When it comes to doing business online, you can mess with your location as much as you like – but don’t risk your reputation.

If you build a good reputation on the web, people will link to you. If people link to you, other people will follow those links, and you will build up your traffic and your business. And the more good quality and relevant links you have, the higher you will rise up the search engine listings. More and better links means better rankings on Google, too.

Whether buying a house or opening a shop, there’s an old saying that the most important factors are location, location and location. But how does this work out on the internet?

Your web server can be physically located in a data centre almost anywhere in the world. Potentially, you can run an online business as effectively from a beach in Majorca as you could on Oxford Street.

One of our customers a few years ago even succeeded in managing his store while halfway up Mount Everest!

So when it comes to doing business online, you can mess with the location as much as you like. But the one thing you don’t want to mess with is your reputation.

If by action or inaction you manage to damage your reputation, the world can hear about it very quickly; via Facebook, MySpace, Digg, del.icio.us, Twitter. There is an endless list of media by which disgruntled customers can spread their complaints about your business. Do you monitor them? Would you know?

On the internet it’s not location, location, location; it’s reputation, reputation, reputation that counts.

That means selling a quality product at a fair price, and looking after your customers. It also means watching what’s being said about you in social and interactive media, and taking every opportunity to intervene positively and turn disappointed customers around.