Adding fresh, updated content to your website is the surest way to get search engines engines to spider your site more often. Search engines are known to index sites updated on a regular basis more frequently.

Updating and adding to the content on your website frequently will give you an advantage in the search results and also help you expand the number of search terms or key phrases you can get found for.

There are many tools and resources you can use to automate the process of adding fresh, updated content and creating more spider-food on your website.

Here are six ways to add fresh content to your site:

- Weblogs or Blogs

A blog is an online diary or journal. Setting up a blog is easy and the many free blogging services make it possible for just about anyone to get started.

Several blog programs allow your users to create an account and post their comments to your blog, thereby adding more fresh content for you.

I use Blogger.com to create my own blogs like the Number One In Your Niche Blog.

- Newsletters or Ezines

Publishing a regular newsletter or ezine is an excellent way to add content at regular intervals and get repeat traffic to your site. Archiving your newsletters online is one way of automatically updating your pages and adding new content.

As an example see the archives of my newsletter online

- Content Management Systems

Content Management Systems (CMS) allow you or your website visitors to add, edit or delete content to your website without having to create and format the pages manually.

Article exchange scripts are a type of content management system. There are many zero-cost or open-source content management systems like PHP-Nuke or Post-Nuke, that are often included with hosting packages and require no set up.

Xongoo! CMS is a search engine friendly and zero-cost content management system

Other open-source CMS include PHP-Nuke and Drupal

- Forums/Bulletin Boards

A forum or bulletin board is an excellent tool for building content and creating an online community that will bring repeat traffic. Many web hosts now provide packages that include bulletin board scripts on your server.

The best part about a forum is that it allows your visitors to build your content for you. However, it does require time and energy, and some technical knowledge to moderate and maintain forums.

phpBB is a popular open-source bulletin system

- Reviews/Interviews

Reviewing and publishing a write-up on new products or resources in your field is becoming a favourite technique with affiliate marketers looking to boost their commissions.

It is also an excellent way to get found for the keywords related to the product you review. You can also do regular interviews of experts in your industry and put up the transcript on your site.

My product reviews have allowed me to get high rankings for specific keywords of my choice

- RSS or Newsfeeds

RSS is the latest craze in online publishing because it allows syndication of *expert* news and content that is regularly updated at the source.

Using RSS feeds you can enhance your site content without the need to write a single line on your own. Search engines love RSS feeds and are known to spider pages with such feeds more often.

Express RSS is a tool that allows you to add RSS feeds to your site in under a minute

Copyright 2004 Priya Shah

Priya Shah is the author of the search engine optimization guide, Number One In Your Niche and edits the newsletters Be a Whiz at eBiz! and The Glutathione Report