As an SEO professional specializing in the real estate and mortgage industry, I have refused to write much about Search Engine Optimization. Even though that is the bulk of our business. Because most of is being taught is about the WHAT of SEO & is a complete waste of time.
The HOW is much more interesting to me, and much more useful to you and your business. And when I say the how, I mean the strategy of SEO.
SEO defined: SEO is simply defining your marketplace, translating that marketplace into keywords, then representing those keywords onto pages throughout your website. Now, link to those pages.
There... now you do not have to spend the next 180 hours reading every SEO book out there. You see there is SEO, and there is traffic building. And then there is lead building!
Most of what is being taught out on the web is on page optimization tactics that at best are activities that you can obsess forever over. That at best will maybe help you move from a 6 to a 5 position.
Most people, even Realtors simply are not living (yet) in that competitive of a marketplace. The piece of the SEO that matters are links, link equity, off page optimization, Page Rank, etc. Whatever you want to call it.
Links are so important that you can say that links forgive the sins of the page. When you have links you will get traffic.