If you’re a small businessman these days, no one has to tell you that times are tough. Especially if you’re trying to find new ways of bringing in more customers that doesn’t cost an arm and leg. Fortunately many small business owners already have a resource at hand that will help them do just that. It just needs some help. That would be your Website.

While many small businesses have Websites, very few are optimized so that local customers can find them. But the blame really can’t go to the small business person. They’re normally so caught up in the day to day operation of their business that they have no time to learn how to optimize their site. The tips below will help you optimize your small business website so that you can rank higher in the search engines. I asked a Guaranteed Houston SEO consultant how he managed to rank so many sites in Google’s top 10. It’s simple he said. Then he gave me the following tips.

One place to start is the usability of your website. Begin by removing flash movies or any music you might have imbedded on your site. Web designers have a tendancy to sell Flash components at a huge markup to unsuspecting small business owners. I’ve seen a lot of studies published about the Customers experience when using a website. Everyone stated that Flash, Javascript and music turn off web users. What more, search engines such as Google can not read Flash and Javascript. Get rid of them.

You want to make sure that the main keyword that describes your business is in the Title of the main page. I see small business websites without their keyword in the Title all the time. They’re missing out on one of the most important aspects of SEO there is. If all your customers are local and you live in Seattle, your Title might say something like, Bob’s Widgets – Seattle’s Best Widgets.

Every page of your site should be about another aspect of your business. In the example above, you may have pages on Bob’s Blue Widgets, Bob’s Discount Widgets, Bob’s Widgets For Kids, etc. Each of those pages should have Titles that describe what the page is about.

Next, you want to make sure that the specific keywords are in the content of your page. Sounds simple but I see this mistake all the time. Just add the keywords to each of your pages 2 to 3 times will be enough to make that page relevant. Whatever you do, don’t go overboard with this step. It will make your page look spammy. That can get you into trouble with the search engines and make it look spammy to visitors. Image is everything. Any good Small business consultant will tell you that!

Now we get to the meat of SEO. Linkbuilding. Use anchor text links when you start building links back to your site. For example, it’s not enough for someone to have Click Here as a link to your site. You need a link that says Bob’s Widgets or another relevant term describing your page. Ideally, every link that goes to your site should be in anchor text. Also, change the anchor text up. Having every anchor text link to your site with the same keyword can get you into trouble with the search engines.

These tips will get your website moving up in the rankings in short order. There’s really no need to hire a SEO expert unless you would feel more comfortable having a pro do it. As you can see, it’s pretty simple, straightforward stuff. Not the Black Magic some SEO experts try to make you believe it is