Web marketing is a hot topic: books and websites on the subject abound. Read them at your leisure, but if you've got less time, here are some simple (and cost-effective) things you can do to get your name out on the web.

To start with, do you have to have a website to promote your business on the web? No, not necessarily, but it sure helps. So help yourself by building your own website.

To get yourself a basic promotional website you can choose from numerous DIY options. Yellow Pages (www.yellow.co.nz) for example, offers a reasonable DIY facility. Another is a locally developed web content editor called MyWebsite, which I used to build my website (go to aboutit.co.nz for more info). For less than $300 and a few evenings of effort, I now have a multi-page site with all the bells and whistles I need. And to do it I needed no more technical nous than I need for using Microsoft Word.

You can think of a basic website such as mine is a bit like a sandwich board outside a local retailer. Not flash, but functional. But if you want to start selling product or services directly off your site, you'll have to go for a more sophisticated e-commerce capable system, such as that developed by Dunedin company emedia (www.emedia.co.nz).

Now that you've got a website, and you want to be found, getting listed on the likes of Google (www.google.co.nz) is a must. But just getting listed isn't enough: you have to be sure that in your category you're within the first four or five listings on the first results page.

This is quite a challenge, and while there are utilities available on the net to help you do this, getting someone who specialises in the arcane discipline of search engine optimisation to help you will be very useful investment, and the results will be plain to see.

But that's just the free listings. You'll have noticed in Google on the right hand column occasionally a series of small ads. These are paid for listings, called adwords.

Adwords are cost-effective and economical, not only because they appear only against relevant searches, but also because you really only pay for what you get, as you're charged just for the number of times your ad is clicked on.

Ads that are relevant to the recipient's interest perform far better than if they're irrelevant. Like, for example, when I was searching for info about a beach holiday in Fiji. We ended up at a place which had advertised itself via adwords.

A feature of adwords is that you can nominate how much you'll pay per click (down to only a few cents each) and nominate an upper monthly limit for your total spend - so no need to worry about a shocking bill. If there are ads for competing businesses, the order of display is determined by how much you elect to pay per click and the relevance of your ad to the search.

If you want to be displayed at the top of the list (though I suggest that there's no need - number two or three will do) you just nominate a figure well above your next competitor. As long as it's relevant, the good folk at Google will display your ad at the top of the list, yet charge you only one cent more than the next ad displayed. Isn't that nice of them?

A useful feature of adwords is the facility to test out various key phrases (search terms) to see how often the phrases have been used recently in searches. You can use this facility to test out different phrases so you get the combination that best suits your products or services. A similar facility is provided by Overture (http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/), while wordtracker (www.wordtracker.com) does it, for a fee, across an extensive range of search engines.

And while Google hogs the press nowadays, remember also to register your site with local search sites such as SearchNZ.co.nz and Pipers (http://www.piperpat.co.nz/nz/). Pipers, by the way, seems to be good at getting listings for other sites on the likes of Google.

But don't stop at the search engines. Make sure you display your website address (aka URL) everywhere you can: business card, letterhead, email signatures, brochures and advertisements are the obvious places. Look around you: URL's are everywhere! For example, if your business uses delivery vans, make sure the address is plastered over the outside of every van.

But maybe your product or service is one that has a very specific audience. If you're lucky, that audience has some sort of meeting place on the web, be it a usergroup, forum or community page, or e-zine. Simply by becoming involved in discussions you can get your product or service known. But be subtle. Overt promotion, except through a simple and succinct signature phrase, is a definite no-no.

See if you can get some press coverage. You're most likely to get some joy through a publication which focuses on the same sector as your business. Association newsletters are another vehicle which you might use to get your URL known.

You could also consider writing articles on relevant topics for posting on user-community sites.

If your product is software, you might consider the shareware/freeware route. A local developer claims to have made tens of thousands of dollars, without any promotion at all, simply by putting his application on the net and asking for donations from people who downloaded the software and liked it. More formal shareware/freeware options are at download.com (www.download.com) and Tucows (www.tucows.com), amongst others.

Finally, here's a trick a friend of mine told me about. Try selling your product via a trading site, like local site TradeMe (www.trademe.co.nz) or eBay (www.ebay.com). I've not tried this but it could be a useful way to get some buzz happening amongst people in your target audience.

How much have we spent so far? Around three hundred dollars for the website, plus not very much for adwords, plus some of your time. Not bad eh?

Disclosure: Alec and aboutit.co.nz owner Ian Mitchell are both practice leaders of independent management consultancy the IE3 Group and the Vital Marketing website is built on the AboutIT platform. Apart from that link Alec has no commercial relationship with any of the above-mentioned companies.