The Internet is now an essential marketing and sales tool for any business, large or small.

Large businesses can afford to employ specialist web design companies to meet their requirements, sole traders and small start up companies may find the cost prohibitive.

It is now easy to find software to allow anyone with even basic IT skills  to design your own website but remember design is a skill that many of us will not have, if you can't afford a designer then you may well be better to use a template that comes with your software or can be downloaded free of charge or at low cost from the Internet. Yes, you may see other websites with a similar design but this is probably better than putting something together yourself if you do not have design skills.

For a basic website many web hosting companies offer online web design tools, for example 1 and 1 offers a website builder facility with all of its business hosting packages.

There is little point having a website if no one knows about it, search engine listings are essential especially big ones like Google and Yahoo. Your host company may well offer a search engine registration tool, if not there are many on the web, but be careful some free ones may not include the major search engines. It is easy to do it yourself, just choose the search engines you have heard of and look for a submit site or similar link. Remember the top 3 or 4 engines will probably account for 80% or more of traffic generated by search engines.

Registering is the easy part, getting listed reasonably high up against specific search terms - or keywords - is more difficult. Search engine optimisation is an art rather than a science but again there are search engine optimisation tools - free and paid for - to help you. The key point is to think about what terms or keywords you expect people to search on to find you, then make sure that you use these on pages of your website. Page titles are extremely important, meta data - page description and keywords - should reflect the content of the specific page. Don't be tempted to use your keywords too often on a page - the search engine may reject you if you over do it!

Social networking is the in thing on the Internet, including blogs (or weblogs),  MySpace and YouTube. These are not just for individuals, businesses can use them very effectively to provide dynamic regularly updated information and link them to the main website. Money Jungle has its own blog and MySpace page - if you set up a MySpace page we would love to be your MySpace friend!

Directories - It is worth registering with online directories, some are free others charge a fee, remember that links in ti your website can improve your search engine ranking.

BT Tradespace offers an opportunity to attract new customers and meet new suppliers on a daily basis. Businesses can gain a whole host of benefits when signing up for a FREE Tradespace:

• Raise their online profile- by being found on BT Tradespace and via search engines like Google
• Promote and even sell products and services online with Paypal (transaction fee applies)
• Communicate more effectively with customers via blogs and communities