I hear time and time again that a site which is updated regularly benefits in the SERPs. What I have yet to figure out is, what exactly constitutes as an update? Does changing a single word count as an update? Does an added paragraph or two on an already existing page work? Or do you need to add an entire new page itself? Do news/RSS feeds count as updated content?
You may learn more from this post: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2006/09/better-details-about-when-googlebot.html
Like most SEO things, common sense applies, and many other factors are at play. If there's no reason to update a page, don't update it. If there is a reason, update it. Consistent updates to your site are good for your visitors - but then again, consistently updated reference material on relatively static subject matter isn't a good thing. Don't spend too much time concerning yourself with trying to put updates in for SEO purposes. If you do have relatively static content, it would be worth adding a blog and writing fresh articles on the subject, and in those articles, linking to your relevant static pages consistently.
Develop whats called a rotator and you simply load into the rotator 5 documents it then randomly gives that document a time limit between 1 - 3 weeks. Then they documents rotate giving you the effect of a active site. 127.0.0.1
On a home page of one of my sites I have a "Site last up-dated XXXX" which I up-date whenever I up-date any sub pages. I do belive it helps a little even though I'm only changing a couple of charectors.
Update means adding fresh contents for your site. Changing a single word won't give much votes to your site. Also as Google said don't make websites for bots make it for human. Its the quality of the content that counts.
One thing to add... If a page is rarely updated, spiders will hit it less frequently looking for updates. It doesn't mean they won't come around, just they'll come around less frequently because the page has a history of being static. Frequent updates, however, do not equate to frequent spider visits. The more popular a frequently updated page is, the more frequent the spider visits are. I don't know that what I'm stating is a set of hard and fast rules, it's merely my observations from my own limited experience.
These include many things actually. Updating with new information, new products and services, new articles and industry news does add a freshness to a website and also more user gets atttracted. Blogs can be another good source for updating your content.
If your main page had a few images and paragraphs that change content because of the site design, but stick to the same, 10 articles say, would that count as constant updates from google's eye?
thanks for this one anyway, for me, an update means changing the content of the site. a new and fresh content. but as what they say, update if the site needs to be updated and vice versa no need to update if there's no reason to do so