Whether a website is for business purposes or just as a collection of hobby information, updating the information with new, added resources convinces people to keep coming back for more. It also helps to actively protect copyrighted material included on the site.
Search Engines Track Changes
Most people find websites today utilizing search engines. And these search resources generally place websites that have active updating at the top of their search results lists. While they will still list stagnant websites, they tend to pile up at the bottom of the results as much as ten pages deep. Since the average Internet viewer only looks at the first three pages of search results, items that list deeper are essentially non-existent.
Don’t Let Links Get Old
Too often websites are designed with quite a bit of external linking. Unfortunately, if left to sit, it involves an assumption that the link destination is not changing anything either. Many a website has been found to be left orphaned as viewers click on links that change to being defunct or inaccurate. It says two things: the destination changed and the website owner hasn’t been around to pay attention to the upkeep need.
Out-of-Date, Out of Mind
For websites that are designed specifically for updating, a lack of it becomes very obvious. Especially with blogs or date-stamped pages, people can tell immediately if a website owner is still working on anything. Blogs have to be updated with a new post at least once a week. On a good schedule, blog posting tends to occur twice or three times a week for maintaining traffic.
Date-stamped news postings have the same effect a blog post. In many cases, the need for news may even be greater on these websites with new items needing to be posted daily or hourly.
Copyright Concerns
Finally, if there are any included images or works on the website that are copyrighted, the related website notice needs to be update. Otherwise, an unscrupulous person might think the owner isn’t paying attention anymore and may try to make the work his own, stealing it for his own website.
