What is SEO? You've probably heard the term thrown around in meetings about websites and social media. And you may already know that it stands for "Search Engine Optimization." But what does that mean? In short, SEO is the process of getting traffic to your website from the free and organic search results on search engines.

How Search Engines Rank Sites

When someone searches for a term using Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc., the search engine gets information from your page and every other page on the internet to determine what sites are the most relevant to the topic. You can pay, of course, for an ad that puts your information front and center for certain search terms. However, by using the right SEO strategy, you can earn a higher ranking without spending any of your advertising budget. Here's what goes into search result ranking:

Clicks Help SEO

Each time someone searches for "New Homes in Texas", the search engine will keep track of which results are clicked most often. The website with the most clicks will earn a higher ranking. This is a very difficult component to change. If a website has earned a top spot in a search result, it will continue to earn more clicks. If your page is appearing on the fourth, fifth, or later page in the results, it will be very difficult for you to get more organic clicks.

Content Helps SEO

This is one of the best and easiest ways to impact your position in the results. Sites like Google look at the words populating your site. If people are searching for "real estate agent", search engines look for how many times those words appear on your pages. This is why blogging is a great idea! Instead of having five or six pages on your site that point Google in the right direction, a regularly updated blog can add an ever-increasing number of pages. You may have seen places for "Meta Title", "Meta Description" and "Meta Tags" at the bottom of a website editing program. These things are embedded in the page's code, rendering them invisible to your viewer, but very visible to search engines. Again, these all help tell the search engines what your page is about.

Links Help SEO

It's all about relevance. Adding links to other pages on your site is helpful, as long as the links are relevant to the services you're offering. So, by linking to your brokerage website, to lenders, title companies, inspectors, and other vendors, you're helping search engines recognize your value to the topic at hand. If other sites link back to you, it's even better!

Updates Help SEO

A site that isn't updated regularly won't look relevant to search engines. To improve your SEO, make sure your site is regularly updated. Blogs, again, are a great way to update regularly, add content, and add links.

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SOURCES AND FURTHER READING: https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo http://www.mtu.edu/umc/services/digital/seo/ http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/S/SEO.html