Great news from the Sunshine State, our clients Summit Advisors a leading West Coast financial consultancy have hit page one in Google with two highly competitive keywords.

Senior Partner Rafael O. Velez III e-mailed to say'  We are on Page 1 for the terms “independent financial planner” and “independent financial advisors”.

Great news and a testimony to the effort Raf and his team put in to updating their blog.

Search engines are looking for the most relevant content for their customers and for them, the newer the content the more relevant it must be.

So the ability to update your web site is essential if you want to compete for the attention of the search engines.

Until now changing site content required considerable technical skill, a series of phone calls to your web designer or reliance on "content management" software that could at best be described as flaky.

Well times have changed.

The latest Squarespace software gives you the ability to add fresh content with ease. So now adding new pages, text or pictures to your site is as easy as using Microsoft Word.

Check out these demonstration videos to see how easy it is.

There is nothing more frustrating than not being able to identify visitors to your web site. 

A number of great programs now exist to help you create attractive forms to help you build your subscriber list.

Once again some simple guidelines will help you be more successful.

• Checkout www.campaignmonitor.com and www.mailchimp.com for simple to use forms.
• Ensure you follow regulations regarding privacy and provide an unsubscribe link.
• Make a genuine offer to attract subscriptions
• Only ask for a name and e-mail. Asking for telephone numbers or addresses will dramatically reduce your subscription rate.
• Follow up promptly and politely with a professional e-mail newsletter.
  

Thousands of companies are now using Google Adwords to promote their businesses, however most are paying over the odds and missing opportunities. 

Follow these guidelines for better results.

• Use professional software like www.wordtracker.com or ww.keywordelite.com to research keywords.
• Avoid generic phrases such as "video camera" go for specific terms such as "Sony HD Video camera"
• Limit the geographical reach of your adverts to start with.
• Try for positions 4-7 on the page, you will get much cheaper "clickthroughs".
• Use groups of ads getting your keywords in the title as often as you can.
• Split-test your ads. Use two very similar ads and then replace the weakest ad after 30 hits.
• Sign up for" google adwords guru"  Perry Marshalls free adwords course at http://www.perrymarshall.com/
• Use a subscription form to capture the e-mail details of site visitors.
• Use Google Analytics to track site visitors.
  

RSS syndication is the hottest technology on the web yet very few people understand how important it is.

The reason is simple, Internet Explorer 7.0 has RSS built in to its core technology.

RSS is the internet community's answer to spam e-mail, enabling users to choose to subscribe to the content updates they want using "live bookmarks" rather than e-mail.

The example above is from the BBC's site, however already businesses are using RSS to keep clients up to date without cluttering their in-boxes.

Blogs create RSS feeds automatically allowing users to subscribe to new content.

Advanced software such as Squarespace also "pings" search engines every time you add to your site.