Making updates to your web site or blog has many advantages. Updates make visitors more likely to return on a regular basis, they can improve search rankings, and they increase the chance of gaining inbound links or being listed in directories. So, is there such a thing as too many updates?

There is, but only in some circumstances. Here are a few situations where too many updates could become a problem:

A. Low Traffic: If a web site has relatively few visitors, entering many updates could be a waste of time, because too few people will see each update. One approach is to update weekly or daily until the site starts to receive more traffic, then increase their frequency. This is more of a problem if each update permanently replaces the material which came before it, because it further decreases the chance of anyone seeing the previous content.

B. Massive Content: Some blogs have speculated that it can harm search engine rankings if a web site adds a large number of new pages at one time. This issue shouldn’t be a concern unless your updates sometimes involve adding several dozen or hundreds of individual pages on the same day.

If you pay someone to write a large quantity of articles for your website, consider adding them periodically instead of all at once. In addition to the possible SEO benefit, this may also encourage visitors to keep returning (because there will be new content each time they visit the site).

C. Limited Bandwidth: Updates will increase the amount of bandwidth consumed by a web site, especially if they cause users to visit more regularly. Using too much bandwidth is more likely to be a problem for sites located on free web hosting services. It is usually not very expensive to upgrade your bandwidth limit, unless there is an impressively large increase in traffic. If the updates do not replace old material, more storage space will also be used up; however, even the cheapest blog and web site hosting services typically provide enough space for hundreds of articles.

All of these problems apply to some web site operators, but most don’t really need to worry about them. Although there is such a thing as adding too many updates, far more web site and blog owners have difficulty finding the time and inspiration to post updates regularly enough.

“Insight for Search” is a new tool Google has recently introduced in to add to the current Google Trends and AdWords tools. Google claims Insights for Search will help you “see what the world is searching for.”

Basically, the tool should help people better understand what is being searched for on Google as well as to see the details for certain keywords across various geographic regions, verticals and time periods for more insight.

Internet marketers or bloggers that what to determine what kind of content is engaging to more people should consider looking into the tool. One of the most powerful uses it offers is that you can actually narrow your search by categories to figure out which keywords are more popular in certain categories.

Additionally you can simply click the “search” button without entering any words in the search field to find the most popular rising terms for all categories and regions. And, by narrowing your empty search to a specific category you can see the most popular search terms for the category for its history.

This has the potential to be quite a powerful tool for anyone in the online marketing arena because essentially now you know which article topic will be more popular or which keyword is searched for more often in certain areas.

SEO copywriting is the practice of writing promotional material (or “copy”) in a way that optimizes it for search engines. Ideally, effective SEO copywriting should help the web page achieve a high search result ranking, while convincing potential customers to buy a product or service. Here are some more details on what SEO copywriting is and how to best apply it.

Some characteristics of SEO copywriting include appropriate keyword density, the use of keywords (or phrases) that people search for, and search engine (SE) optimized formatting. Attractive and SE-friendly META tags should be used. The copywriting must be in text format; it will not be indexed in results if it is inside an image or animation.

Good SEO copywriting doesn’t compromise clarity for the sake of optimization; it is best to avoid redundant or awkward phrases. Even if it is well optimized, poorly-worded copy has some drawbacks with regard to sales. Customers may question the quality of a company’s services or suspect that the words were translated from a foreign language.

Using bold text and/or H1 (large font) tags for important keywords in SEO copy will help search engines identify the web page’s topic, potentially producing higher rankings. These tags shouldn’t be used excessively and only ought to be applied to words directly related to what the page is about. They also must be words or phrases that people actually search for.

What about using links in SEO copywriting? This is acceptable, but they should open in a new window so that readers are less likely to leave the current page. When the link points to a competitor’s web site (perhaps to compare prices or features), consider utilizing the “nofollow” tag/attribute to prevent the link from giving SEO benefits to the other site.

Any images accompanying the copy/text should include relevant ALT tags. Some SE “spiders” take these into account; people with images turned off or text-only web browsers can also see these tags. It is best if the page containing the SEO copywriting is still fully usable and provides all of the necessary information without images.

To sum it up, SEO copywriting emphasizes relevant search keywords and uses search engine optimized formatting to enhance its ranking in non-paid SE results. At the same time, the copy must be persuasive and hold the reader’s interest, which can often be achieved using the same techniques as effective email or print copywriting.

In online marketing, link bait is the technique of creating content that other web sites and blogs will voluntarily add links to. Link bait often attracts links on message boards and social bookmarking systems as well. It eliminates the cost and/or effort of buying and exchanging links. However, what is considered valid link bait for web site operators to use?

Articles that are timely, original, and interesting often act as good link bait, especially if efforts are taken to make other web site owners aware of them before they become outdated. However, valid link bait of this type shouldn’t make exaggerations, use a deceptive title, or offer poor-quality content. Low quality link bait doesn’t benefit readers and may cause webmasters to eventually become wary of linking to the site in question.

Another example of link bait is to provide free web site tools (like a mortgage calculator) that people can add to their sites and have links embedded in them. A similar option is to give awards or certifications to web sites or products they offer (like software downloads), and hope for links in return. This type of link bait is more valid if the award is only given occasionally to deserving recipients, not to every site with a high PageRank.

Some blog and web site owners (sometimes including major news media) have sacrificed accuracy to produce sensational link bait. Unconfirmed “breaking” stories have sometimes spread throughout the WWW despite being partially or completely false. Most people don’t find this sort of link bait valid, as it distributes useless information and damages the source’s reputation (along with that of every site linking to it, to a lesser extent).

Other ideas for making valid link bait include analyzing or experimenting with something in a way that produces new data, reviewing a product which has just been introduced, or comparing different items in a unique way. Try using established facts to prove an unconventional but valid assertion about an interesting subject; just because data is publicly available doesn’t mean that anyone has drawn the most significant conclusions from it.

Basically, creating valid link bait is a good way to improve a web page’s search engine rankings and attract direct traffic. However, quality and accuracy shouldn’t be disregarded when applying this promotional method; the best and most valid approach is to write up-to-date content in an original style that effectively catches people’s attention.

Some websites use countless pages of poor quality content to attract hits via search engines. Such content is sometimes generated by computer software or created using a template that leaves little difference from one page to the next. Even if these pages are optimized using SEO, they have a number of disadvantages for the website operator, not to mention users. These are some ways of how poor content damages SEO.

1. Links: Other websites are unlikely to add links to poor quality material. No one will comment about the pages on their blogs or post them to social bookmarking systems either. Gaining inbound links is a very important part of SEO, as most search engines give sites and pages better rankings when more links to them exist. Also relevant to SEO is their ability to boost a site’s ranking under keywords used in the link anchor text.

2. Redundancy: This is frequently a problem with poor quality web content. When a site has many pages with almost the same material (aside from a few brief pieces of different information on each page), search engines will detect the redundancy and give preference to more unique/original results from different sites. This consequence worsens if the material has already appeared on other websites.

3. Updating: Many examples of poor website content are never updated. This damages SEO efforts because search engines tend to favor more recently updated material. It can also be a problem for sites with quality content, when they either cannot find new details about a subject or don’t have time to. Allowing users to post comments is one way of enabling a page to “update” without adding new information.

4. Recognition: Regardless of how well a site might rank in search results, more and more people will eventually recognize that it provides poor content, when they see it in search results. This will cause the amount of traffic it receives to decrease over time, and make it harder to recover even if higher quality content is added.

Overall, poor content primarily damages SEO campaigns by having redundancy, being unable to generate inbound links, and/or becoming outdated. Even when SEO efforts successfully attract users to poor quality material, they are liable to find it unsatisfying and become less likely to click ads, make purchases, or return to the same site in the future. It is better to focus upon quality than quantity when creating new content.