No Comments Written by Robert on August 17, 2008 – 8:04 pm

Keeping your content current is essential to maintaining favorable organic search-engine rankings. It is vitally important to your Web site’s success that you update content on a fairly regular basis. Search engines consider fresh content to be of greater value than outdated content, penalizing Web sites that remain unchanged and stagnant and rewarding Web sites that maintain fresh content.

There are many ways to keep content fresh and original. Manually changing your content on a routine basis is time consuming, tedious, and often results in less authentic prose. Self-perpetuating systems of content creation are preferred over the manual insertion of fresh content. User-generated content from testimonials, forums, and blogs, as well as content through content aggregation networks, are highly recommended methods of supplying your site with fresh, stimulating content.

Search engines favor Web sites that have fresh content. Keeping your content current is fundamental and necessary to achieving and maintaining high search-engine rankings. Search engines consider fresh content to be of greater value than outdated content, penalizing Web sites that remain unchanged and rewarding Web sites that maintain fresh content. Short of having to draft your own content on a daily or weekly basis, several proven strategies exist that allow you to keep your content fresh and original.

Keep your content current

For example, the most streamlined and least expensive approach to keeping your content current is to allow your users to create content for you. User-generated content from testimonials, forums, and reviews provides your users and the search engines with fresh content, while also providing valuable feedback to you and your users about the highlights of your Web site.

Another approach to keeping content current is through the use of free content aggregation systems such as Really Simple Syndication, or RSS. RSS technology allows you to subscribe to various content sources, such as relevant news and blog feeds, and then automatically post that content to your Web site.

For example, you can use RSS to update your Web site on a daily basis with select content on subjects that deal directly with the theme of your Web site. Please keep in mind that although use of content aggregation systems helps to keep some of your Web site content fresh, content aggregation systems alone cannot lead your Web site to high search-engine ranking.

Because RSS syndicates duplicate content, which can cause search engines to penalize your search-engine ranking, you also need to make weekly or monthly updates to the original content on each of your Web pages. Integrating RSS feeds into your Web site requires moderate to advanced technical skills. The most common approach to integrating RSS feeds is using the programming language PHP.

There are a plethora of free content aggregation systems available. For example, just about every popular blog allows you to join their RSS feed, and other sources exist such as Google News and Yahoo News. Free content aggregation provides a quick and easy approach to updating your Web site with fresh content, especially if the theme of your Web site is broad and not overly technical. If your Web site deals with very specific issues, such as medical services, programming, or aeronautics, you should consider a paid content aggregation service such as YellowBrix.

YellowBrix, located at www.yellowbrix.com, is a leading paid online content aggregator that offers real-time, online syndicated content from reliable and respected premium sources and numerous industry-specific trades. The YellowBrix aggregation system offers up to 130,000 breaking news stories a day gathered from thousands of trusted sources such as USA Today, the Washington Post, the BBC, and the Associated Press.

YellowBrix offers a free 30-day trial demonstration, along with several different levels of paid service once your trial expires. Another approach to keeping content fresh is to launch a company blog. A blog can serve several useful purposes, including keeping your visitors informed and educated, and allowing your Web site to build authority in the eyes of search engines.