Online Reputation Management for Students

This page was most recently updated on March 31, 2023

It’s no secret that, as a student, you are going to have an active online presence. Before you go applying for college programs and graduate jobs, however, you should know something about your digital footprint. Most people don’t think about how their online life can affect their future until it is too late. As a student, you can be proactive about managing your reputation.

What Is Online Reputation Management?

Reputation management for students is all about making sure that you are putting your best foot forward online. Having a positive reputation can open many doors for you, which is crucial as a young person trying to make their way in the world. On the other side, a negative reputation can limit your choices.

We use several reputation management strategies to help you stand out for the better. This can include:

• Creating and optimizing your profiles on social media platforms
• Building a professional website
• Creating blog posts about the things you are passionate about
• Highlighting your accomplishments
• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Removing and suppressing negative online content that appears in search engine results

Why Is Online Reputation Management Important For Students?

The importance of online reputation management can not be understated. It takes a long time to build a good reputation, but it can all fall apart in seconds.

Colleges Check Your Online Image

Whether you like it or not, many colleges do look at your social media accounts when making enrollment decisions. It is very easy for them to do a Google search of your name and find all of your online activity. Whether you are applying for a Bachelor’s, Master’s, or Ph.D. program, your online content matters.

Around 65% of college admissions officers view social media as “fair game” when making enrollment decisions. Ideally, you want colleges to see that you are a well-rounded, accomplished individual that would make a great student on their campus. However, if you have posted something offensive or been involved in an online scandal, they may think twice about sending you an acceptance letter.

Your Digital Footprint Affects Your Job Search

70% of employers use social media to screen potential candidates. By simply using a search engine, they can find anything from photographs, videos, and blogs to “virtual” worlds and gaming sites that you have long forgotten about.

When you are applying for your first job, any posts that are less than professional can put you at a disadvantage – especially when you don’t have a lot of previous work experience.

It’s Hard To Permanently Delete Online Posts

Just because social media sites have a delete button doesn’t mean your posts are gone forever. By the time you go to delete an image or Tweet, countless people could have already seen and liked it. Not to mention, deleting something from your profile doesn’t mean others haven’t saved or screenshotted it.

If someone posts your content to their own page, it can be even harder to scrub it completely from the internet. Even things said in private messages can be leaked to the internet and damage your reputation.

How Do Google Search Results Affect Your Reputation?

These days, when people want to find out information, most of them turn to Google. In fact, Google holds a whopping 91.9% of the search engine market. Google’s algorithm uses a number of different factors to index and rank every single webpage on the internet. When you enter a search term, Google shows you the most relevant and useful sources according to your search query.

The First Page Of Google

Because of Google’s ranking system, web pages that appear in search results get less and less relevant as you scroll down. The most viewed results will always be on the first page of Google. Anywhere from 75-92% of people will never even click past the First page of Google at all.

So, because most people use Google and most people are only looking at the first page, it really matters what is shown there.

Google Yourself

If you were to enter your name into the Google search bar, do you know what results would appear on that first page? Your various social profiles will show up, blog posts you have written, or any news that has been written about you. If all of that content is positive, that’s a great sign!

However, if there is any negative content about you that appears on that first page, you could be in trouble. Negative content could be pictures or social media posts you have put online yourself, or it could be things that other people have written and posted about you. No matter what it is, anything negative that appears on Google’s first page will influence how people see you as a person.

If you want to take the first step to monitor your Google search results, set up Google Alerts for your name. That way, you will get an email whenever Google finds a new mention of your name online.

Content Suppression

If negative content is affecting your life, there are ways to tackle it. You can’t remove everything from the internet, but you can suppress Google search results. Creating new, positive content and optimizing that content in search results will push down negative content that you don’t want people to see. Once that negative content gets pushed down to the second, third, fourth, etc pages of Google, it is incredibly unlikely that anyone will ever see it.