Virtually every organisation worldwide is examining its commitment to cyberspace, but experts warn that without proper marketing and promotion, web sites can quickly become cyber elephants.

"The web cliché, 'if you build it they will come', has lulled many online marketers into a false sense of opportunity," says Charles Sayers, a US-based internet marketing consultant. "The truth is that web site traffic building has its own set of PR needs and requires its own system of aggressive, attention-getting tactics."

Mr. Sayers says businesses looking to maximise the web's potential should first attempt to determine how many of their customers are using the internet, and how easily they will be able to reach this market. "Don't rationalise the number. Don't inflate your projections," he says. "Be conservative. And determine whether it's a number you can live with."

Given the global market the web represents, there are probably few businesses that would not benefit from a web site and related promotion strategy. Companies wishing to promote their site, or rethink their existing strategy, should take advantage of as many marketing techniques as possible. Here are some of the most important:

* Virtual press centres: One of the priorities, consultants say, should be to create a web version of the traditional corporate press centre. Probably one of the most overlooked opportunities on the web, virtual press centres featuring news releases, company executive speeches, company white papers, financial reports and the like are considered a goldmine by harried reporters looking for detailed data on a particular company, industry or industry trend, according to Craig Settles, author of Cybermarketing: Essentials for Success, published by Ziff-Davis.

Good business models for virtual press centres can be found at Telewest (www.telewest.co.uk), The London Clinic (www. lonclin.co.uk) and Morgan Stanley Dean Witter (www. msdw.com).

* Exploiting search engines: Equally important for site promotion is finding ways to attract traffic via the web's search engines, Mr Settles says. As most internet users know, seasoned surfers turn to search engines such as Yahoo! (www.yahoo.com), Excite! (www.excite.com) and U.K. Directory Search Engine (www. ukdirectory.co.uk), to help them find specific information quickly.

Essentially, retrieving informa tion is simply a matter of typing a keyword or two into a search engine, and waiting for related links to pop up on your PC screen. For example, when the phrase "online banking" was recently keyed into the U.K. Directory Search Engine the first link returned was Accelerex (www.accelerex.com),aLondon-based maker of customer information management software. And when the keywords "online stock trading" were entered into the directory, MBA Systems, (www.mba sys.co.uk) a financial software maker based in Winchester, was the first link-up.

Given the great power these search engines have to steer thousands of net cruisers to specific sites, it should come as no surprise that a number of web-positioning companies have cropped up to help clients be among the first links the search engines return. A good source of information on these companies and search engines in general can be found at Search Engine Watch (www.searchengine watch.com).

Meanwhile, if you prefer to bring your web positioning in-house, there are a number of tools available. At Virtual Promote (www.virtual promote.com) -auseful site devoted to the art of site promotion - you will find links to dozens of sites that will list your web site with hundreds of search engines and directories simultaneously.

There are also several software packages you can use to help promote your site. An example is Web Site Traffic Builder, by Intelliquis (www.intelliquis.com). The package automatically registers your site with more than 900 search engines and puts your business in the appropriate category in each one.

You can also use the software to check your site's position on the internet's eight most popular search engines, and trigger it to resubmit your site periodically. A similar program is WebPosition Gold by FirstPlace Software (www.webpositiongold.com).

If you are doing your web positioning in-house, you will also want to use one of the web-positioning companies' main techniques for achieving favourable exposure on the search engines: the creation of "hook pages", or "doorway pages". Hook pages offer information on a highly specialised subject area associated with a particular business, and are often listed by the search engines as a link that is distinct from a company home page, says Mr Settles. Etrade (www.etrade.com), for example, offers a hook page offering free stock advice online - a "second doorway" that in turn links back to its home page.

* Using links effectively: Another tried and tested strategy is to link your web site with every other non-competitive page on the internet that shares the same interest. The European Molecular Genetics Quality Network (www.emqn.org), based in Manchester, for example, offers links to a number of related organisations. The Association for Business Conferences and Events (www.martex.co.uk/ace), another UK site, offers links to its members' sites. Yet a further good example of links leveraged effectively is 100hotFinance (www.100hot.com/directory/ business/finance.html), which offers links to 100 of the most popular finance sites on the web. "Link until you drop," advises Mr Settles.

Once you are comfortable with the look and feel of your site, you will want to enter as many web site award schemes as possible, says Mr Sayers. Sites that are judged worthy of an award are given the equivalent to a graphic blue ribbon they can post on their home page. And the awarding service also provides a free link to the winning page from its own home page - a perk that can generate thousands of visits to a new web site, he says.

For example, Top Ten Links (www.toptenlinks.com), offers a "Top Ten Internet Banks" list, a ranking based on ratings by net surfers who actually bank online.

Jim Wilson, the marketing expert behind Virtual Promote, says: "Keep in mind that most people who will be surfing to your web site don't know the relative difficulty of earning different awards. All they see is that some people thought your site was good enough to win an award. Go ahead. Apply for everything."

Mr Sayers concludes: "Combining these tactics with a relentless persistence to build your site's traffic will virtually guarantee that within a few short weeks, your access counters (a software tool used to measure visits to a web site) will start spinning like the gallon indicator on a 1950s gas pump."

This concludes the series. Previous articles appeared on March 17 and March 28. Joe Dysart is a California-based internet business consultant, e-mail: joedysart @aol.com