I've heard this many times, and its easy to understand that Google likes fresh pages that are updated regularly and may rank them higher. However what if I have some sort of reference page (I.E an Hex Color Code Reference Page) that virtually NEVER changes, is that going to substantially effect my page rank for say the term "Html Colors" (just an example)? If so is there a way I could deal with that without getting myself blacklisted?
You should be able to do well just work on seo and get links to your site from similar sites. Alot of sites have static pages and do well.
One of my site's pages has been number 1 in Google for its main keyword for more than a year, even though I haven't made any changes to it during that time. Eventually it might start dropping, but so far it hasn't.
Well, the important thing is links and the fact that the content itself is useful and appreciated. If you have useful contents people start linking to it as long as you advertise more. Static pages, do well, especially static pages that have provided useful information for many many years. I know this one site: TAT and it's used HTML in a static process for many many years, and still ranks extremely well and gets some of the most traffic in its subject.
rank them higher? content doesnt always alter ranks, if its serps then static pages have a higher chance of getting higher rank since the content is unchanged, but if the site isnt changed for 3 years then it just looks inactive and can lose its rank i guess its just how they work it really, u'll never know how google ranks most of the time
It can remain unchanged and rank well if it continually is getting backlinks. If you want to have fresh content maybe add an rss feed on the page somewhere but make sure its related. For a color table i know there are design rss feeds specialising in color choices.
If you kept on building links then it will rank the same or even higher even if it's still the same page content.