by Mack CollierIf you've read my posts here or were able to hear me speak at SmallBusiness Marketing Unleashed in Houston, you know what a believer I amin businesses monitoring the blogosphere. It's a must for businessesto know what bloggers are saying about them, because then they canrespond. But how do you know the correct way to respond? It dependson what you find.

So by now you have hopefully started monitoring the blogosphere and have subscribed to Google Blog Searches for your business and/or have Google Alerts set up (for more info on how to start monitoring the blogosphere, check out this post). Now you need to know how to use this information, based on what you are finding. Here's four possibilities and how you can react:

1 - You find nothing. You're...

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by Jennifer Laycock

If you're new around here, you've probably never heard of Robert Clough. If you've been around here for years, you've probably decided Robert Clough is my imaginary friend...someone I made up to pin the blame on when things go south. The truth is he's a real person. The folks who attended SBM Unleashed last week know this and thanks to Anita Campbell, the whole world now knows it.

Anita spent some time talking to Robert at our show last week and wrote up what may well be the first interview with Robert I've seen published since I came on board four years ago. Sure, there's been the odd occasion where his personality has come out...but there was still little to prove he was an actual person. He also rarely gets as much credit for the site as he deserves, so it...

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by Stoney deGeyter

There are two important questions that every business needs to be able to answer:

What's in it for me?

and

Why should I buy from you?

The first questions, when answered correctly, helps sell your product or service, but it doesn't necessarily close the deal. In order to get the deal sealed and money in hand you have to be able to answer the second question sufficiently.

This is where a lot of businesses go wrong. They focus on one of these two questions but not both. Let's break these down a bit:

What's in it for me?

To sell your product or service you have to explain to the user why they need your product or service in the first place. But it isn't as simple as telling them they need a new car battery to replace the old car battery. They need...

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by Scott AllenMany website owners have a small technical issue with their site(s) that they don't evenrealize, and when left uncorrected, can severely hurt search engine rankings. Thissituation occurs when the one or more pages can be accessed via severaldifferent URL's.

For example, the following URL's may seem like theyare the same page, but to a search engine, are actually different pages:

- http://samplesite.com- http://www.samplesite.com- http://samplesite.com/default.php- http://www.samplesite.com/index.html

What are some of the issues you can face when this occurs?

If people link to your site inconsistently (which willhappen sooner or later), different versions of the same pages can getindexed in search engines. This forces the search engines to...

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