SEO involves making changes to a website so that it ranks highly in the search results of all search engines including Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask. Thus, when someone searches for your product or service on the search engines, your website appears among the first.

This can result to getting new clients for many years to come.

In this article, we look at the techniques you can use to boost your search engine rankings.

On-site optimization

The first step in Search engine optimization (SEO) is to make sure your website has your chosen keywords. You need to include keywords in

1. Title - this is the page title in the meta tags. The easiest way to see this is on top of the browser. The title appears in bold in the search engine results. This should be a short sentence 250 words or less that describes the page content.

2. Description - this is also in the meta tags. The meta description can be longer than the title and provide more information.

3. Content - you should include the keywords naturally in the content meant for the human eye as well as for the search engines. Do not over-exaggerate by putting the keyword too many times.

4. Domain name - if at all possible, if the domain name contains the keywords, you will rank better than a domain without those keywords.

Offsite optimization - link building

Off-site SEO involves having third party websites link to your website. A website with many websites linking to it is considered by the search engines as being more popular, and is ranked higher than less popular websites.

As much as possible, make sure you use the chosen keywords as anchor text.

You should be careful not to build links too fast, or the search engines could sandbox (blacklist) your website as a spammer.

Building links involves several activities:

1. Articles

When you post content in article directories, they allow you to put a link back to your website. You will find hundreds of these directories that will link permanently to your website.

Article marketing will bring you clients both directly and through boosting your search engine position.

2. Profiles

All social networking websites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc, allow you to leave a link to your website when you create a profile with them. You will find hundreds of these websites.

3. Web 2.0 websites

Whenever you post your articles to Web 2.0 websites like Wordpress, Squidoo, Blogger, etc, make sure you leave a link back to your website.

4. Classified directories

Thousands of directory websites allow you to post classified ads with a link back to your website.

5. RSS

Be sure that you submit your website to RSS directories if your website has an RSS feed. This allows your website content to be posted in other websites with a link back to your website.

6. Videos

Video marketing has become very popular.

Be sure to distribute your videos to all video sites for best results.

7. Bookmarks

Hundreds of bookmark sites allow you to post your link and some content and keywords. Search engines love these sites, and can boost your search engine rankings within a few days.

8. Blog and forum commenting

The results of blog and search engine commenting can be a drastic boost in search engine results. Since this can be abused, you must do this right or your comments could end up being deleted.

These are the most popular SEO techniques that are likely to boost your search engine rankings drastically.

At the very least, your real estate investing website should be optimized so it continues bringing business for you naturally for years to come.