Your mother always told you, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” Well, the same saying comes in effect when publishing content to your Web pages.

If you do not have any real content or information to give out, maybe that second or third Web page about your hamster really isn’t in order? Looking at it from the search engine optimization view, Google ranks folks mainly by useful content. If you are delivering the same old freeze-dried content on every single Web page, you might be hurting yourself more than helping yourself.

Gerry McGovern at Web Site Notes has written a great article on the subject of when to publish new content.

Some organizations hardly ever bother to update their Web sites. There are stories on the homepage that can be months - if not years - out of date. These organizations simply don’t understand that leaving this content on the Web site is damaging to the professional reputation of the organization.

However, some organizations publish new content even when they shouldn’t. They fall into the trap of thinking that publishing is about news. Yes, an element of publishing can be about news, but that is not what the core purpose of publishing is. At a basic level, publishing is about getting the right content to the right person at the right time at the right cost.

The rule of thumb to follow is, if it is useful, then go for it. If you are just posting for the sake of posting something, then you might want to think again about how relevant the content might be to your Web site.