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The major challenge of search engine optimization (SEO) for small business owners is that the rules change often. Although some small business owners may have a basic understanding of SEO techniques, many do not have the time to stay on top of current trends. Therefore most small business websites are either completely unoptimized for today's search engines or they have some optimiziation using oldand/or outdated steps. In this article, I will share some website optimization tips that are beneficial to most websites, have stood the test of time, and are relatively simple to implement.

First, your site must be visible to search engines, which is not the same as being visible to humans. Search engines cannot understand and rank your web site if their "spiderbots" cannot follow links between pages. Therefore, every website should have a sitemap at a minimum. Simply do a search for "create sitemap" to find sites where you can create and download your own sitemap.

In addition to a sitemap, your website should use HTML-based text links to connect all your pages together in a logical fashion. Some search engines have difficulty reading links contained within certain programming languages such as Flash and Javascript. While a sitemap will help the engines see a basic outline of your website, using text links will enable your site to be indexed and ranked appropriately.

After ensuring your site can be found, the next step is to provide quality information, or content. Quality content must be relevant to your site, offer a unique perspective, and be timely in nature. "Timely" essentially means frequency; more frequently-updated sites seem to rank better than other similar sites. "Relevant" means the content should be related to the overall theme of your website. Websites with no focused topics find top rankings impossible to achieve. After adding your new content, be sure to link your other pages to the new content - taking care to use descriptive words in your link text (often called "anchor text").

Sites that offer useful content updated regularly will eventually attract a lot of internet surfers. However, SEO for small business cannot be considered complete without strategies to speed up the process. The general term for this process is link development (or "link-building") and is a third major step in search engine optimization. Building link popularity can involve actions such as sending out keyword rich press releases whenever newsworthy events occur regarding your business. Other forms of ethical link development include contacting other websites and directories with similar content or groups and request for a link to the site.

There are many web designers that do small business web design at an affordable cost. When considering potential web design firms, consider more than just cost alone - ask about their knowledge of search engine optimization techniques. Websites designed without even basic SEO considerations run the risk of being overlooked or ignored by search engines.

An SEO web designer's strategy is to increase natural web traffic and improve your search engine rankings. True SEO web design isn't a miracle, it's an art that necessitates following a fairly distinct path of website expansion including valuable reader content, properly design pages, significantly placed key search terms, search term modification and page assessment. Search engine optimization is first about getting your site listed in the search engines, secondly about ranking well and, most importantly, about bringing the right visitors to your website.