All these acronyms and they all have an "O" in them and all are related to real estate. (okay, SEO is a stretch but for the sake of this blog, it is) A coincidence, I think not. I think the "O" is a clever marketing letter and is just better at it than its fellow alphabetaens. My theory is the "O" had a very good teacher and did its homework on how to get seen. This is just my "O"pinion, of course.

What's my point to all this? Tonight I started researching how to get my new website seen, how to move up the search engine ladder so to speak. Sites like Google and Yahoo (apparently big fans of the "O") rate your site based on certain key factors in your site. Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search resultsfor targeted keywords. What does this mean? Well, honestly I don't totally understand it yet but that's what the internet is for. Apparently, there are literally thousands of companies that will do this for you.............but I'm a hands on kinda guy so I want to do it myself. Plus, I'm cheap and can't make myself pay for something I can do myself.

I've read what seems like hundreds of blogs and comments tonight about this SEO stuff and I'm slowly learning but I thought I would call my my fellow AR members for some advice as well. It seems after all I've read tonight that it might take a while to get my site up the list and that's fine but I want to be sure I'm doing the things that will "Optimize" my time spent on it.

So, let me know what you've done to get more traffic to your site besides the normal advertising. Hopefully, with a little time and advice from some you, I can be on the first page!