Is your website optimized for search engines?

1. Choosing Keywords
The basic premise of keyword optimization is simple: Discover the search words that potential customers are using to find products or services like yours, and then build your Web content around those words. What complicates matters is that countless other websites are trying to do the same thing.

Understand the competitive ratio. Generally speaking, the more popular (or potentially lucrative) the search term, the more websites compete to rank high for that search term. Yes, you want to rank high on popular terms -- but if you don't have limitless resources, it is wise to target search terms for which you have a realistic shot at a high ranking. The best keywords, says Jill Whalen, a longtime SEO practitioner and head of the consultancy High Rankings, are "words and phrases that are being searched but that may have been overlooked by other websites."

An effective way to find such terms is to calculate the ratio of the number of pages a search returns to the popularity of the search term. "You have to look at the competitiveness of every keyword phrase that's relevant to what you offer," Whalen says.

Do the math. First, draw up a list of the keywords -- or, better yet, keyword phrases -- a potential customer might plausibly search if he or she were looking for your product. (A bike retailer, for example, might start with variations on bike, bicycle, and cycling; a specialty shop might also try bike frames and bike components.)

Then, see how often users search for these terms by plugging each into keyword-tracking tools such as Wordtracker (wordtracker.com), Keyword Discovery (keyworddiscovery.com), or Google AdWords's Keyword Tool (adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal). The Google AdWords tool is free, and the website SEOBook.com offers a free, though less robust, version of Wordtracker. Besides showing how many times these phrases are searched on average in a day or month, these tools will suggest other relevant terms. You may learn, for instance, that bicycle parts is a much more popular search term than bicycle components.

Next, run each phrase through Google. The more websites returned, the more competition you will have with that phrase. (In general, Woessner recommends devising terms that generate fewer than one million page hits.)

Finally, divide the number of indexed pages by the number of daily searches. The lower the result, the more promising the term. Ideally, says Woessner, the ratio should be 500 to 1 or less.

Narrow your keywords. If your ratio is higher than 500 to 1, you will probably want to choose narrower or more specific keywords. For example, if you do most of your business locally, you would be smart to add a geographic term to each keyword used on top-level pages. (Bicycle shop becomes bicycle shop Poughkeepsie.) Such a search is less popular, but the competition to win it is much less fierce, so it is likely to generate a better ratio.

There's no need to generate an exhaustive list of phrases. However, because each page of a website has a different focus or objective, each should have its own keywords. The homepage should have the most general terms, and keywords should become more tailored and specific as you burrow deeper into the site.

2. Placing Keywords Strategically
Once you have determined the best keywords to use, you need to employ them strategically, in two places.

In the code. It is the search engine that ultimately associates a keyword with a webpage, and the first place it looks to decipher a page is at the top of the page's coding -- within the so-called head tag that defines the page's overall characteristics. (A webpage's code, of course, isn't normally visible in a browser window; to see it, use the browser's "source" or "page source" command.) Incorporate the keywords you have chosen in the title, description, and keywords tags. These are often called meta tags, and the code often begins with that word.

The title will appear at the top of the user's browser window, and the description is often quoted by search engines, so these should be coherent and concise -- the title should be six to 12 words, according to Bruce Clay, a leading SEO consultant, and the description 12 to 24 words. Your title and description should reinforce each other and the page's visible content. If you have a lot of keywords, choose judiciously, because search engines prize natural-sounding language. You can load all your keywords, even misspelled variants, into the keywords tag field.

In the visible content. Your keywords should appear frequently in the text, as well as in the other elements of a page, including the descriptive "alt" tags that underlie images and in the headlines and subheads atop a section of text. Though there is no agreement among optimizers about how much text a page should include or how frequently keywords should be mentioned, they do agree on this: If people find your copy thoughtful and worth reading, a search engine will, too. Never stuff a page so full of keywords that it doesn't read naturally.

3. Building a Better Website
How your site is organized, designed, and built will affect its search-engine ranking, according to Andy Robson, managing director of the optimizing firm dzine it. Organize content into themed categories, what Clay calls silos. "By lining up your content by the way people search, you define to the search engine what you're about," Clay says. You can either group similar pages together into separate directories of folders and subfolders, or you can create "virtual silos" by using links that guide a user from one page to the next.

Other strategies are more technical, so you may need to rely on a Web developer for assistance. The site must be hosted on a fast server. The page code should be free of bugs and fully comply with the standards for website structure set by the World Wide Web Consortium. (You can test this at validator.w3.org.) Include in the site's code a special protocol known as Sitemap, which makes it easier for visiting search engines to scan the site. Sitemaps can be submitted directly to the search engines.

Seeding Links

Once you have optimized your website, you want to attract links from other sites. SEO consultants offer a fairly prosaic strategy: Build a good site with useful content to which other sites will want to send their readers. Here are a few strategies to grease that wheel.

Lend your expertise. Forge partnerships under which other sites can publish your repurposed or original content on the condition that they link back to your site. "Sharing your expertise about the product or the service can differentiate your brand," says Stephen Woessner. "The brand story is what gets somebody to purchase one product over another."

Find out who's linking to your competition. Many of them probably should be linking to you as well. The "links" tool at faganfinder.com/urlinfo reports the inbound links to a website detected by the major search engines. Many of those links will come from directories that are important to your industry or community. There's no sin in requesting a link -- or in trading content for one.

Be choosy about linkers. "You want the best sites, not the most, to link to you," says Bruce Clay. "If an expert links to you, by association you're an expert" (provided the expert is in your subject area). By the same token, avoid link farms, or websites that exist solely to provide outbound links, and services that sell links outright. Search engines, says Clay, will penalize you for the chicanery.

SEO Subterfuge

The techniques we have talked about here are often described as ethical, organic, or natural SEO. By contrast, black hat SEO embraces manipulative or deceptive techniques to game the search-engine system. Search engines work hard to keep these techniques from working, so they are seldom effective for long and could even get you blacklisted. Here are several strategies that you are best off avoiding.

Cloaking: Presenting two different versions of the same page, one to search engines and one to users.

Keyword stuffing, or spamming: Loading up the meta tags with popular search terms that have no substantive connection with the page.

Hidden links and keywords: Concealing them in the background color, outside the visible margins, or in other code.

A great example of an optimized website is the Millennium Group website www.millennium-groupinc.com

School Access Control

Every school district faces unique challenges, but they all share a basic responsibility for ensuring the safety and security of the students, the faculty and the staff. To meet this responsibility, many schools systems are including access control within their overall security strategy.

The balance that must be struck in incorporating access control, as it is in all security issues, is maintaining a an open user-friendly environment while establishing a safe and secure facility at all times; including when school is in session, when limited faculty and staff are present, and when the school facilities are unoccupied.

As a component of a complete security solution, access control not only manages physical access to facilities and assets, but creates an audit trail that is valuable for both operational and forensic purposes. Access control often represent the center of an overall security management implementation since the event database that integrates all security-related actions is most typically controlled by the access control system.

The primary reasons for using access control in schools are:

1. Protection of administrative areas and other sensitive areas;

2. Visitor management;

3. Protection of high value assets;

4. Emergency response;

5. Maintenance of records of facility use; and

6. Management of operational costs.

Let’s look at each of these reasons for using access control:

Protection of administrative areas and other sensitive areas

Access control systems are used in schools to protect administrative offices and rooms where personnel files and student records are maintained. The policies for access to these areas will typically be substantially different when schools are in session than during periods when administrative staff is not present.

Visitor Management

Visitor management is a responsibility of all schools today. Visitors will include educational professionals, parents, substitutes as well as support and service personnel. The policies for each of these groups will typically be significantly different. Effective access control requires limitations to the access points to the school, but will permit schools to control physical access [if necessary] as well as to maintain records for all of these visitors. Visitor management may include badging and temporary access to sensitive areas for visitors as required.

Protection of high value assets

In many schools, computer and science labs have significant high-value assets that that can be subject to theft. For this function, access control is typically integrated with intrusion detection and security video. In this manner, access control can provide verified alarms for police response as well as forensic records.

In some schools the access control system may also integrate video surveillance at external areas where there is a history of graffiti or other vandalism. Some schools are using two way audio to warn students that their actions are being recorded and they will be subject to disciplinary action. In general, the school can use the access control system to reduce theft, ensure privacy and reduce damage to school property.

Emergency response

Access control systems can be used to facilitate automatic lockdown and communicate with teachers that are affected to inform them of the event and, most importantly, to communicate with the teacher that the lock-down has ended. Each action is important. When there is an event, it is imperative to communicate the need for a lock down as quickly as possible. It is also important to ensure that classes are not caught in that lockdown after the alarm has passed.

Newer access control systems also provide the capability to communicate with local police. Many school lock downs are driven by an alert from the police that there is a problem in the neighborhood of the school and that there is a possible danger to students if they are allowed to leave the classroom. While remote locking to all classrooms is expensive, it is important if the school wants to institute automatic, remote lockdown. Even during lockdown, all school doors need to be able to be opened from the inside (so that students and staff can exit in the event of a fire or other emergency), but the school should able to reduce the number of doors that can be opened from the outside. The access control system should also be able to facilitate mustering for situational awareness of students and staff during and after lockdown events

Maintenance of records of facility use

One of the benefits of access control is in risk management. A robust security, safety and emergency management program can reduce insurance costs. Many schools are members of cooperative insurance programs and these insurance alliances and associations are focused on minimizing the liability exposure of the schools in the alliance.

Gymnasiums, athletic fields and libraries represent areas with significant potential for liability risk. They typically are made available to community organizations for after-school use. Security in these facilities can be enhanced and liability can be reduced by controlling the access points to the facilities and capturing video surveillance of the activities within these areas.

In middle and high schools, another area of risk management is in the laboratory areas, either where chemicals are stored or where physics experiments are being conducted. These areas are often subject to liability and compliance requirements, for example the policies and procedure requirements relating to the control, storage and disposal of chemicals. Recently, some middle and high schools have added remote duress and panic alarms to their access control systems. Teachers can transmit as many as four different commands-from “I am uncomfortable with the situation’ to “I need help, quick”. This ability for a teacher to communicate quickly and remotely can prevent many high liability events from occurring.

Management of operating costs

A new use of access control is reduction of operating costs. Once the infrastructure for access control is implemented, many schools have added robust wireless sensors to quickly recognize and eliminate operational problems.

One example is the use of wireless sensors to ensure that fire extinguishers are where they should be, and that they are fully pressurized and not blocked. The schools have eliminated the costs of monitoring the extinguishers manually. Another example is the use of temperature sensors to ensure that food is properly refrigerated and being stored at a temperature that complies with normal safety standards. This eliminates spoilage and liability. A third example is to use water (humidity) sensors to monitor bathroom areas that have a history of vandalism and water damage.

Another example is to connect the access control system to field lights to ensure that they are turned off after events and thereby reduce the power costs.

For schools with their own police force or with a designated response team, reports can be downloaded into the system and stored for subsequent analysis. When schools have their own police force or guards, a Guard Tour module can be added to the access control system to ensure the operational efficiency of the security staff. Recently, some access control systems have developed analog to digital interfaces with a wireless reporting capability. These sensors can monitor all utilities and allow for more cost effective use of those resources.

Conclusions

Access control systems represent a significant element for school safety and security. Together with other components such as video, environmental sensors and management of security-related events in a searchable database, they permit school districts to meet their safety and security responsibilities to their students, to their faculty, to their staff and to the community at large. They also can be used to reduce both liability and operational expenses. More schools are seeing the benefit of these systems and are using access control as an integrating platform for their security, safety and emergency management initiatives.

5 approaches to a greener business

Being green is an excellent way to help the environment as well as save some money. Fortunately, turning your office into a green one is not very hard to do. Here are some simple tips for making your office greener.

1.    Use double-sided printing whenever possible

Set your printer or copier’s default setting to double-sided printing to automatically cut down on paper use. This is a simple step and if anyone needs single-sided printing they can easily change the settings.

2.    Use a water delivery service

Bottled water is incredibly wasteful, and unfortunately is prevalent in most offices. Using a water delivery service gives your employees the option to drink clean water without wasting all that plastic and suffering from the possible health effects of bottled water.

3.    Turn lights and machines off when they’re not being used

Although this may seem like an obvious way to be eco-friendly, many people overlook its necessity. Some people think that it’s more efficient to leave computers and other machines on overnight, but it’s far more wasteful than anything else. If you can afford to install motion sensors, they are always a great option as well.

4.    Use recycled and recyclable products when you can

Almost any paper product is available in recycled versions at major office supply retailers. While they’re much better for the environment, they are generally comparable in price to non-recycled versions.

Also, if you must use disposable plates and cups, try to find recyclable or compostable options. It’s not enough to simply buy recyclable products, it’s important to have an easy-to-follow recycling program. Stress to your employees the importance of recycling those products, otherwise there’s a good chance they’ll end up in the trash.

5.    Cut down on commuting

Organizing carpools is rather easy to do. Simply match people up based on where they live. If you can, offer parking incentives to those who carpool. If your town has public transportation systems, try offering a bus or train pass to employees who can use those systems.

These are all simple and inexpensive ways to make your office greener and to ensure that your business has less of an impact on the environment.