Small businesses don't have the large advertising budgets that some of their competitors do, but without advertising, no one will know you exist. A good Internet marketing plan can make a small business known. But how do you compete on the Internet, especially in a large market like Los Angles?

The two most common ways small business get traffic to their website is search engine optimization, or SEO, and Pay per Click advertising, or PPC. If you are doing Internet marketing in Los Angeles, you can either make your website rank high on local searches with SEO so traffic is naturally directed to your website because you are near the top of the search results or by PPC advertising because you have a nice highlighted ad that is either at the top or on the right sidebar.

Search engine optimization, or organic search, is what comes up in your search as a direct result of having the most relevant website to the terms that were searched. For example, typing in "Internet Marketing Los Angeles" will bring up those websites that are geared towards the local market in Internet marketing. A number of factors, including keyword saturation, links to and from your website, and other factors, determine these rankings. The formula is complicated. To gain the most from your SEO it is usually prudent to hire a professional who specializes in SEO and understands the formula and how certain factors will affect your ranking.

Especially in the larger metro areas, search engine optimization is key because you are often competing with several other small businesses like yourself. Internet marketing in Los Angeles for small businesses means you have to be more search engine friendly to rank higher against all the competitors. Of course, it is important to know that certain factors can actually drop you in the rankings instead of raising you up.

Compared to PPC advertising, which can be costly over time, SEO actually results in about 75 percent of the web traffic that a website will see. However, PPC click results are usually more immediate results. Again, if you search for "Internet marketing Los Angles" and you have pay per click, your ad will show up on the very top of the search, usually one of no more than three paid advertisements for that page. Therefore, even if your website ranked only at 50 for that search in SEO, it may have ranked two for PPC. You are now on the front page.