You probably know by now that your web site needs to be updated on a regular basis. Updating your site is vital because search engines love fresh content.

In layman's terms, here's a brief rundown: the itsy bitsy spider comes to crawl your web site and indexes your pages and content. Two weeks later, he comes back to crawl your site again.

He notices that the content hasn't changed, so instead of coming back in two weeks, he comes back in four weeks. Again he notices that the content hasn't changed, so now he adjusts his crawl rate to every six weeks.

If your site's crawl rate has been reduced, you'll be fighting an uphill battle to get your new content indexed in a timely manner, once you do publish new content.

Since the spider isn't visiting your site very often, it could take weeks and weeks before he comes across your new information. This is bad news if you're trying to run a seasonal sale, or if you have any timely information you'd like to spread the word on.

Fresh content is great for your real-live site visitors also. If your visitors come to your site and never find anything new or valuable, the chances are they won't be visiting very often.

So what happens when you run out of ideas for fresh content? Just snag one of these:

1. Interview an expert.

I love this idea because it is relatively easy, it's fun, and you generally end up with some extremely valuable content.

You can reprint the interview on your site in text format (best for the spiders to crawl) and, if you're trying to earn a bit of revenue, offer a downloadable version as a product.

2. Question and answer sessions.

Invite your visitors and email readers to submit their most pressing questions, then release the answers to these questions as individual posts.

Stagger the questions out over a few weeks or even a few months to encourage your human visitors, as well as your spider visitors, to return to your site often.

3. Customer reviews.

Customer reviews have become so popular on the internet, and the great thing is, almost every site can take advantage of them. Even if your site does not offer a product for sale, you can publish reviews about complimentary products or services from your industry.

If you're offering reviews of other people's products, you can write the reviews yourself, or invite your site visitors to submit their own reviews.

4. Client case studies.

Case studies are a great marketing tool! A detailed before and after story of a client who has benefited from your products or services is sales letter and social proof all in one.

You can "accessorize" the case study with graphics and/or audio and/or videos, but be sure to include plain text also to serve as the "spider food".

5. Top ten lists and checklist.

No doubt you can develop multiple top ten lists and checklists to publish at your web site. Review some of your past articles, your free reports, even the user manuals for the products you sell. I'm willing to bet you can have at least 5 checklists created within an hour.

There you have it, five incredibly easy ways to add fresh content to your web site. Some of these ideas take a bit longer than others but neither are difficult.

Try to add new content to your site at least twice a week, and you're sure to see increased natural traffic in no time.