Julian Goldie, a digital expert, shares five steps to manage your digital footprint. These actions help protect privacy, improve SEO, and maintain a positive online presence, crucial for job hunting, brand building, and maintaining privacy.
With the rise in internet and social media use, it is more important than ever to maintain a clean and positive online presence. Studies show that 70-90% of employers check a job candidate’s social media before an interview. Your digital footprint can also impact your business, university applications, and even make you vulnerable to identity theft.
“Whether you’re job hunting, building your brand, or simply wanting to reclaim your privacy, cleaning up your online footprint can be a daunting task,” says Julian Goldie, an expert in SEO. “But it’s not as bad as it sounds. With these five simple and practical strategies you can regain control of your digital presence.”
5 simple steps to manage your digital footprint
- Review your privacy settings: The first thing you should do to clean up your online footprint is to check the privacy settings on all the platforms you use. Most social media sites and online services offer controls that let you manage who can see your posts and information. Here’s how to get started with some of the bigger platforms:
- Facebook: Go to Settings > Privacy. You can adjust who sees your posts, friend requests, and profile details. “Setting your profile to ‘Friends Only’ will prevent most people from seeing it, protecting your privacy,” Julian says. “You can also customise who can see individual posts, allowing you to show fun things to friends and family and professional things to the outside world.”
- Instagram: Go to Settings > Privacy to manage your account’s privacy. You can switch to a private account, making sure only your followers can see your content.
- Twitter: Go to Settings and Privacy > Privacy and safety to control who can interact with you and view your tweets.
Taking a few minutes to adjust these settings can significantly reduce your online visibility and protect your personal information.
- Delete old accounts: Over time, we create many accounts that we don’t use anymore or even remember. These old accounts can be risky as they might contain personal information that hackers could access. To clean up your online presence, consider:
- Making A List: Write down all the websites and platforms where you have accounts, including social media, forums, and shopping sites.
- Deleting Unused Accounts: Visit each site and look for the option to delete your account. If you can’t find it, try searching “how to delete an account on [website]” for help.
“Taking the time to delete old accounts can significantly decrease the chances of your information being exposed,” says Julian.
- Unlink throwaway accounts from your personal emails: Sometimes, we create temporary accounts, such as for signing up for newsletters or free trials. If these accounts are linked to your personal email, they can be a privacy risk. Here’s what you can do:
- Identify Throwaway Accounts: Look for emails from services you no longer want to be subscribed to and make a list.
- Unlink Or Delete: Log into these accounts and unlink them from your personal email. If they’re no longer needed, consider deleting them entirely.
“Unlinking these accounts also has the added benefit of reducing the amount of spam that hits your inbox,” says Julian.
- Remove outdated or unprofessional content: It’s common to post things in our past that we later regret, such as embarrassing photos or questionable comments. To clean up your digital history:
- Google Yourself: Start by searching your name online to see what content shows up. Pay attention to anything that could be harmful or unprofessional.
- Request Removal: For content on social media, you can delete posts or photos directly. If unwanted content is on other websites, contact the website owner and ask them to remove it.
- Clean Social Media: Go back through your old posts and see what comes up. “You’d be surprised what embarrassing things you might’ve posted ten years or more ago that you don’t even remember,” says Julian.
“Cleaning up this content will make sure nothing odd pops up when potential employers or business partners search your name,” says Julian.
- Manage public comments on forums or news articles: Comments on forums or news articles can stay visible for a long time, and they are often linked to you. To manage these comments:
- Review Your Comments: Go through forums and news sites where you’ve commented before. Look for posts that might not match your current views or could be misunderstood.
- Edit Or Delete: Many sites allow you to edit or delete your comments. Take the time to clean up any comments that don’t align with your current views or could harm your reputation.
By being proactive about your public comments, you can ensure your online presence reflects your current beliefs and values.
Julian Goldie commented, “Being mindful about what we post online is essential, especially when trying to build a brand, improve the SEO of our own name, or get a new job. People often say Googling your own name a lot is a sign of narcissism, but if you’re trying to build your brand, it’s something you should be checking at least once a week. You need to be aware if something embarrassing crops up in search results that you need to deal with.
Improving the SEO scores of pages you want people to see is also imperative. Most people won’t scroll beyond the first few results, so if you can make sure those are the content you want people to see, most people won’t go digging far enough to discover some embarrassing college Facebook post.”
Himani Verma is a seasoned content writer and SEO expert, with experience in digital media. She has held various senior writing positions at enterprises like CloudTDMS (Synthetic Data Factory), Barrownz Group, and ATZA. Himani has also been Editorial Writer at Hindustan Time, a leading Indian English language news platform. She excels in content creation, proofreading, and editing, ensuring that every piece is polished and impactful. Her expertise in crafting SEO-friendly content for multiple verticals of businesses, including technology, healthcare, finance, sports, innovation, and more.
