Want to manage your online reputation effectively? If you're selling your writing services, it's essential that you do so.

Your aim should be that when someone types your name into a search engine, your site, and other references to you, occupy the entire first page of the search results.

Managing your reputation starts with your site.

1. Your Website Is You: Add Content, and Promote Your Site

Your primary sales tool is your website. Once your site is online, people can find you via the search engines. You get writing jobs without having to hunt for them.

I've always recommended to writers that rather than using a clever business name, they use their own name for their writing. If you're trying to promote both the business name, and yourself, it gets much too complicated. Unless you have a very good reason not to do so, use your own name as your business name.

So your first step in managing your reputation online is to add content to, and to promote your site. There's no substitute for this. It just has to be done. The more pages you have online, the more opportunities there are for people to find you via the search engines -- and the sooner you stage an effective land grab for the entire first page of the search results when anyone searches for your name.

2. See What People Are Saying: Create Alerts for Your Name

The second step in managing your reputation online is to discover what people are saying about you.

Google provides an "alerts" system, which is a valuable tool for research. However it's valuable in another way. You can create an alert for your own name so that you'll notified whenever your name is mentioned online.

3. Get Active on the Social Networking Sites

Your activity on the social networking sites provides links back to your primary website and boosts it in the search engines. This means that you'll be found more easily.

These links also help you in your endeavor to grab the first page of the search results when anyone searches for you.