For many small businesses, these hard economic times have been a make it or break it time. The price of everything is going up. This includes advertising. It’s getting harder and harder to find affordable advertising that actually has a decent ROI. What a lot of small business owners miss is that they already have a resource that can bring in loads of new customers. And it’s sitting right under their nose. It’s their 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. If you find that this is the case for you, here are some tips to optimize your website so it will rank higher in the search engines. A while back I talked to a Houston SEO Expert who said that he used the tips below to routinely rank small business websites so his Customers would dominate their local niches.

Start by removing any music or flash components you might have on your website. These components are not necessary for an optimized website. In fact, Flash and Javascript can actually hurt your SEO efforts. 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. Plus, search engines can not read Flash or Javascript code, so they add absolutely no SEO benefit to your Website. Ditch them.

Next, make sure your main title reflects what your business is about. If you own a widget store, don’t simply call it ‘My Store’. Let’s say your name is Bob and you sell Widgets. Don’t put Bob’s Emporium in the Title, even if that is really what your business name is. Your Title should tell people what your business does.

If at all possible, there should be a page on your website for each product, or group of similar products, or services your company offers. Following the example I gave you above, your widget store might have pages that look like this; Bob’s Widget Outlet, Bob’s Groovy Widgets, Bob’s Round Widgets, etc.

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. It doesn’t have to a lot, repeating the keywords 2 to 3 times on the page is enough. Don’t overdo it and make your page look spammy. Stuffing keywords into a page is a no-no and can get you into hot water with both your visitors and the search engines. Image is everything. Any good Small business consultant will tell you that!

You want to know the most important part of SEO optimizing your site? It’s linkbuilding. Links are the magic bullets that will get your site ranked higher. Make sure (if you can) that all links use anchor text. 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. Relevant anchor text is the single most important thing about SEO’ing your website. 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