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About BrandYourself
What is BrandYourself?
BrandYourself provides tools and services that help people look better online. This includes dealing with unwanted items--like an old divorce record or ill-advised tweet--and promoting positive items that actually help someone’s career.
Check out our guide, BrandYourself Software & Services for an overview of what we offer.
What software and services do you offer?
BrandYourself's DIY reputation management software:
BrandYourself's DIY software walks you through the process of improving and monitoring the search results for your name. You can open an account for free or upgrade to Premium for $99 per year.
For free software users: Sign up for our free software to diagnose how you currently look online.
Our free software:
- Scans for online risk factors for your name
- Scans for positive online factors for your name
- Calculates your Reputation Score
- Generates a Reputation Report that explains where you stand with your online presence
- Allows limited access to Premium features like the Social Scanner, Reputation Builder and more
Once you know where you stand, it’s time to take action. Our software walks Premium users through the step by step process of looking great online.
Premium member software lets you:
- Unlock your personal Action Plan tailored to your industry
- Review all flagged posts and images using our Social Scanner, then delete or accept them right in your BrandYourself dashboard
- Receive ongoing monitoring of your reputation online
- Manually scan for risky posts, images or Google search results whenever you want.
- Unlock all guides from BrandYourself University
- Apply a custom domain like yourname.com to your BrandYourself profile
- Remove all mentions of BrandYourself from your profile. This helps your profile rank higher in Google & looks more professional - free users have a BrandYourself banner & other mentions of BrandYourself on their profile
- See everyone who Googles you & finds your profile
- Get priority customer support - you'll get faster response time and more in-depth answers whenever you need help
BrandYourself's Managed Services offer plans for individuals and businesses Managed Services provide you with dedicated experts who create, update and promote your online presence and take all necessary steps to suppress any unwanted results. We offer highly customizable packages.
For individuals we offer the following packages:
For businesses we offer the following services:
For a full breakdown of our software and services visit, "BrandYourself Software & Services".
How do I get started?
Sign up for a free account to receive a diagnosis of your current online presence and scan for potentially damaging search results and social media posts. From there, you can follow our steps to build out your online presence.
Our Introductory guide, "Building a Strong Personal Brand" will get you started with improving and managing your online presence.
What sets BrandYourself apart from other online reputation management companies?
- Complete transparency. We'll fully explain our process and happily answer any questions you might have.
- Absolute quality. We do the best work in the industry because we refuse to cut corners or outsource work.
- Do right by you. Whether using our tools or managed services, we consider you a partner – not just a customer.
- Communication and collaboration. Our open team structure ensures all our best minds are constantly collaborating to help you more effectively.
- Our software. We’ve spent hundreds of hours researching, designing, testing and improving our software so that you have the tools that you need to develop the online presence that you want.
- Never settle. We're constantly improving and believe we can always do better.
Do you work directly with Google?
No, we are not affiliated with Google or any search engines (Yahoo, Bing, etc.). BrandYourself simply helps you improve the way you look online when people search for you by following best practices.
Does this work with other search engines?
We only track Google results on BrandYourself, but the recommended steps apply for all search engines. All major search engines follow similar principles when ranking results. If you use BrandYourself and follow all recommended steps for the links you want to show up higher, it will help them rank higher across all search engines.
I have a billing issue
If you're a DIY user, contact our support team at [email protected] or call us directly at (646) 863-8226.
If you're a Managed Services client, contact your Reputation Specialist and/or Brand Strategist directly. You can also update any billing information here.
What is your Premium DIY software account's refund policy?
Our Premium DIY software is a subscription based account that recurs automatically based on your selected plan. If you have a billing issue, contact our support team at [email protected] or call us directly at (646) 863-8226. However, we do not issue refunds.
Working with our DIY software
What's the difference between Free & Premium?
Here's a complete breakdown of our software and services, including the differences in our Free and Premium memberships.
Can I use it for my business?
BrandYourself's DIY tool is a product designed to help individual people control search results for their name – because of this, the software does not work well with business names.
Check out our managed Business Services packages to see how BrandYourself can help your business:
How do I set up my BrandYourself profile?
Click on your name in the upper-righthand corner to activate your BrandYourself profile. This will act as a static profile, that not only shares biographical information with users, but also acts as a repository for links to your other profiles and sites.
The more content you add to it, the more relevant it becomes to search engines, and the higher it will rank. Your profile is automatically Search Engine Optimized to show up for your name as high as possible, but the more information you fill out, the higher it will rank.
What do the Action Plan Steps do?
We distilled best practices in Search Engine Optimization into these simple actions that you can take to maximize the chances that your profiles will rise in search results over time. Following the Recommended Steps will not instantly change your profile's ranking. Google usually takes 2-6 weeks to recognize that you've optimized a profile in some way.
Each step makes your profile more likely to rank higher over time. However, it is NOT guaranteed to make your link move.
What does "optimize" mean?
In terms of Search Engine Optimization, "optimize" means building out a site in a way that gives it the best chance to rank high for your name. Your Action Plan is designed to make your site or profile as search engine friendly as possible.
What does “authority” mean?
Google and other search engines like it use “authority” as a means for ranking one domain over another. Authoritative domains are considered credible, relevant and popular (think CNN.com ). These types of domains are much more difficult to bury than a random blog post from a random person and often have many other sites linking to them.
What does “visibility” mean?
We use the term “visibility” to refer to the likelihood that a search result will be seen. The higher a search result shows up in rankings, the greater the visibility, the more likely someone is to click on that link.
How do you calculate the Reputation Score?
BrandYourself provides you with the only technology that accurately scours the web and compares your online presence against a comprehensive known database of red flags and reinforcing factors that employers use to screen you.
The DIY software calculates your Reputation Score by:
- Scanning your social media posts and images
- Identifying your google results
- Scanning damaging search results
- Comparing this to standards in your industry
What is your Reputation Report?
BrandYourself’s DIY software generates a Reputation Report which includes:
- Your Reputation Score
- A breakdown of known Risk Factors
- An explanation of positive Personal Brand Factors
- An analysis of Google visibility
- A look at your Online Audience
- The estimated impact your online presence is having on your earning potential
- Your Reputation Score percentile as compared to other users
- Steps to improve your score
What is the Reputation Builder?
BrandYourself’s unique software takes all of the knowledge and experience of our Managed Services, combines it with research to give you a customized step by step Action Plan to build the online reputation that you want.
BrandYourself’s Reputation Builder features an Action Plan, Guides, An analysis of your current search results, a social scan of Posts and Images that may be harming you, a tracking system for building authoritative sites and profiles, and your very own BrandYourself profile.
How long until I see results?
Unfortunately, there isn't an exact timeframe for when you will see results. There are a number of factors that will determine a change in rankings.
- Do you have a very common or competitive name?
- Is there already a lot of information about you that you don't control?
While Google usually indexes changes in properties every 2 to 6 weeks, this doesn't necessarily translate into an immediate spike in search result rankings.
Additionally, if there is content out there about you that comes from an authoritative site (perhaps a news source, a government website, or even a blog that has been around for a while and is updated regularly), it's going to take more time and effort to battle what's already out there.
If you are dealing with a negative search result or a very competitive name, you may not see significant gains for a few months, six months, a year, or more. It truly depends on your situation. To learn more, visit our guide, "Advanced Guide to Fixing Negative Results".
I've been using BrandYourself and nothing has changed - why is that?
To look great in Google, you need to:
- Build a website and profiles to create the foundation of your online presence.
- Optimize your content so your sites and profiles are search engine friendly.
- Improve your appearance online by publishing and promoting high-quality content over time.
Remember that changes do not happen overnight. In general, it will take Google 2 to 6 weeks to recognize changes on your site and profiles. While this may result in slight changes in rankings, suppression requires time and continued effort to re-rank your results. This can take anywhere from a few months, to a year or more.
If you've followed our 3-step strategy and still haven't seen any changes after six months, contact our support team at (646) 863-8226 to go over your results and strategy.
I'm receiving a message that my Twitter, Facebook, etc. is associated with another BrandYourself account - what do I do?
Go to your Properties page in your Reputation Builder to connect or disconnect your social profiles. If you're still having trouble, contact our support team at (646) 863-8226 or [email protected].
How do I downgrade my account?
You can cancel your subscription by contacting support at (646) 863-8226 or [email protected].
When you downgrade to a free user you:
- May only submit, track and boost 3 profile links
- Cannot approve or delete any potentially damaging social media posts
- Can only see the 3 most recent profile visitors
- Will lose the ability to manually refresh your Report Card
- Will no longer receive priority over other free users for customer support questions
As mentioned above, when you downgrade your account, you can only submit 3 links. The links you don’t keep may fall in results because you won’t get alerts when they move, and you won’t be able to boost them anymore. However, if you continue to refresh those profiles and sites with high quality information, they will continue to gain authority.
Even if you choose to downgrade or cancel your account, BrandYourself would never do anything to make any of your links fall lower in results.
How do I delete my BrandYourself account?
Although we'll be sad to see you go, you can delete your account by contacting our support team at (646) 863-8226 or [email protected]. We're also happy to answer any questions or clear up any areas of confusion directly.
What happens if I stop using BrandYourself?
Simply deleting your account will not affect your rankings (except for your BrandYourself profile). However, if you stop regularly updating your profiles and website, your rankings will undoubtedly suffer. Never let the properties that you control go stagnant!
By staying active as a BrandYourself user, you'll have access to the resources necessary to diagnose, optimize and protect your reputation online. So before deleting your account, contact our support team at (646) 863-8226 or by using the chat feature on our site to show you how our software can better serve you.
BrandYourself's Managed Services
What is the difference between the DIY software and Managed Services?
BrandYourself helps you build an impressive online presence with our DIY software (free - $99 per year) and Managed Services (pricing varies). With Managed Services:
- You have a team of experts doing the work for you. With a DIY software account, you do the work entirely yourself to improve your results.
- Our experts create custom strategies to improve your results. DIY users have to follow our software to create and build out their online presence. Our managed services team members customize the strategy along the way to meet campaign goals.
- Our specialists use advanced SEO tactics. Our DIY software provides general SEO tactics which might not give you that extra edge to improve your results.
- You know we’re doing the work to improve your results with managed services. We provide the software & tips for you to improve your results as a DIY member, but you have to do the work.
- We’ll work with you every step of the way. You’ll receive a detailed monthly report as well as regular check-in calls to discuss campaign progress.
Here's a complete overview of our software and services.
How much does it cost?
Since each plan is unique to the individual based on their needs, the pricing ranges from user to user. However, Concierge services typically start around $599 per month, depending on the needs of the client. Speak to a Reputation Advisor at (646) 863-8282 to learn about additional services and pricing that best suit your needs. If this pricing is out of your range, make sure to sign up for our free DIY software which lets you scan, build, monitor and protect your online reputation.
I'm interested in Managed Services, how do I get started?
Speak to a Reputation Advisor at (646) 863-8282, schedule a consultation, or email [email protected].
Dealing with Negative Search Results
Can I get the result removed?
Getting something removed from the Internet is incredibly difficult and is only an option in a certain set of unique situations. Check out our guide, "Advanced Guide to Fixing Negative Results" to learn more.
What's the best way to handle a negative?
Negative results are notoriously difficult to bury in results, so we typically suggest our expert Concierge service to deal with negative information online.
The overall strategy is to combat negative results with positive results. You want to build websites and profiles, optimize your content, which will then help improve your appearance online. For more in-depth information on this strategy, read our guide, "Advanced Guide to Fixing Negative Results".
What if I'm dealing with a negative image result?
Dealing with negative image results is similar to the 3-step strategy for combating negative results, but you want to focus more on visual content and profiles that rely on images.
Read the post on our blog, "How to Remove a Picture or Image From Google" to learn more.
How long will it take?
Unfortunately, there is no overnight fix for combating negative search results. While Google indexes profiles and websites about every 2 to 6 weeks, it's likely that this will not result in huge shifts in rankings. Instead, you will see small gains in rankings over time.
Negative results can take several months to a year and beyond to suppress a result off the first page. A number of factors can influence this, from how authoritative the negative is, to the number of negative results, to how competitive your name is and more.
However, creating a strong foundation and following a disciplined approach to improving your online presence is your best defense. As long as the negative result isn't actively being updated, you will see positive movement in the properties you control over time.
About BrandYourself University
What is BrandYourself University?
BrandYourself University is an educational platform dedicated to sharing vital tools, strategies and information with its students when it comes to personal branding online.
How did you choose the topics?
BrandYourself University's curriculum reflects the strategies and best practices followed by the team of experts that oversee managed services at BrandYourself.
Our team will regularly update guides and add new ones to the curriculum as needed.
Will I get a degree after I read these guides?
While BrandYourself University's curriculum showcases best practices in Online Reputation Management, it is not affiliated with an accredited academic institution. Because of this, we do not confer degrees upon users who read and apply the lessons in these guides.
How do I access these guides?
As a visitor to brandyourself.com, you can access a number of in-depth free guides. As a Premium member, you get access to exclusive content from BrandYourself University, in addition to a number of other features on our DIY platform.