How to safeguard your privacy when building your digital company

The internet can be both a boon or a curse depending on how you use it and how other people use it to interact. Many new side hustles and businesses emerged after the pandemic. Brick and mortar businesses began digitizing. This has created well-being issues around how senior executives and business owners can seperate work from personal finances over the internet. How can they protect their privacy online and ensure safety while creating a digital footprint for their business?

These are some things that you need to know about protecting your online identity via the internet.

1. Your site can be anonymous

It is possible to digitize your business without revealing any personal information. However, it can be difficult. These are the steps to create an anonymous blog. In essence:

• Create an online pseudonym. (A moniker is what we used to call it back when we used forums.
• 
  Create a new email account and a public profile on social media for your business
  
• 
  Domain privacy protection will be required to protect your address, phone number, and email from being linked to your domain. Domain privacy protection replaces personal data with proxy information in the public WHOIS database.
  
• Use an SSL certificate to ensure you are protected.

We have talked about transparency, authenticity, and building your personal brand a lot lately. So it seems strange to me that creating a successful anonymous website without showing yourself is a popular choice.

There is still room for anonymity on social media. You can still be successful without revealing your personal information to the public. To keep your private life private, you just have to be careful when using any marketing tactic (such as blogging or social media marketing).

This means that you won’t post family photos on Instagram or tell personal stories. However, there are still many opportunities for SEO and PPC ads. You will need to create a different identity for personal strategies like blogger outreach. No one likes anonymous emails.

One thing is certain: It’s possible to create an anonymous business entity for both ecommerce businesses and SaaS businesses. While some customers might be curious about who your brand is, it’s not an issue if you have contact information. Freelancing businesses will find it more difficult as many freelance marketplaces require you to be your real name.

While some may question the anonymity of E-A–T, in reality it is not common knowledge of how Google converts its E-A–T requirements into a ranking algorithm. There have been many websites that rank high with no humanized “About” pages. You can also tell the story about your business without telling the personal history of its founder.

It is not necessary to become a public figure in order to own a business. This is still an option. The three pillars to solid organic visibility are technical SEO and high-quality links. However, quality content and well-done keyword research remain important. An excellent ‘About page’ can be created without branding, provided it conveys the business’s proposition and origin story as well as conveys values that resonate with your target audience.

2. You can delete your public content on third-party platforms

You have probably contributed to third-party platforms under your real name. This is because Quora and Facebook are two of the most powerful social media platforms. They have real-name policies that prevent users from being anonymous.

What if you don’t wish that the content you have chosen to not appear in search results when someone searches for your name?

It is difficult to remove content you have uploaded to third-party sites. Some platforms don’t have the tools to mass delete content. Quora is an example of this. To get rid of your content, you’ll need to delete your account.

Sometimes, such as Reddit or Tumblr accounts, even deleting an account will not help. Your content will still be there and assigned to a removed entity.

If you’re curious, here’s how to wipe out your content from major third-party content-based network.

It will take time to delete your content from the internet. In some cases it may not be possible immediately. It is worth the effort to delete any spam messages targeted at you or your company.

While you can change your username on many of these networks to conceal your real identity, it is possible to do so through the Wayback Machine or other archiving tools.

3. Keep your accounts secret

You can make your social media accounts private if you feel that going off-grid is an extreme sport. Even though your profile is private, your profile picture and name may still be visible and searchable by Google.

This is an example of a private Instagram account that still makes your username, description and profile picture public.

In general, if a social media account has been set to private, no one can access it.

People are too open to sharing their private information without any consideration.

Let’s not forget the risk of data breaches that could expose your personal information to hackers. It is clear that a social media platform will not inform their users about a breach. They may notify users months later, but it could be months before your personal data is in the wrong hands span>

Conclusion

It is true that once we open up our lives to the internet, private content can take flight on its own. It is difficult to control it and it can spread quickly without your knowledge.

This is a serious concern.

Ann Smarty, the founder of Viral Content Bee and brand manager at Internet Marketing Ninjas, is Ann Smarty. You can find her on Twitter @seosmarty

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Search Engine Watch’s first article was entitled How to protect your privacy while building a digital business.