When Windows 7 was in BETA, I had a copy… Microsoft came out with their newest version of anti-virus software. It was called Microsoft Security Essentials. I’m not the largest fan of Microsoft but sometimes you have to dance with the partner who brought you to the ball. Having said that, this software is everything that Norton or McAffee is plus more.

Microsoft Security Essentials provides real-time protection for your home PC that guards against viruses, spyware, and other malicious software.

Microsoft Security Essentials is a free* download from Microsoft that is simple to install, easy to use, and always kept up to date so you can be assured your PC is protected by the latest technology. It’s easy to tell if your PC is secure — when you’re green, you’re good. It’s that simple.

You can get your FREE COPY HERE. There is also an installation video. Enjoy!

Well I owe this post to those who have been following my SEO and Wordpress site optimization. As stated in SEO Page Level Optimization I do not use the All-In-One SEO Pack anymore. I use the plugin called Platinum SEO Pack. It offers everything that the All-In-One does but it has even more. The neat thing about it is if you’ve already got your All-In-One configured, when installing this you will have an option to import all the All-In-One settings!

* Optimized Post and Page Titles for search engines
* Generates all SEO relevant META tags automatically
* Helps you avoid duplicate content
* Lets you override any title and set any META description and META keywords, for any post or page
* Compatible with most other plugins, like Auto Meta, Ultimate Tag Warrior and others.However you may have to disable All in One SEO pack
* You don’t have to fear changing permalinks. If you are not satisfied with the current permalink, change it through Settings–>Permalinks in your admin panel, without worrying about loss of Page rank or google penalty.Platinum SEO plugin will take care of issuing a 301 redirect to the new location.This is a new essential feature, not present in All in one SEO
* Add meta description and meta keywords tags to Wordpress Categories and Wordpress Tag pages.
* Add index, noindex, follow or nofollow, noarchive, nosnippet, noodp, noydir meta tags to any post/page. These options are not available in All in one SEO Pack.Find out why this option to set post/page level HTML meta robots tag useful?

You can download or install from this location: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/platinum-seo-pack/

Thanks for reading my series. I will provide the links below if you missed one of them. The thing I would like to add about optimizing Wordpress for SEO is SEO in general is ALWAYS changing. You have to stay on top of it. By implementing the plugins and using the features of them you should greatly advance your SEO rankings.

SEO Page Level Optimization
SEO Page and Site Optimization with Wordpress – Part One
SEO Page and Site Optimization with Wordpress – Part Two

Enjoy!

Interesting Facts About Groundhogs
* Woodchuck and groundhog are common terms for the same animal
* Scientific name: Marmota monax
* Woodchucks can climb trees and also swim
* Groundhogs in the wild eat green plants, such as dandelion greens, clover, plantain and grasses
* They feed heavily in summer, storing fat for winter hibernation
* By February, hibernating woodchucks have lost as much as half their body weight
* So how much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? About 318 kg

This morning Punxsutawney Phil came out of his winter slumber from his oak stump and saw his shadow. Phil sees his shadow.

Another 6 weeks of winter will there be!

I was over on Chris Hughs blog, (definitely check it out WhosChrisHughes.com ) and he asked as the title of one of this blog posts, “What’s Your Perfect Day”?

This is a very subjective question and we all have different answers. So to help with “MY” and maybe “YOUR” introspection, here is the answer to the first question. And even though I’ve seen this question asked before out here on the web, I’ll answer his. Remember, it’s a “Perfect Day”. I will get to several other questions of the set in later posts. So I ask you to also answer this and let someone know what it is either here, on his site, or your own.

So for now…

Where would you live?
I am a novice traveler but only because I’ve not spent time in been to places that most people haven’t even thought about going to. So my definition of a novice means that being or spending time in Paris, London, Rome, or Berlin, I’ve only gone through their airports. Yes, one day I will be going to Katmandu. I’m one that ALWAYS like to take the path that is least traveled. I enjoy being a rebel. I don’t choose paths because there is less resistance, but because I’ve taken a comprehensive critical look at the facts. This doesn’t stifle any of curiosity nor does it say I’m predictable. I’m number one, an individual. (This information really prefaces all my answers to all of Chris’s questions as well.)

I would like to have homes all around the world. They also are not all going to be in the cities either. I may give locations that are large cities or are a country, but only because either I have not been there yet, or would always have to explain where they are located. The places I have got to live that were outside the United States are limited but I’ve been lucky to spend weeks at a time in may places.

I would like to have a home in Moscow Russia. It is quite expensive to live there but I enjoy the strong, (and I mean STRONG), will of the Russian people. There is no worry about NOT feeling politically correct. They feel and live life for what it is and nothing more. There is no alternative euphoric reality. They make it their own. Family is very important as is history.

I would like a home in Bucharest Romania, a city that lived under the worst of the prior Soviet empire under Nicolae Ceauescu. Ceauescu was the Communist ruler put into place that allowed the country to fall into socialist ruin. He later was executed for crimes against the state and humanity in 1989 during the collapse of the Soviet empire. The people were held under thumb for so long that when I visited many times and spent weeks there, they were a joy. They were now free. They welcomed me into their homes and were proud of their families.

I would like a place in Hayward Wisconsin. The area is home to what I consider the best fishing and wildlife in the world. It is basically a city in the north woods of Wisconsin. It is not uncommon to see bears, deer, every kind of fowl imaginable, as well as elk around any corner you happen to drive.

I would like a place between the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone National Parks for some of the same reasons though it is up in the mountains.

I would like a place on just about any island in the Caribbean. I would like the amenities of a classic luxury resort but be within 5 miles of a white sanded secluded beach.

A high rise overlooking Chicago would be nice as well. I enjoy the diverse neighborhoods of Chicago where I can go and feel like I’m in Warsaw or Prague. I love the food.

I would like a home situated somewhere between the Pacific Ocean and the tallest mountains of New Zealand. I picture this as a serene place overlooking a flock of sheep and watching the dogs keep them in line.

So I like the variety of between people and seclusion, county life and the big city, of oceans and beaches, and of snow and sun. I’d like to have the freedom to move around anywhere and stay long enough to learn and enjoy the culture, landscape, and climates of many places whether it be Brazil, Copenhagen, Prague, Saigon, Atlanta, or Bismarck. Each are different and unique.

Of course this kind of lifestyle is only possible is you have a way to generate the income you need to live by that is not determined by where you live. This typically is by business that you create on your own as an entrepreneur, and online. You might find that it is actually cheaper than having to live in the United States 12 months a year. In fact, you may be able to live off of 60-70 percent of your U.S. income. If you haven’t read 4 hour work week, I highly recommend that you do. Tim Ferris explains a lot of this in great detail.

Till the next question…

Well I’m all for creating web traffic but here’s some Traffic of a different kind, and maybe time as well.

Live from Santa Monica in 1972

Dear Mister Fantasy play us a tune
Something to make us all happy
Do anything take us out of this gloom
Sing a song, play guitar
Make it snappy
You are the one who can make us all laugh
But doing that you break out in tears
Please don’t be sad if it was a straight mind you had
We wouldn’t have known you all these years

Enjoy!

We all know that blogging and other marketing campaigns can really help us build up the buzz behind our brand. We know our goals are also similar in that we want to get people talking and spreading the story about our products and services. But it is going to take more than just blogging and marketing to make this kind of effort pay off. There are three main ingredients that help build and establish our number one goal for personal branding, Trust! We want to establish the kind of trust that will create a positive reaction in our clients and customers. The products and services that we offer need to have:

Quality
While branding builds the recognition for your product, that product or service must have superior quality needed to evoke strong positive emotions in your customers. Your brand cannot gain positive brand recognition if your products and services are don’t offer the kind of quality needed to elicit strong trust in your customers and clients.

Excellent Service
We recognize that customer service is everything in business and know it has been for a long time. When building a strong personal brand, customer service can increase word-of-mouth advertising. So this, in turn, boosts referrals and helps your brand to grow even that much more. Even in businesses that have no product or service that is sold directly, like blogging for a living, remember that customer service still is extremely important. The bottom line is that people will trust the authority of your blog if the posts are written with authority and integrity. A way that you can also build authority and integrity is with timely and well thought out responses to comments from the readers of your blog.

Value
And finally comes value. Value is a growing buzz word with customers and clients these days. If your product or service comes at a price, you have to make sure your buyers get the value they are after. Value should not mean cheap. It should mean quality for the price point. Even the information that you provide for free should have tremendous value. The information you share and provide needs to be accurate, informative, or entertaining. You want your readers to feel like they have gained some insight and have not wasted their time by visiting and reading. If they like the value, whether it is for free or purchasing a product and service from you, they will visit and buy from you once again.

Personal branding builds on all these important and key ingredients in a successful business and puts them in a package that your customers and clients can readily identify with. When you offer rock solid service, impressive quality and value, your products and services will begin to speak loudly. So later down the line when you have new products or services, they will be much more likely to have strong footing in the marketplace solely because of the brand you have built. This personal branding thus enables you to build on your previous successes and allows you to grow your customer and client base. Once this strong personal brand it set up, launching new offerings will become much more effective.

If you’ve found this post helpfull, can you please share it with your Facebook and Twitter followers.

Well I’m continuing my three Part series on Page and Site Optimization with Wordpress. Today I’ll discuss a few more Wordpress plugins that can help your SEO but are little known.

SEO Friendly Images
SEO Friendly Images is a Wordpress plugin that will automatically update your new images with the correct ALT and TITLE attributes. If your images do not have (ALT and TITLE) already set, SEO Friendly Images will add them based on the options you set in the settings. This will also make the post W3C/xHTML valid.

ALT attribute is important part of search engine optimization. It describes your image to search engine and when a user searches for a certain image this is a key determining factor for a match.

TITLE attribute will have a lessor role but is important for visitors as this text will appear in the tooltip when mouse is moved over the image. It can actually be quite verbose if so chosen. In fact as an example, check out the image I have in the upper right hand corner of this post.

SEO Smart Links
SEO Smart Links searches for keyword phrases that match the titles of your posts and pages and these phrases are then turned into the links. You also have the option of creating links for your tags and categories. The matching is case insensitive and the original case is preserved. There are examples in the first paragraph of this post. The words Site Optimization and Wordpress plugins are also links to tags of this blog.

Everything happens transparently and you can be edited in the options from the administration settings panel.

SEO Super Comments
The complet concept behind this plugin is presented in Presenting SEO Super Comments Concept which explains it in much more detail.

For each user comment that gets created a new dynamic page on the blog, holding the actual comment information will be generated. This page will not actually exist in the database, but will be created dynamically using this WordPress plugin.

This then makes the site’s comments visible to search engines. This is possible because blog comments are crawlable, indexable and rankable content! So by just implementing this plugin, your comments will get crawled and indexed.

All three of these plugins are written by Vladimir Prelovac. You can check out his site at www.PRELOVAC.com

I will finish up with the plugins I now use for SEO within the next couple of days. Till then, have a remarkable day!

I had promised that I was going to provide you with some Wordpress plugins I use for page and site optimization. Instead of having a huge list I thought I’d give a few of the 6-7 plugins that I use for SEO purposes each of the next few days or so. While most of these are no-brainers and will never have to worry about again, some will have to work in conjunction with a few minutes of extra time per post. I will explain each in detail. These plugins are for on-page and on-site SEO Optimization. Because the nature of SEO is always evolving, the use of these plugins sometimes go obsolete because they get incorporated into other plugins and sometimes into the Wordpress base product itself. So feast your eyes on these first two:

MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer The ability to PING is what makes blog software highly favorable to static sites. So what is the definition of the word PING?

What Wordpress does is it PINGS or notifys various web servers/sites that you have published a new blog post. These PING sites then do a variety of things. Some add your blog to their directory. Some notify the search engines to come and index your new content. Some add and update blog directories. Basically pinging notifies sites that there is new content. By default, Wordpress give you ONE site that does the pinging. That is http://rpc.pingomatic.com . To be honest this site then notifies several other sites, but I prefer a more comprehensive list. I use 147! Here’s the list. (Do a right click Save As)

So if your like me, right after you figure you’ve got your post completed and hit the Publish button, you go to look at what it looks like. Firstly you should be using preview to see what it looks like, but I know we still forget something, discover a mis-spelling, want to add boldness to a phrase, create space between a paragraph, you name it. So when you hit publish, you are pinging to the list. Then when you bold some text and click update, you are pinging your list. When you add an image and updating you are pinging your list. In fact every time you publish or update you are pinging. This tends to create several pings within a very short time. What can end up happening is the ping sites can BAN you for excessive pinging. Not if you install MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer. With the plugin you can limit excessive pinging and control how many times you can ping in a given duration. I have mine set at 1 every 15 minutes is the maximum. You do have to register to get the plugin. You can find it here.

SEO Slugs
Wordpress has come a long way since it early versions with the use of permalinks and url structures. As great as using %postname% is, there is still something that you can do to even further optimize your urls. Enter SEO slugs. What does SEO slugs do? This plugin strips several of the common words like “what”, “you” or “can” out of your post slug to make it more search engine friendly. With SEO Slugs plugin activated, the slugs appear optimized for SEO. As an example, a post titled “What You Can Do Immediately For Higher Rankings” will become http://www.chriskilber.com/immediately-higher-rankings/. You still have the ability to override it by editing your url slug.

I’ll be back tomorrow with a few more.
Enjoy and have a remarkable day.

Many people are confused by what SEO is.   SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.  In most cases, optimizing for Google is the way to go.  So how do you optimize.  Well there are 3 different types of optimization that you can use.  The first which I will discuss below is Page optimization.  The second is site optimization, and finally, off site optimization.

Search engines use things called bots that search your html for links, pictures, and text.  It indexes the text and stores other pieces of information.  It uses various algorithms to determine what value a site has.  There are many determining factors that come into play here.  Today I will talk about page optimization.

Bots like ordered structure.  They like it when pages provide them information about the topics and structure of the page.   Here are the elements that Google looks for and some examples from a previous post.

1. Title Tags
This is an area in a web page where the text is placed that shows the title of the website on the very top of the web browser window. Search engines use title tags to make a link in search results.   The form I use is having the title of the post with a separation bar and then the name of the blog or url.

<title>Psychology of Personal Branding | ChrisKilber.com</title>

2.  Meta tag description
A Meta Tag Description is a section of web page markup that provides the basic description about the website.   Pay close attention to what meta data get put into this tag.  It play an important role in determining page ranking and indexing.  The contents of your description tag is what you will usually see on the search engine results on Google.

<meta name="description" content="There are a lot of psychological factors
in play that cause people to be “Attracted” to you. Come read what they are
to better understand how to use them." />

I’ve even heard that overriding the contents of meta description and changing it to a call of action will result in more people clicking it.  I plan on doing an experiment to test this theory out.  Look for something soon about this.

3. Meta Tag Keywords
Meta Tag Keywords play a similar role as the description tags to emphasize the terms that describe what the page is about.

<meta name="keywords" content="Personal Branding, Action,  Content,  How To, 
Leadership,  Marketing, Psychology" />

4. Keyword Density
A specific percentage of keywords that are used on a web page are referred to as keyword density.  A keyword’s density must be between 2% to 8 % for page ranking that is considered good.   This technique is the heart and soul of Search Engine Optimization.

5. URL Structure
If you want your website to rank high then the URL structure that you use needs to be related to the context of the website.  You should be able to read a url and figure out what the page is about.  For example:

http://www.chriskilber.com/psychology-of-personal-branding/

See below:  I will reveal exactly how I accomplish the above items.

_______________________

• In my next posts will be how I get the best page optimization through the use of several plugins that actually overlap into site optimization.  You may be surprised as to how I do it.  Hint (I don’t use All-In-One SEO Pack).

• If you are using the default WordPress setup then it’s probable that your blog has been banned from many ping services because of ping spamming.  I have a plug-in that stops this.

• The slugs used by your permalinks may be flawed, even using %postname%.  I’ll show you how to solve it.

• Are you ALWAYS filling out <alt> tags with your images?  If not your missing out on a lot.  I have a plugin that will automatically do that for you if you forget.

• And finally, how you can use your followers comments to generate more traffic.  This plugin is a gold mine.

Till later this week…

Have a remarkable day!

Personal Branding
We’ve all heard about Personal Branding. It is your unique selling proposition that will differentiate you from all others. The great thing about Personal Branding is that you don’t have to pretend to be someone your not. In fact, it doesn’t have to perfect either. You will attract people as long as you are genuine in your message.

Psychology
There are a lot of psychological factors in play that cause people to be “Attracted” to you. I don’t mean strictly physical appearance here, though that can have a factor. If you can figure out what these psychological factors are and feature or accent your strong points and identify where you can improve in the others, you will be able to separate yourself from all the others. This may take a bit of introspection on your part. The number one reason people are attracted to someone else is that they feel that they are just like them for a host of reasons. They are looking to try to identify themselves with others.

Characteristics
What makes people identify themselves with others is different for everyone. It can be a combination of many things. It can be, and not limited to, age, gender, physical characteristics, experience, vocabulary, exuberance, and presence. It can differ from day to day as well. It depends on each person’s frame of mind. So no matter what your brand or what your strengths or weakness are, there will be someone who will connect with you, start following you, and start studying what you are doing. In a nutshell, you can’t be everything to everybody, nor should you try. You just need to be YOU. However, there are things that you should try to do though that will attract more than just a narrow band of people.

Your Voice
In your writing, your video, and communications you need to sound confident and sure of yourself. People are attracted to confidence, plain and simple. You need to be honest. If you need to write about a concept that you are not totally unsure of, let your readers know. By being honest and admitting some of your shortcomings people will feel an attraction because they know they are not perfect as well. You can divulge these with a pact to learn more about them and a promise then to write about what you learned. This will provide your readers with a sense of belonging while you discover together.

Where To Go From Here
Personal branding isn’t something that occurs right from the get go. It is something that evolves. You will need to take the time to learn to write better. We all do. What’s the best way? By writing of course. You also will need to read the writing of others, especially successful writers and bloggers. Try and see how they frame their ideas and concepts. Try and isolate how they involve their readers and try to start incorporating those concepts into your own writing. I know I tend to write more in an expository manner and it can become a little dry at times. So these little tips, which actually aren’t so little, will provide you with the means to create a Personal Brand that will shine above the rest.

Here comes the sun…
Here comes the sun…
Here comes the sun and I say,
It’s all right…

Well those are the lyrics of one of my favorite Beatles songs, Here Comes the Sun.  Even without the many studies by scientists everywhere I could have told you that the sun is indeed a great thing.  Some of you know one of the things I enjoy the most is the outdoors.  Being outdoors, many times at dawn,  I am witness to many animals and birds starting their days.  The birds start chirping and chasing each other, the squirrels start hoping around, and the rest of the animals start their daily ritual.  If your like me, and have been “stuck in side your four walls”, other Paul McCartney lyrics with the Wings, you really do miss a lot of time to get outdoors. You need to take time and get outside and excape your cubicle walls, especially in the winter to get your needed dose of vitamin D.  Don’t believe me? Look at the study here.

The best-known benefit of sunlight is its ability to boost the body’s vitamin D supply; most cases of vitamin D deficiency are due to lack of outdoor sun exposure. At least 1,000 different genes governing virtually every tissue in the body are now thought to be regulated by 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 (1,25[OH]D), the active form of the vitamin, including several involved in calcium metabolism and neuromuscular and immune system functioning.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2290997/

Not only is it great to get out and get some fresh air but the sun helps you more than you will know.  Go on, get outside and go for a walk in the sun.  It will help reduce the stress in your life.

My friend Steve has a post over on his blog called No Comparison… that got me thinking quite a bit. Truth be told, just about all of Steve’s posts do. He has a gift of “waxing poetic” as they say, in a very understandable and genuine way.

In the post Steve tells us of someone he knows that is going through financial difficulties. He eventually tells the person about a financial loss he had incurred at one time dwarfing theirs. He doesn’t go into exact detail as to what happened or what was said other than at the end there was hope for this person. Hope.

So no matter what our human frailties, what our shortcomings, what we may think we are lacking, most of us have walked down a few paths that many may not have. We have walked in others moccasins, so to speak. You see we all do have experience and vision that we are able to convey to others. Not all of it is going to be something we are proud of. But as Steve points out, It won’t be your frailty that will be exposed, it will be our authenticity.

Thank you once again Steve.

Questions:
1. What have you gone through that could help someone?
2. What types of relationships could you foster by being authentic?
3. Could you incorporate this into your online business?
4. What would your business do if you worked with a lot authentic people?

Have a great and safe New Year.