I had an interesting experience last week… and it got me thinking, as interesting experiences often do.

Two different friends from my time in high school, that I hadn’t had contact with in 25 years or so got in touch with me.  Now, that in itself isn’t remarkable, but the fact they they weren’t in touch with each other, nor were they contacting me through the same path… nor had I recently update either of the sites, is remarkable.

Both of these friends from Phoebus High School in Hampton, VA, found me through social networking sites.  One through Facebook, and the other through MySpace.  Another odd thing is that I haven’t really leveraged those sites or publicized them… except for a little on Active|Rain.  Here is where I did it…

  • YouTube.  User: LaneOnRock.  My channel has almost nothing to do with real estate… but there are some fun videos.  I need to spend some more time surfing videos… and I’m going to call it work ;^D
  • del.icio.us.  User: LaneBailey.  This is the one I am starting to dig in to.  It has a lot of potential.  I have loaded a few hundred links on here and they are all over the place from real estate to cars.
  • Twitter.  User: LaneBailey.  I am on here each day, but it is at odd times.  I have both of my blogs feeding public posts here.  This also holds a lot of promise…
  • WellcomeMat.  User: Lane Bailey.  I don’t have any videos up here, but I will in the next few weeks.
  • Linked-In.  User: Lane Bailey.  This is one of the Social Networks that I will be more active in over the next few months.
  • MySpace.  User: Lane Bailey/GeorgiaGarageHomes.  I joined here a long time ago, and had been posting my blogs there.  Now I have a widget with my LaneBailey blog on it.
  • FaceBook.  Use Lane Bailey.  I joined here a few months ago, and have NOT really leveraged this site.  I do have a blog widget there.

Of course, there have been a few changes since I posted that…  To start with, I revisited my profile on MySpace and updated a few things.  I also put some time into FaceBook… and I think there will be some more time spent there updating.

Now, I did say that there was an experiment here.  And this is it…

I am going to go all out to tweak this post for Search Engine Optimization. The point is that I want to see what I can do with search engine rankings for this post on terms like Phoebus High School, Hampton, VA, Kecoughtan High School (I had a lot of friends there), Plaza Roller Rink (I admit it, I was a rink rat in high school… and also a speed skater), Buckroe Beach (where I grew up), Class of 1983 and Lane Bailey…

The goal is to see how this post moves up the Google Search terms…  Of course, it would also be great to see the practical application… like having people that knew me from high school or elsewhere shoot me a message or leave a comment.

I don’t know if this is going to work well, but I thought it would be fun to try.  Also, for the purpose of SEO tweaking, see how much effect can be had for property web sites.