Abbreviations are so common anymore with the popularity of text messaging, but should they stay in the text messaging realm and stay off your ActiveRain (AR) Blog posts?
(I have put some common abbreviations in parenthesis after their full versions throughout this post to show how easy it is to simply replace those words with abbreviations.)
I was reading an ActiveRain (AR) post last week, and someone wrote ROTFLMAO, and I stared at that for several minutes scratching my head, and then had to search it online and found the answer on Wikipedia.org. ROTFLMAO meant "Rolling On The Floor Laughing My Arse (clean version) Off". After finding the answer I was not ROTFLMAO or LOL, and I thought to myself has all this abbreviation stuff gone too far. Personally I can't stand the abbreviation LOL, is ANYONE actually Laughing Out Loud when they use that abbreviation, I mean really belting out a roaring laugh? I think it is way overused, like the "Fist Bump" (Another Rant for another day perhaps)
Then today it just hit me, is all this abbreviation hurting your Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
The answer is Yes and No!
So, how can these abbreviations hurt your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or Search Engine Marketing (SEM)? Let's say that you are trying to brand yourself as a Keller Williams (KW) Real Estate (RE) agent but you are always using "KW RE agent" instead of the full version. However when most people search online they likely would put in the full version because KW RE agent is not a common and well know abbreviation. Another example would be someone looking for a Real Estate (RE) Transaction Coordinator (TC). Most searches would be done for the full version, so if all my posts abbreviated those terms as RE TC, then I may save a second or two while writing, but it could cost me many pages of placement in Search Engine (SE) rankings.
When I search "Utah Real Estate Transaction Coordinator" in Google our business comes up (at the time of print) #1, 2 and 7 on the first page and even the 18th result that shows up on the second page of the results. On Yahoo! We are #2, 6, and 7 on the first page. However if I use the term "Utah RE TC" in either search engine, not only do we not show up in the first 100+ results, and the results are not even closely related to Real Estate (RE) or Transaction Coordination Services (TCS). So, just because I know what RE and TC mean, that doesn't mean that others are looking for my services using those abbreviations.
Now that we have seen how using abbreviations at the wrong time can hurt your Search Engine Marketing/Optimization (SEM, SEM). Let's look at how the use of abbreviations can be appropriate.
If I am an expert on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) then only using the term "Search Engine Optimization" and never using the term "SEO" could actually hurt me in the rankings, because in the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) world the term SEO is very common. In this case I would want to make sure to use each version equally in my blogging endeavors so I would show up under both of those terms. Again if I was an expert on "Real Estate Owned" (REO) properties, I would probably want to use a mix of the full and short version, so I can be found under both search terms, since they are both well used and known in the REO world.
In short, don't use too many abbreviations just to save a second or two, but if your abbreviation is also well known and commonly searched, then mix it in your posts so you can get placement juice with both the full and the lazy, I mean short version J
Now why didn't I abbreviate the word abbreviation in this post with the abbreviation "Abbrev.", because I had to type abbreviation a lot of times in this post and it is a really long word to describe shortened abbreviated words? J
Written by your Awesome KW RE TC on AR talking about SEO and SEM. OMG I am LOL!!!!...Not really, just SOL (Smirking Out Loud).
UPDATE!!! Read my next post: From ActiveRain Blog Post To #2 In Google Results In Less Than 2 Hours to see how this post went from ActiveRain post to #2 in google Rankings for the Keyword search "Utah Real Estate Transaction Coordinator"
and notice it was placed because of the Full wrote out keywords, not the abbreviated version. That just Proves my point! :)
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