Home Staging Glossary by Staging Diva

A pair of photographs with one showing a room before staging and the other after staging. It’s important to include strong before and after photos in a home staging portfolio in order to demonstrate to potential clients your staging abilities and how staging can increase a home’s appeal to buyers. For advice on taking before and after photos, see this four-part article: Photography Tips for Home Stagers.

A bidding war occurs when multiple buyers submit offers to buy the same property, thus driving up the final price. Bidding wars are more common for a well staged home and in a seller’s market. For more information on how to decorate a home to sell for a bidding war read: "Staging Diva Ultimate Design Guide: Home staging tips, tricks and floorplans"

The term “black hat” refers to any search engine optimization (SEO) technique that relies on deception to gain a high ranking. Black hat techniques can be effective in improving the rank of a website, but only in the short-term. When you are discovered using black hat techniques your site will be banned from Google entirely! One example of a black hat technique is “keyword stuffing,” where a number of keywords are inserted on a web page, but they are only visible to search engines, for example by running them in white type against a white background. It’s important to avoid hiring a web development or SEO company that uses black hat techniques, to avoid being banned from search engines. Beware of any company that promises to get you on the front page of Google. No one can promise that! For more information on acceptable SEO techniques, see Course 4 of the Staging Diva Training Program.

Short for “web log,” a blog is an online journal, diary or website. Home stagers can use blogs to keep in touch with their clients and prospects by posting articles on a regular basis. For examples of two blogs written for home stagers, see Home Staging Business Report and Staging Diva Dispatch.

A computer program used for visiting, “browsing” or “surfing” web pages on the Internet. Popular examples of web browsers include: Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome and Safari. If you are building your own website, it's important to know that web pages can look different on different browsers because of the different ways they interpret the computer code. It's important to test your site on all the popular browsers. If you have a listing in the Staging Diva Directory of Home Stagers, this is already done for you.

When the supply of homes exceeds demand, prices are lowered because there are many homes for sale and fewer buyers looking for them. Buyers have more power in this “buyer’s market” because they feel little pressure to make an offer when there are so many homes for sale. Home staging is especially important because it gives the individual seller more of an advantage over their competition. By decorating the house to appeal to buyers, they are more motivated to take action before this more desirable home is sold. For further reading about home staging in a buyer’s market download the FREE Report: Ask Staging Diva “Can I grow a home staging business in a depressed economy?”