The foundational element of a successful real estate website (or really, any small business website) is information-rich content that ranks well in search engines.

To create such content and develop a website that’s SEO-friendly and gets properly indexed in search results you’ll need to:

• Understand how to perform proper keyword research.
• Understand on-page SEO factors so that you can properly optimize your content pages.
• Understand how to claim your Google authorship so that your authorship information displays in search results for the content that you create.

…and much more.

But don’t worry, this doesn’t have to be difficult. I’ve rallied some of the best content around the web to give you a solid introduction to understanding search engine optimization.

Some of these are guides that’ll give you a good introduction into the world of SEO and others are practical How To that’ll walk you through the process of implementing and building an SEO-friendly website that Google will love now and into the future.

Enjoy!

Learn SEO

The Beginner’s Guide to SEO by SEOmoz
If you’re looking for a good primer on how to get started with SEO then SEOmoz has you covered with a solid 10 Chapters covering everything you need to know.

How To Create Compelling Content That Ranks Well in Search Engines
Here’s another great in depth report written by Copyblogger founder Brian Clark that teaches you how search engines work, how to create readable and engaging content, how to create cornerstone content that Google loves and more.

Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide by Google
If you’re looking for a comprehensive introduction to SEO this is a nice complement to the previous two guides listed above. Between this one and the previous two you basically have a whole SEO 101 textbook to read through.

Meta Description Magic: Think Less About SEO and More About Click-Throughs
The meta description is the 160 character snippet used to summarize a web page’s content. Search engines use these snippets in search results to let site visitors know what a specific page is about. This post covers in details why meta descriptions are so important and how to properly optimize your content’s meta description to increase click-through rates.

A Simple Step by Step Guide To SEO
If you’re looking for a quick-start guide on some simple things you can do to optimize your website, this is it. This post covers some on-site and off-site SEO basics, how Google+ can help with your rankings, and how to track your results.

A Cheat Sheet for Building High Ranking Authority…Without Cheating
If you want to build an authoritative website, one that ranks well in search engines across multiple pages, then you need to create a strong relationship between your pages through deep linking. This post shows you how to link to a cluster of pages by topic, how to send more links to one particular page, how to avoid cannibalizing keywords and much more.

The SEO of Responsive Web Design
Statistics say that 61% of consumers who visit a mobile unfriendly website are more likely to go to a competitor’s site. This post covers everything you need to know about mobile responsive design and how it impacts SEO from usability to duplicate content to ranking for mobile searches.

10 Reasons Writers Should Claim Their Google Authorship Markup
Authorship markup is the method used to display your authorship information in search results for the content that you create. This post serves as a great primer on how to implement authorship on your website and how it can impact your search results.

On-Page Factors: Best Practices for Search Engine Optimization
There are several on-page SEO factors that affect search engine rankings. This post is a great primer on how to create a perfectly optimized page.

The True Power of Evergreen Content – A Case Study
Evergreen content is a great way to build your audience and increase the authority of your website. This post offers an excellent case study in how evergreen content (or cornerstone content) can serve as an excellent foundation for your overall content strategy.

How To

The Beginner’s Checklist for Learning SEO
Wondering how to build an SEO-friendly website that gets properly indexed in search results? This post gives you the perfect step-by-step checklist with tons of instruction along the way.

The 2012 Guide To Google Webmaster Tools — Analytics Integration, +1 Metrics and More
Yes this post is titled the “2012 Guide” and I realize we’re in 2013. Still, it’s a great resource for how to setup Google Webmaster Tools and generate an XML sitemap for your site. Once you have webmaster tools setup you’ll be able to see important data such as search queries, crawl erros, incoming links, top keywords and more.

How To Setup Your SEO Friendly WordPress Website in 15 Minutes
Alright, so you purchased a domain name, you just setup a new hosting account and installed WordPress and you’ve installed your new Genesis powered WordPress theme. What’s next? This post shows you what to do step by step so that you can have an SEO-friendly website that gets indexed by search engines.

A 3-Step Process for Painless Keyword Research
Proper keyword research is one of the most essential elements to your content marketing success and it’s often the most difficult, but it doesn’t have to be. In this post you’ll learn a simple, 3-step process for identifying the appropriate keywords for your content.

How To Add Google Author Tags To Your Real Estate Blog for Improved Search Results
The rel=”author” link element is a way of assigning authorship to the content you’ve published online. This way, when people perform a search, they’ll be able to see who published an entry straight from the search results page. In this post I show you how to add Google Author tags to your real estate blog for improved search results.

Claim Google Authorship for Your WordPress Website in 3 Easy Steps
If you’re using the Genesis framework for WordPress, claiming your Google authorship is as easy as 1, 2, 3. This post shows you how!

6 Indispensable Free and Freemium SEO Tools
As you begin working on optimizing your website you’re going to need some good SEO tools to help you move along. This post offers 6 of the best tools around to help you get the job done.

10 Premium SEO Tools That You Can Try for Free (or Cheap)
Looking for more than just the basics, here’s a solid list of premium SEO tools that you can use for free or cheap as you conduct your marketing research.

Over to you…

What are some of your favorite How To’s and guides for learning and mastering SEO?

What articles would you add to this list?