What is SEO and why do I need it if I don’t even know what it is?

Many realtors never expected to be as technically savvy as they have become in this age of Internet information. But selling in the current era is a totally different animal from what is was even a decade ago. We have to learn the newest technological tricks of the trade to keep up with the competition and stay current and relevant to our clients. Part of staying relevant is educating yourself about the latest innovations in the trade.

One of the most recent trends in website marketing is search engine optimization, SEO for short. This process is part art, part science. SEO is an Internet marketing strategy that attempts to gain top positioning for your site in a search engine’s “natural” results pages. A natural result is one that was not purchased, one that showed up due to the search engine’s research into your website. Top placement on the pages will help you get attention and drive more potential new clients to your site.

When you type in a particular word or phrase into a search engine, it chooses among the sites is has combed over and displays a list of sites it had deemed to be relevant to your search criteria. We won’t go into all the technical details about how this information is derived by the search engine. Just let it suffice to say that it is a very, very thorough process.

In the early days Internet marketing, webmasters and page designed had some dubious tricks to ensure top ranking on the results pages. They would fill entire pages with key phrases they believed their future clients would be using and hide them within the site. The search engine companies responded by seeking out this type of behavior and refusing to allow it to influence the site’s rankings.

Today, we use more above-board techniques to attempt to land at the top of the search results. These so-called “white hat” techniques don’t involve deception and conform to the search engine’s guidelines. SEO practitioners use techniques like adding informational content like articles and blogs containing your key phrases. They can also help you build a network of links out of your site to others and from them back to your site. This is one thing search engines really seek out.

Needless to say, this is a complicated topic. You may want to seriously consider hiring an Internet professional to help you through it. Start with some small steps like adding professionally written content to your site and see what happens to your site traffic. If you let a pro deal with these technical details, you’ll have more time to do the things that you do best – helping clients buy and sell their homes.