Texas is the best place to own a small business, according to a study conducted by the Development Counselors International. Thirty-three percent of executives surveyed said Texas’s favorable tax system, low cost of living and business-friendly atmosphere merited the state the number one spot to own a business.

North Carolina came second in the list compiled by site selection consultants, mid-sized companies and large companies. Texas and North Carolina were the only ones chosen by each category of respondents. Executives from mid-sized companies also included Nevada, Georgia and South Carolina in their top five while larger companies opted for Tennessee. Site selection consultants ranked Alabama and Florida in their top five.

Networking can be a life-line for your small business. Choosing the right events and making the right business connections can accelerate company growth. Crain’s offers a great guide for business events in larger cities, organized by industry. However, conferences and expos can be pricey.

Here are some inexpensive alternatives:

• Local Chamber of Commerce
• Industry Associations
• Local Charities
• Minority/Women/Entrepreneurial Associations
• Online Networks like LinkedIn or Ning

Last month, Search Engine Strategies held their annual conference in New York City to educate online businesses on the latest internet marketing trends and tips. Biz2Credit attended the week long expo to bring you the most up to date information on how to improve your sites organic search ranking.

Here are a few takeaways:

Fact: Top-notch software engineers at Google, Yahoo! and Live constantly refine search algorithms to weed out keyword spammers and provide users with relevant content.

Tip: Make a list of frequently asked questions by clients. By publishing articles and blogging on your site about these issues, you can build credibility with search engines and potential customers.

Fact: Believe it or not, there are still people out there with dial-up connections. Image heavy sites can be a slow internet connector’s worst nightmare. Plus, search engine robots (also known as bots or spiders) have trouble crawling sites with a lot of Flash, JavaScript or Java pages.

Tip: Stick with HTML tags. Embedding links in JavaScript, Flash or Java blocks spiders from crawling and indexing internal pages. Disable Java on your browser to see for yourself what information search engines analyze.

Fact: Complex global, secondary and tertiary navigations without breadcrumbs (page tracking) make it difficult for a user to figure out where they are and where they want to go. Search engines need help too.

Tip: Submit a Sitemap in XML format to all major search engines and post a Sitemap in HTML to your Site for users. Also, pay attention to title tags and headlines. Google’s algorithm heavily weights keywords in page titles and displays them on search results.

Check back regularly for more in depth and technical advice on how to improve your sites ranking.

Never, never, never stop marketing your business. Despite the economic downturn, we can’t stress enough how important it is to maintain brand awareness and promote your product or service.

Here’s a couple of inexpensive marketing strategies that we often see small business owners overlook.

• Create a Web presence: Every small business should have a Web site. In the age where “google it” has replaced “look it up in the phone book,” having a simple and informative Web site builds brand awareness and credibility.
• Blog: Regardless of industry type, web marketing can be extremely rewarding for your business. For example, Butler Sheetmetal Ltd started a blog called Tinbasher. Within 6 months, the company Web site generated over 50,000 unique visits a month. The blog helped the company communicate with potential customers on a more personal level. As a result the company received media awards and coverage on the success of Tinbasher.
• Contribute to online forums: Establish yourself as an industry authority in the blogging community. Contribute your experiences and answer questions in online forums and link it back to your company blog or Web site. You’ll position your company as a leader in your field.
• Circulate a newsletter: Circulate a monthly or quarterly newsletter throughout your client community to maintain a strong brand identity. Take this opportunity to highlight new products, services or company achievements.
• Experiment with multimedia: Video can be an extremely cost effective marketing medium. Blendtec, a company that manufactures blenders, posted a video on YouTube of their product blending an iPhone. The video quickly became an online hit and helped quadruple their sales over a 6 month period. The video only cost the company $100 to shoot.