet Collection that I created for this Article,
How to optimize your online reputation and boost your authority

For more detailed information on how I and others use Wakelet you can read my article: How to use Wakelet – How I use Wakelet

How to optimize your online reputation by leveraging WakeletClick To Tweet

Guest Blogging

Guest blogging has its critics.

Why spend time creating content for someone else’s site when you could be making it for your own?

Well a lot of bloggers would reply “for a backlink”

That is true and it is often a benefit when guest blogging but if you are just doing it for a backlink then you are missing the real reason and value to guest posting on someone else’s blog

Guest blogging for links can if done badly get you in trouble and that is the exact opposite of why you should be guest blogging.

You should consider guest blogging to improve your online reputation and to boost your authority.

I write about SEO a lot on my Infobunny site.

I can’t think of a better way to qualify me as an expert than to be published on  SEO+ with Hazel Jarrett.

Hazel knows everything there is to know about SEO.

She very happily welcomes me to share my unique perspective on SEO on her site because she knows that she is not going to get cheap thin content that is backlink based.

There is a bigger picture than blogging for backlinks, especially with the E-A-T algorithm update.

Yes, backlinks are still important but less so and how you acquire them now matters more than ever.

How to optimize your online reputation and boost your authority – Takeaways

So that is it, that is how I grow my reputation and boost my authority.

I prove my reputation by being super transparent with Google.

Engage with and build my followers on social media

And I collaborate with other bloggers with guest posts.

That’s all for now

Regards Dexter

Do you have any special ways to optimize your online reputation?

Have you seen a drop in the search as a result of the E-A-T update?

Let me know in the comments section below!