Search Engine Ranking Factors (1)
Here is what most of the gurus say about the need to update content (They mostly talk about Google, and so will I because we all know that Google is the absolute king when it comes to keyword searches and page rankings - sorry Yahoo!, Ask and MSN/Bing - I do respect your rules and your presence in the market, it's just that it seems that once you master Google, everything else is kind of... easy.):
- Google likes fresh pages. It's recommended that you add new content often in the form of news, promotions, press releases, information about new products, etc. Adding new content or updating your website content is indeed a ranking factor. And here is the place to mention that unique content is what counts. Unique as in not "borrowed", "copy-pasted from another source" or " a series of keywords stacked together without making any sense".
- The frequency of your website content updates is related to how often you want the search bots to crawl your website. It seems that the more frequently they visit your website, the better it is for you and your rankings, so try to add new content (text, picture, or even a whole page) as often as reasonable. Don't overdo it though, because "too frequent" sometimes spells "bad rankings". Aim for the golden middle. Moderation is everything in this game.
- Adding fresh links to your website definitely counts as new content, but try not to get carried away, because Google hates link farms and often interprets the act of adding multiple links at the same time as some sort of scamming.
- If you want to add fresh images, don't forget to update their titles/"alt" tags. Text included in images will not be read by the search engines. For example, if you create a beautiful collage crowned by a clever advertising statement that contains some of your keywords, which is then saved neatly as an image - a .jpg or .png format - and published on your website, don' t count on the engines to take notice and "index" your keywords. They cannot "read" images like people do.
- If you are planning to have a flash file on your website, especially if it contains an important set of keywords, note that search engines do not read flash content either.
- Adding new videos is really a good way to keep visitors longer, and definitely counts as new content. If you don't have the bandwidth to play them smoothly from your website server, then definitely publish them on YouTube.com and then embed them on your site. YouTube will give you more exposure, as well as the ability to choose appropriate search tags for your video.
- A word of caution regarding keeping duplicate content: If you have live duplicate content on your website, bear in mind that search engines don't really like websites that maintain published copies of the same content. That might affect negatively your ranking too.
