Content is King

Content is King! This is a well known phrase in the web design world. Having good and fresh content keeps a website alive. So it is very important to ensure that the content on your site regularly changes.

Firstly, fresh up to date content keeps visitors returning to your site. Why should they return if nothing changes, there's nothing new to see.

Secondly, all the search engines regularly send what are called robots to your website to index the information on it. This is how they build their database of live sites and how they categorise those sites. If the content on a website doesn't change regularly then the robots reduce the number of visits they make to the site. If the website content continues to stay static then the search engines will start to mark your site as old outdated information and will rank the site lower in its search results. Now this may seem a tad harsh but the search engines do care about the quality of the sites they send their visitors to, so of course they are going to send those visitors to a site they believe to be updated rather than one that's not.

Firstly you do not have to make regular changes to every page on your site. As long as some sections change on a regular basis this is enough for the search engines to keep visiting frequently.

Some sites naturally have changing fresh content such as estate agents or event sites, blogs and database sites that categorise things. If you don't have this type of website then you can introduce elements into your site that will make this happen. The sorts of things you can do is to create a blog, or a news section, perhaps a portfolio section. The important thing to remember is that you have to keep it updated. Add a new item at least every couple of weeks to keep those robots returning.

It is also important to add relevant, well structured and well written text. The search engines are good at working out which types of content are appreciated by humans, so the better and more useful the content you produce, the more it will improve your websites performance. Always remember to produce your content for the people who will be reading it rather than the search engines.