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Sure, you’ve heard wonderful things about running a business blog, but is it REALLY for you? In a world of uncertainty, we give you the answers to this all-important question and point out the things you need to take seriously before embarking in the blogosphere.

SEO Audio Episode 22

Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft all announced this morning that they’re supporting an addition to the Sitemaps protocol that makes it easier for site owners with multiple subdomains to manage sitemap files.

In the past, you were forced to maintain an XML sitemap in the same domain as the domain which it referred to. i.e. www.hallme.com would have a sitemap for this domain, and blog.hallme.com would also need its own sitemap hosted on its own domain. There was no way to specify that we wanted blog.hallme.com to have a sitemap hosted on www.hallme.com, nor could we for www.hallblog.com.

For most site owners, this isn’t much of an issue, but if your business consists of multiple web properties, or many subdomains, the management of the sitemaps protocol could be quite a chore! (Imagine a scalable CMS such as wordpress.com).

The update makes life a lot easier for webmasters in these situations. Now, you can host all of your sitemaps for multiple domains at a single domain, and then use your robots.txt file to point search engines to the location of the correct sitemap.

So let’s say we want www.masterdomain.com to have the sitemap for subdomain.masterdomain.com. All you need to do is add the following line to the robots.txt file on subdomain.masterdomain.com:

Sitemap: http://www.masterdomain.com/sitemaps/subdomain.masterdomain.xml

On the same token, www.masterdomainblog.com could have this line added to the robots.txt:

Sitemap: http://www.masterdomain.com/sitemaps/masterdomainblog.xml

For the average small business, this is an interesting, if useless feature, but for businesses spanning multiple web properties, with subdomains, or for businesses like ourselves who manage sitemaps for hundreds of clients, the new update is welcome news indeed!

Hello? Hello? Is anybody out there?

Ever spend hours crafting the perfect blog post? It’s informative, witty and controversial, everything that all the blogging experts say a blog post should be, Yet, nobody comments on it…at all?  As bloggers, we spend a great deal of time, trying to convey information, thoughts and ideas to our readers, yet when feedback is not received, it can makes us feel like we are talking to ourselves, and let’s face it…blog posts can look a little pathetic without comments. Chirp. Chirp. Chirp.
So the question is, how do you get your readers to comment?

How to get blog comments:

1. Ask a Question - By asking your readers a question, they may feel compelled to answer it, especially if you are asking for their opinion or experiences. Remember, people love to talk about themselves and voice their opinions, give them an open invitation to do so.

2. Say Something Controversial - Do you have an opinion that goes against the majority? Write about it. State your conviction and stand strong while the comments from supporters and naysayers pour in.

3. Challenge another Blogger - Choose a successful blogger and write a post about how much you disagree or agree with one of his or her latest posts. Then, leave a comment on his post with a quick summary, be sure to link back to your blog. Not only will you be inviting the blogger to comment on your blog, but you will probably get a lot of curious readers of his blog to visit yours as well.

Comments give the visitors a sense of community. Communities are what you should be aiming to build with your readers, this is a sure fire way to get them to return, get them to subscribe, and best of all tell their friends about you.

Comment, Comment, Comment!
photo credit: saris0000

Money, it’s a hit! But is it right for YOUR website? Find out the things you should be taking into consideration by listening to this week’s episode of SEO Audio, when search marketing experts Chrystie and Fred duke out the pros and cons of monetizing your website and the different strategies available for website owners.

SEO Audio: Episode 21