What's your digital dirt?

by Laurinda Shaver

William Arruda, founder of Reach Personal Branding, has a great Personal Branding prediction list for 2010.

Item #9: Digital Dirt Elimination caught my attention. I spend alot of time talking with clients about how videoBIO can help increase their visibility on Google, but spend no time thinking about how to remove "dirt" from the Google Search results.

You know what I'm talking about. That ugly picture from a party or that association that you no longer want to be associated with. Pretty much anything that will tarnish your online reputation.

So, who can help you eliminate your Digital Dirt?

William talks about 3 companies:
1. ReputationDefender
2. Defend My Name
3. Internet Reputation Management

Lets review their offerings:
1. ReputationDefender
They are a global online reputation management and privacy company. They focus on 3 goals. To SEARCH your online information, to provide DESTROY assistance, and to deliver CONTROL on how others are able to perceive you online. This is done through their 4 products:
1. MyReputation
2. MyChild
3. MyPrivacy
4. MyEdge
Essentially you pay a monthly fee for reports and additional fees if you want to "DESTROY" online information. The Privacy option allows you to remove your personal information from search databases. They go a step further and will promote you at your chosen online locations to increase your search results rank. A very comprehensive offering.

2. Defend My Name
I had to dig around a bit to figure out what services they offer. I believe that at their core, they are a SEO (Search Engine Optimization) company. They build content to promote you using SEO techniques to drive up your ranking. There is no listed price, so you will have to get a quote.

3. Internet Reputation Management
This company is solely focused on identifying and evaluating all your negative search results. From there, they create a plan on how to move the negative notices and to replace them with positive ones. The site is simple and straightforward. There are no prices listed, but there is a Contact Us form to fill out if you want more information.

Have you used any of these or other similar companies? I would love to hear about your experiences.

At the end of the day, being careful and monitoring your online presence is extremely important. Therefore if you do stumble across some digital dirt, you can catch it quick and deal with the issue before it explodes.