All businesses, regardless of size or industry, must factor in building and monitoring their online reputation as part a comprehensive marketing and sales plan.

“If you have a virtual presence, chances are you have an online reputation, too,” says Sean Silverthorne on a BNET blog post titled Protect Your Online Reputation. “In other words, investing in reputation maintenance pays off.”

Your online reputation impacts how you are perceived by prospects, clients and customers. Prospects now “Google” companies they consider doing business with and judge your company by its Virtual First Impression ™, your online findability, and what others say about you on blogs, websites and online communities.

Companies that do not monitor their online presence risk (at best) losing business to their better known competitors.

At worst, companies can lose credibility in an instant when they become victims of libel, defamation, or unfounded attacks from competitors or disgruntled customers.

“Increasingly, your personal reputation is at the mercy of search engines, blogs and social networks, none of which themselves has a sterling reputation for accuracy,” says PC World contributor Dan Tynan in 5 Ways to Defend Your Online Reputation.”

Fighting back means proactively staying on top of what others say about you and your company. "Google is no longer just a search engine; it's a reputation engine," says Chris Dellarocas, a professor at the University of Maryland who studies online reputations

Google Alerts are an easy way to track certain keywords (such as your name and company name) that yield search results related to your company. Technorati is a search engine that can help you track your reputation in the blogosphere by subscribing to search terms that relate to your company.

Another handy resource is Reputation Defender, a $9.95/month service that scours the Internet to dig up every possible piece of information about you, which is presented in a monthly report. For $29 they’ll even correct and/or completely remove unwanted content from the web.

What if your efforts to remove offending material about your business lead to nothing? My colleague, Scott Allen, coauthor of The Virtual Handshake: Opening Doors and Closing Deals Online, advocates burying the bad with the good by creating new content about yourself.

“It’s not that you can make the stuff disappear. It’s that you make so much more good stuff that you can’t find the bad stuff,” he says in an article on Monster.com. If possible, Allen says, publish your writing at respected sources, such as industry publications. “If it’s obvious it came from you, it can only do so much,” he says.

In the end, the most effective means of maintaining a positive online reputation is the most obvious: practice ethical business practices, deliver great customer service and position your business as a generous contributor to your industry.

Andy Beal, author of Radically Transparent: Monitoring and Managing Reputations Online sums it up nicely on a post at Mashable Social Networking News.

“I’ve written thousands of words on the topic of building a great online reputation, but I’ve managed to condense everything down to just three words for you to remember: sincerity, transparency, and consistency.

Consistency is a vital component for any reputation management efforts. Your customers will forgive your isolated failure, but if you’re not consistently living-up to your brand promise, they’ll find a company that does.”