Most small businesses begin with a small website, after all, the costs of creating a custom website can be out of reach for many small business owners. Especially start ups and home based businesses.

But the truth is, the cost is SO worth it! The monies spent on a custom website, especially one that is Search Engine Friendly will come back to the website owner in multiples! Not only will the website owner save money on re-designing the website but because the website is already structured to attract those search engine spiders, the site will naturally gain ground in the search engines.

But, can small businesses really benefit from SEO services (Search Engine Optimization)? Yes, if they put some muscle into their websites. The days of creating a 10 page website and expecting that to compete on the engines are pretty much gone. As the larger companies output websites filled with information and data and the “content” that search engines just love, the small business website owners need to do what they can to continuously add information, quality information, to their websites.

How can they do this?

1) Look at the long tail. Keyword phrases that don’t bring in a ton of traffic but also don’t have much competition are GOLD. Go ahead and look at your website logs. I will guarantee that the total number of visitors that you received last month from your Long Tail keyword phrases is more than the total number of visitors from your high competition phrases.

What should you do? - Create more pages on your website, you can do this slowly, adding one new page a month. Target each new page towards a long tail keyword phrase. By the end of the year, you’ll have 12 new pages bringing in more visitors. And an added bonus of long tail keyword phrases is that the type of visitor who is typing in this phrase is usually ready to “buy” - not just browse.

2) Go Social! Join those social networks like Linked In, FaceBook, Twitter, whatever other social network might be related to your industry. Not only are these places great for networking, but they offer you a place to link TO your website.

3) Write, Write, Write, Write, Write!!!!! - The absolute cheapest, most effective method of marketing on the Internet is to write articles, submit articles, press releases, blogs, online newsletters, comments on forums and social networks. Use anchor text in those articles and you’ve got incoming links TO your website. It’s really that simple.

So, although SEO is getting more and more competitive, there absolutely is a way for small businesses to benefit from SEO. And so they should, after all, what’s the point of having a business website if it doesn’t bring you business?