When you change firms, it is essential that you keeping your online professional image up to date.
If you don’t change old names and logos on your website or blog, you could receive a cease and desist letter from your former firm, says Loic Jeanjean, online marketing director with Vancouver-based Advisor Websites. That’s one piece of correspondence you don’t want to receive, especially when starting at a new position.
While deleting old websites and blogs is important, you should try to keep some continuity so you can still be found online.
Follow this expert advice to delete your professional Internet past while making it easy for clients and prospects to find you:
> Keep the domain name
Retaining your old domain name helps you maintain continuity.
A domain name is the web address (for example, johnsmithfinancial.com). If your domain name is not connected with that of your old firm, it’s best to keep it. This way, you can build on previous web searches for your site, says Jeanjean.
When a large number of searches for words and phrases connected with your site occur (search engine optimization or SEO) and many links to your domain name take place, search engines like Google will create an index for you. The better your SEO (more searches over time), the higher your name is placed on a list when someone does a keyword search.
> Don’t disappear right away
You don’t have to delete your website immediately.
Instead, set up a forwarding page explaining why the website has moved, says Jeanjean.
After three to six months, you can shut down the site by logging into the host — the firm from which you rent space or bandwidth to publish your website — and cancelling your subscription, Jeanjean says.
While cancelling your package with the host is easy enough to do yourself, you may need some help from a web designer in creating the forwarding page.
> Save everything
Before cancelling any material online, make sure you’ve saved it.
That includes all the content that was on the site, including photos, says Jeanjean. As soon as you delete the site by cancelling your hosting package, everything will be permanently erased and you will be unable to retrieve it.
> Be selective with blog posts
Think twice about what you delete and what you keep when it comes to old blog posts.
If you have endorsements, logos or comments regarding a previous employer or carrier, you should delete the blog to avoid any conflict, says Jeanjean. Once you delete the blog it will be gone from the Internet within 48 hours.
You can keep blog posts that refer to your services generically.
IE