In all honesty, your design doesn't work at all, it is simply too plain and has that feel of being out dated. Text heavy sites aren't supposed to have out of this world, absolutely amazing super sharp designs however a simple design that looks modern, clean and professional could be made up to better suite your needs, making your viewers stop for that extra minute to take a look around. Good content is extremely important however if your design fails in any way, that can really impact your traffic and how long they stick around for.
If you're wanting to improve your SEO you should consider a simple redesign of your current website, include images and make sure your website is properly optimized. Right off the bat one issue I found was that your site has an immediate H2 tag but no H1 tag, i'm not too sure why that is. I would look into that as well. Do you have a sitemap? If you do, have you submitted your sitemap to Google, Yahoo and Bing? if you don't have a sitemap, get on it asap since that is also a good thing to have.
Make sure all of your code (HTML, CSS and any javascript you may have) are all properly applied, clean and in use. The list literally goes on depending on how far you want to get your site with SEO. Traffic is key, without it, it's pointless having a site at all so there are quite a few things you'll need to keep in mind when you decide to revamp your current site.
I hope this helps you out, if you have any questions or want additional pointers, please let me know
I wish you all the best with your website
Chris
My comments are strictly for constructive criticism so please do not take any offense to my comments as they are only intended to help guide you to better solutions that work.