It goes without saying that in order to compete in today's market (not to mention the current downturn) you need to have a website. Not only do you need a website, you need to have visitor traffic coming to your website. This is where SEO - search engine optimization - comes in. You need to know how to get the main search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN, to pick up your website, and to rank it highly.
A good place to begin learning about all this is at http://www.searchenginewatch.com. Go there, read the articles, lurk on the forums, until you begin to get a handle on what SEO is all about. If you're not tech-handy yourself, go somewhere like Craigslist, and under "Services - Computer" see if you can find someone local to you who can work with you.