There are very good reasons why you should update your website on a regular basis.

Here's six of them.

1. Interesting = traffic

   People will keep coming back to your site if there is going to be something new and interesting on it.

   It doesn't have to be brand new different ideas or products, but variations such as reviews, latest industry news or buzz - or even things more personal to the business.

   More traffic = more customers.

2. SEO

   It helps with search engine optimisation. Google likes websites that are updated on a regular basis.

3. Shows you're open

   New content like news and industry updates let's people know your business is active and communicating with it's customers. There is nothing worse than a news section or blog that hasn't been updated for six months. People will think you are either on holiday, the business has closed or worse – you don't care.

   But you really want to show people you are on top of your game, right?

4. Building your content

   It demonstrates knowledge of industry and topic. Adding guides tips or commentary will, over time, grow your website into a body of work that show off the depth of knowledge, range of products or expertise available to customers.

   It can make small businesses look bigger than they really are.

5. Marketing

   It encourages back-links and mentions. Fresh, on-topic content encourages people to link back to your site from their websites, blogs, Twitter stream or Facebook page. You get a social media marketing and search optimisation boost in one go.

6. Inspiration

   It gives you something to tweet about. Wondering what to put on your Facebook business page or what to tweet about ? Link back to your latest content – easy as!

How often should I update my site?

Some search engine or blogging (so-called) guru's will tell you that it should be everyday. While some businesses can update their site all day each day with new product material, news and other updates this is not feasible for some. At the end of the day, it depends on your business.

If you have a large range of products that change frequently, then we'd recommend that you update the site at least weekly if not every few days.

If you are service oriented, then we'd recommend every week. Industry sector's such as health, finance, IT and other professional industries tend to have a continuous stream of news, industry updates and trends available that can be reported and commented on.

If you can't update your own site, consider placing content on other sites in the form of articles, commentary, blogs, tweets, diggs etc.

But - quality matters more than quantity so if it means a blog post once a month that is kick-arse and get's people talking and linking to you then this is obviously better than a continuous stream of low quality, copied junk.