One of the key aspects of online reputation defense involves being in charge of your own name online, leading people to information you want them to know about you instead of being at the mercy of others, particularly detractors. Naturally, this brings to mind the old SEO practices of utilizing your name as a keyterm as often as possible.
These practices, however, may also cause your reputation more harm than good. Hallmarks of lazy marketing, these often create unwieldy content geared more toward search engines than readers, leaving a terrible and off-putting impression on readers to your websites and social media.
Moreover, due to algorithm changes in Google and the growing role of quality content in traffic, the importance of merely using your name has decreased. Rather than improve your visibility, keyword-heavy SEO strategies, particularly blatantly deceptive ones like irrelevant keyword stuffing, is likely to have your content pushed back, which is a severe misstep in protecting your online reputation.
The changes don’t just affect misuse of keywords. They also focus on bringing forward quality content that people want to read. Paradoxically, this means that, to put yourself in control of your identity online, you must avoid gratuitous mentions of your name.
Outside introductions and calls to action, there are few areas using your name as a keyword is applicable. You should instead put focus on content that facilitates engagement with the users. Setting up blogs with interesting and well organized stories and creating rich media (videos, images) would provide audiences with a lot to talk about.
In addition, be careful with encouraging your audience to like and share. No one likes to be told to like something. Subtlety is the key.
Whether for online marketing or online reputation defense, the old cruise-control methods are no long effective. Effective content marketing is not a domicile for the lazy attention seeker. Putting yourself out of the limelight in your content and focusing on content people want to see or check out for their selves is a far more subtle and effective way to boost readership and, by extension, protect your online identity and brand.
Further reading:
http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2012/03/21/dangers-of-keyword-stuffing
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66358?hl=en
http://moz.com/google-algorithm-change
http://blog.crazyegg.com/2013/10/11/what-is-high-quality-content/
http://socialmediatoday.com/blakejonathanboldt/1749106/high-quality-content-necessary-online-reputation-management