Everyone is talking about recession, gas prices and rising energy costs. Top 500 companies are cutting back on their marketing budget and laying off workers.

How can your business survive tough times? How can your business grow while making sure it's not losing money with bad advertising?

Most business owners still think that marketing is all about spending money to attract visitors. When I talk to small business owners about marketing they think I want their money. However, advertising is just a small part of marketing. Marketing is far beyond the advertising world.

The most effective form of marketing is optimizing your business, website and ads to instantly achieve higher profits. Optimization has been overlooked more than any other thing by most small businesses.

In this article I would like to share with you five solid website optimization techniques to grow your business without spending more on advertising.

1. Analytics - One of the first step to improve website conversion is to install analytics software on your website. Analytics software can provide you all the important information you need to understand your target customers including page view, buying habits, needs,wants, requirements and competition.

There are number of free analytics software available on internet with easy installation guide. You can integrate your website with analytics software in one hour or less for a 5-10 page website.

2. Guarantee - If you are not offering any guarantee or risk reversal on your website then you are loosing tons of customers. When you are selling face to face then its easier to put your clients at ease by verbal communication but its extremely difficult to do that on a website.

You must offer some kind of guarantee on your homepage. Guarantee is not limited to money back, you can offer price guarantee, fast shipping, fast service, best quality (verified by third party) and lot more.

3. Incentives - The easiest way to make your customers buy from you and not from your competition is to offer incentives. Incentives can be anything from free shipping to free trial, discounts, coupons, free gift, buy one get one, free product, free second time service.

4. Customer support or contact information - It is estimated that an average user spends not more than 8 seconds on a website. If your website cannot provide a visitor contact information in less than eight seconds then you can loose them forever. Add your telephone number and email on the top left corner of your web page to dramatically improve conversion.

5. Capture information - Setup a small email capture box on your web page. Offer incentive to encourage customers to leave their name and email. Once you have the customer information you can follow up with them easily.