If there are dozens of companies out there not only promising the moon but saying they can deliver it yesterday why wouldn’t you take them up on their offers? Why should you build your online reputation organically (and slowly)?

Control

By taking the time to grow your reputation organically, you take control of the situation. You choose the sites with which you want to do business, the blogs on which you want to leave comments, the portals through which people can access your content. You can make sure that they are respected within your market (and theirs).

In addition to controlling where your content goes, you get to control what your content says. Most of the time you will be composing this content yourself. Even if you hire someone to produce it for you, the final say over that content is yours. You can make sure that it’s original and well constructed.

Reputation

This control is extended to your potential business network. By not forcing yourself upon them, you give them the choice of whether or not to work with you, which will definitely pay off well later on.

"Data is being collected without our knowledge by people we can’t identify for purposes we don’t know” says Michael Fertik, CEO of Reputation.com in this interviewwith The National. "The control we’ve talked about here can help you ensure that the reputation you build for your brand is a good one. Because you have control over your content and links, you also have control over what information about you gets published online."

Trust

When people know that the content they are reading and that the links they are following were created organically they are more likely to trust those links and that content. More importantly, they are more likely to trust the person or business that created it. That trust is going to make them more likely to buy your product or hire you for your services. That trust will also encourage them to recommend you to their own networks.

Loyalty

If the content you produce is good and the links you build are relevant and help the people who follow them, this will help build loyalty for you, your products or services and your brand. If your link leads a reader to something helpful, they will be more likely to follow the other links to your site that they find elsewhere. It will also make those readers more likely to visit your website over and over again because they will want to keep up with you, your business and the updates that you publish.

 The truth is that when you hire one of those firms that promises you everything, most of the time what they actually deliver is worse than nothing. You might get hundreds of links but you’ll get labeled as a spammer. They might publish dozens of articles, but those articles will be phished and plagiarized. When you publish good content and work to build your company organically you control what people see and think about you.

Going organic might take more time, but it also has far longer lasting and positive effects.There are lots of benefits to going organic. It’s worth it.