If not, you should be and now there is no excuse because you can be online for free! Sound too good to be true? This article explains how.Google Sites (sites.google.com) allows you to set up free websites up to 100Mb which is plenty for a basic site with some pictures on to get you up and running with an online presence, you can have as many pages as you want too. If you feel daunted by the sound of setting up your own site on the web, don’t be as it’s really simple so long as you’re able to use the internet (you’re reading this so I’m sure you can) and if you can use any simple word processor you can set up your Google sites- site. Also there are help pages If you get stuck and forums too! If you go to ‘Getting British Business Online’ you can get a free.co.uk web address. If you then mix this with all the free online social media sites like twitter and Facebook by making your own fan page you’ll start to draw more people to your website.There are some rules to good website design but some simple guide lines are don’t use lots of different fonts and colours, write descriptive text about your business be sure the first 2 lines on your home page of your site aren’t all about you how long you’ve been trading as a company make it about what your visitor is going to get from you. Also use a couple of pictures and a video is also great too.After you have your site set up you can then start using Google Analytics (https://www.google.com/analytics) which is another free tool from Google, with Analytics you insert a piece of code into your Google site which looks like this UA-12345-67 and then Analytics starts tracking how many visitors come to your website and from where. By knowing this information you can then concentrate your efforts on where you’re getting the most hits from.Once you have your free site up and running, it’s a great idea to show people your expertise about your industry by using Google’s free Blogger site (blogger.com) and create a Weblog or Blog, If you write a post of about 500 to 1000 words every week or so on your industry, the changes, how you help people and give out tips and advice people that are interested will be reading your blog know you’re the expert and then click through to your site so you are getting more hits.Of course all this means you’ll get more business, but you can even make money from your site using Google AdSense where Google places Ads on your site and when visitors click the Ads you’ll be paid!Don’t expect for your website to be found straight away and business to come flooding in though, as your site will be like a very small needle in a massive hay stack! It will take time for the website to be indexed by the search engines so that when people use a keyword relevant to your site it gets found, this can take six months to a year and sometimes longer. You always need to be updating your site and the more often you update it by adding content the better.One great way to be found is by using Google Places (Google.co.uk/places) this is great if you are a local business, add your details to Google local and you’ll be found at the top of Google along with 6 other businesses on a Google map so when someone searches for your industry plus a location you should be found at the top of Google. Be sure to get customers to write reviews on your Google Places page though as it will put you above the competition.Good luck with your site.