I’m always looking for new terms to add to the Home Staging Glossary by Staging Diva that I created this summer. It already includes more than 120 terms and phrases that will benefit home stagers— whether you need more help in understanding decorating, home staging and real estate terms, or even concepts to help you with the Internet side of building your home staging business.

One of the things that makes this free resource different is that it’s not filled with standard dictionary-type definitions. I explain things in simple language and include business tips and links to free articles I’ve written for further learning about the concepts.

Black Hat vs. White Hat: The perils of not knowing the difference.

Following up on a detailed Internet discussion we had during last month’s Graduate-only Staging Diva Dialog Q & A call, I decided to define “black hat” and “white hat” for glossary readers.

These are key concepts because if you don’t have much knowledge or experience with building websites or search engine optimization (SEO), you can unknowingly stumble into some black hat techniques that will get your site banned from Google and the other search engines. This is very serious because if you’re not on the search engines, your website might as well not exist at all.

Unfortunately, there are many unscrupulous SEO companies that will call and promise to get you on the first page of Google if you hire them to promote your website. Beware! These companies use black hat techniques that will only work in the very short-term. By the time you realize your site has been banned, they have taken your money and moved on to the next gullible customer.

In the Staging Diva Directory of Home Stagers, I use only white hat techniques to help the site come up on search engines for phrases like “find a home stager.” I also teach many SEO techniques in Course 4, Staging Diva Sales & Marketing Secrets to Boost Your Home Staging Business.

> Visit the Home Staging Glossary now and either go through the pages one by one checking out phrases you would like to learn more about, or search for a particular term using the search box at the top of the page.

> More terms are added regularly and I invite you to email me with any new entries you would like me to add.