Earlier this month I wrote about Google’s Broken Link Filter and how important it is to make sure all the links on your website work. For internal links I recommended using the GSiteCrawler program and asked my blog readers to suggest a tool to check a site’s external links as I have not yet found a good option to use.

Enter blog reader Dan Chase who recommended trying out Xenu’s link Sleuth. I downloaded it last night and began running a report on my website to see how it works.

The Pros:

• The program is a free download that is easy to install and straightforward to use
• It crawls a website extremely quickly and will find all the links (internal and external) that you are listing
• It validates the links to make sure they exist and gives you a fairly easy to understand report on what is broken
• Unlike the Google Sitemaps tool it not only tells you which links are broken but also tells you on which page the broken link is listed so you can fix the problem
• It found a number of broken external links on my site (including to one of my sponsors - yikes!) that I am now able to fix

The Cons:

• Because the program works so quickly it seems to have trouble accessing pages that do exist on my site. As a result it tells me in the report that I have many internal broken links when they are actually fine
• Note: My case is not the typical one as I have almost 20,000 pages of content on my site that the program has to sift through. Because the program includes internal links it will have to analyze around 500,000 or so links!
• There is an option to only test your internal links but, as far as I can tell, no option to only test your external links (which is what I am looking for) so you end up having to test both your internal and external links

Overall:

• It is a easy to use, valuable tool to test your internal and external links
• My preference for internal links remains to be GSiteCrawler program as I find it much more reliable
• I will likely continue to use Xenu until I can find a tool that gives the option to show only external broken links and can handle the size of my website

Thanks for the suggestion Dan!

Evan Carmichael

Yesterday I had a call with a reporter who was doing an article for the New York Times. The topic was how to make yourself look big. Apperance is important when you are selling your products / services because most people do judge a book by its cover.

Here are some suggestions for you to make yourself look professional and potentially bigger than you actually are:

Create a fantastic website - If you have a great looking website people will assume that you are an established, reputable business. You no longer need to spend the big money on the marketing fliers and brochures as long as you have a fantastic website that you can reference. Spend your money where it counts!

Hire people to work part time - The first person I hired was for one hour per day. As I grew I could afford more hours and I could also tell my customers, partners, media, etc that I had people working for me (I just did not say full time). You do not need to make the leap to full time right away, especially if money is tight, hiring part time can be a great way to get some of the tasks you hate doing done.

Share an office - If you do not have the money to rent an office yourself, share it with another business. If that is not feasible and you need an office to entertain a client, borrow one from a friend. Especially in the B2B businesses, customers will often want to meet with you at your office before making a purchasing decision so you have to look good!

Align yourself with experts - For one of my businesses I contacted all the top people in my industry and asked them to contribute one article for a Guide to Professional Success. I also wrote an article and put it all together into an ebook. I immediately became associated with all of these experts and it was a huge credibility boost for my new business.

Bring in friends - I once did a media interview with a television station in my early years and only had one person working with me at the time. I wanted the place to look busy so I brought in my friends. They dressed up in suits and pretended to work behind me while I was on camera doing the interview.

Have professional business cards - Do not print your own business cards on the tear-away sheets. It makes you look like an amateur and people will not take you seriously. Through companies like VistaPrint you can now get very nice looking business cards for practically nothing. You no longer have an excuse for not having a good business card.

These are just some of the things that I did when I was first getting started to look bigger than I was. I hope the New York Times uses the material from the interview!

Do you have any additional tips that have worked for you?

Evan Carmichael

If you have been following my series on Google Filters you will already have had a good introduction to some of the things Google looks at when deciding on where to rank your website versus your competitors. Today we are going to tackle the Too Many Links Filter.

The Importance of Building Links

As previously discussed, link building is important to any SEO campaign. The more quality websites that link to you the more Google will see you as an authority website and the higher you will rank in their search engine. It should therefore follow that you want to get as many links as you can as quickly as you can to rise in the rankings, right? Well, not exactly. Enter the Too Many Links Filter.

Google’s Too Many Links Filter

Google likes to see that you have created a progression of links to your website. They expect that you will, at the start, have very few links to your site and then continue to grow as your content base grows. This would be a natural progression. If you have a sudden increase where you have too many links created all at once it can set off flags with Google’s system. What’s even worse is if you have many links created at one point in time and then no new ones or very few are created afterwards. This is a good sign that you are trying to game the system and can earn you major deduction points. You could drop significantly in the rankings or be banned altogether.
How To Work Around The Filter

The key to working around this filter is to continue with your link building campaign. If you generated many links in one month make sure that the following month additional ones are created. This is especially important when you are first starting a website and Google does not have a rich history to base your actions on. Any solid SEO campaign should have ongoing link generation as a core component. As you continue to build new quality links each month you will continue to rise in the rankings and will not trigger the Too Many Links Filter.

Happy link building!

Evan Carmichael

Inspired by a post on the YE Forums about a member’s challenges in selecting a business name I thought I would share some tips on how to choose the right name for your company.

Make It Memorable

You have only a few moments to capture someone’s interest before they move on to the next company. Having a name that is memorable will help you stand out from the competition and get your target’s attention.

Make It Easy To Spell

The harder it is for someone to remember your name or spell it the harder it will be for you to land a customer. If they cannot spell your website address, for example, they will not be able to find you.

Tell People What You Do

The easier you make it for people to understand what you do, the more likely they will sign up. For example, Young Entrepreneur is a good title for this webpage because it contains information that would be of value to young entrepreneurs. If the company was called HMC Communications, for example, it would be meaningless to the general public and make it more difficult to attract visitors.

Keep It Short

People like names that are short and sweet. The longer the name is the easier it will be to confuse you with someone else or forget you altogether. A short, descriptive name that stands out will always be your best bet.

Note that there will always be exceptions. You do not have to follow these 4 tips to be successful, it will just make it harder for you to stand out and generate business.

Evan Carmichael

As a young entrepreneur I am always looking to learn from others who have paved the way before me. I am a big believer in Modeling Masters - why struggle through the ups and downs of entrepreneurship when you can tap into people who have already made their mistakes and can give you guidance?

On a regular basis I update my list of people I want to connect with personally and learn about. This is the easy part - creating your list. The next step is to contact them and give them a reason to want to talk with you.

The angle that I have always used is my website. I go in to meet them to learn about how they built their companies and then I write a story about them on my website. They get exposure and a flattering story written about them. In the meantime I get to hear their secrets to success and ask questions that can help my business grow. I always look for the fastest growing companies in my city and target the founder of the firms. One of the people I interviewed just became one of the Top 40 Under 40 and I have learned a lot from his success.

If you do not have a popular website that carries a brand of some sort, go out and get one. Local newspapers and other websites, blogs, etc. are always looking for good stories and love to profile stories of achievement. Contact them with your idea and then go get the entrepreneur using the their name and reputation.

I have always been a fan of quality over quantity. It may take some extra work to get into meeting the people on your list but if they are the cream of the crop of people who can help you and give you advice it is worth the effort. You will get some good tips and also likely end up with someone who you can call on for advice in the future.

Evan Carmichael

Last month Google filed for two new patents: Document Scoring Based on Traffic Associated with a Document and Document Scoring Based on Query Analysis.

The two patents are in addition to the other patents that Google has filed. Some of the information represents new takes on existing data that is being tracked while other information is brand new and should paid attention to. The information that is being collected now includes:

• when the website was set up?
• how often and how extensive are the changes that are made to the site?
• what kind of search queries are being used to find the site?
• who links to your site, who uses text links, what the text links say, and when are new links being created?
• what is your overall traffic that Google sends you?
• what is the user behavior once they click through to your site?
• what kind of topics does your webpage cover?
• domain related information

Google uses this information to assign your website a score which represents the trustworthiness of your site. This score, along with the relevancy of the search query being made, will ultimately determine where your webpage will rank in Google’s index.

This information is not necessarily new to these patents but represents an expansion of what was already being collected.

New Data Collection

What Google is now tracking that can have an impact on where your site ranks includes:

• How many ads are shown on your website and how frequently are they changed?
• What is the quality of the ads? For example, an ad that links to a high PageRank page could get a higher score for your page than an ad that links to a low PageRank or, even worse, banned Google page.
• What kind of click through rates are you getting on the ads?

It is still unclear how heavily the advertisement data will be factored into Google’s algorithm but in light of all the various attempts people are making to monetize their websites, Google is now taking notice and is tracking such information.

Keys to the Game

With Google’s new updates it will be even more important to:

• Ensure your content (now ads included) are all related. You do not want to have a page about cars and then have links and advertisements that target a different market.
• Ensure you get quality inbound links and outbound link to quality sites. The first part of this equation has always been true but with Google paying more attention to who you are linking to and who your advertisers are it will be all the more important to carefully screen your outgoing links and sponsors.

Evan Carmichael

I was reading through the YE Forums today and noticed a thread on bootstrapping so I thought I would share a list of top ways to bootstrap your business. For those of you who are not familiar with the term, bootstrapping is the process of spending as little money as possible to get your business off the ground. It is equivalent to starting a business on a shoe-string or limited budget.

Ways To Bootstrap Your Business (in no particular order)

1. Work from home to save on rent, commuting costs, and you can deduct some of your home costs for tax purposes.
2. Get customers to pay upfront by selling membership, subscriptions, gift certificates, coupon books and other initiatives to get their money now and deliver later.
3. Lease or rent equipment and other major purchases instead of buying. Always try to push off payment to the future.
4. Get used instead of new equipment to save on the expensive price tags.
5. Barter your products / services in exchange for something you really need.
6. Get free publicity by contacting reporters with a story idea instead of buying expensive advertising.
7. Do a side job to make sure you have an income that lets your business survive in the early days.
8. Give sweat equity to employees / partners instead of paying a salary.
9. Take as little as you can out of the business and focus on growing the company so you can bring in more cash in the future.
10. Manage your cash flow and make sure there is more coming in than going out before you start spending money

Evan Carmichael

Mike Walker is 27 years old and is taking the surfboard industry by storm. Like many entrepreneurs Mike started his business as a hobby and worked out of his parent’s garage when he was 17.

“I started building boards during high school when my family was living in northern Baja. During my junior and senior years, I was home schooled and was able to surf every day. I couldn’t afford to pay retail for new boards so I bought the tools to shape my own.” He made many mistakes but through trial and error created a board that was pretty close to the ones sold in the retail stores.

After high school graduation Mike took a job with Pacific Surf Glass to learn more about the ins and outs of the industry. The company also let him use their shaping room after hours for his own business.

Mike quickly gained a reputation for producing high quality work and in 1999 produced his own line of products with his signature Walker label. Since then he has gone on to sell to some of the industry’s biggest and most well known brands and he is now looking to expand his product line by focusing on wakeboarding.

It just goes to show that if you are passionate about what you do it is possible to turn your hobby into a business success regardless of how old you are. Mike Walker started a business out of school and on the side when he was 17 and he is now producing over 30 surf boards per week for the top players in the surfing industry.

Are you the next Mike Walker?

Evan Carmichael

Now here is an opportunity I wish I had been given when I was in summer camp! This August a group of 44 young entrepreneurs aged 14 to 16 will be invited to join Carrefour Jeunesse-Emploi of Montreal.

It is a summer camp for young entrepreneurs where students will get a taste of what it is like to own their own business. They will learn the differences between working for yourself and working for someone else and will also get to hear from and meet guest speakers who are local entrepreneurs coming to share their experience and wisdom.

In addition, representatives from young entrepreneur organizations are invited to come to the camp and introduce what they do and how the students can get involved.

“What we are trying do is promote entrepreneurship among youth and create and entrepreneurial spirit,” said Katherine Korakakis, coordinator of last year’s inaugural camp. “As such, we have to come up with initiatives and activities involving this spirit, and since there’s no school in the summer, we came up with the camp idea.”

The students will also get workshops on the different stages of running a business and learn about financing, business planning, market research, and production. On the last day of camp the students have to actually produce a product or create a service.

While I enjoyed planning tennis and learning karate at my summer camps I wish this option would have been available to me when I was in school!

Evan Carmichael

Since this blog is an offshoot from the popular Young Entrepreneur Forums I thought it would be fun to profile some of the popular forum members and showcase what they are up to. Here is a list of the 6 members who have gone over the 1,000 post mark. That represents a lot of work and should be recognized!

Daniel Nerezov (akula)
Total Posts: 3,510
Join Date: 09-27-2005
Location: Sydney, Australia
Occupation: Full time hardass
Website: None listed

(NeeJam)
Total Posts: 2.983
Join Date: 10-25-2005
Location: England
Occupation: Entrepreneur, Student
Website: http://www.neejam.com

Daniel Briere (The Stealthy One)
Total Posts: 2,376
Join Date: 05-29-2006
Location: East Coast, USA - but for how long?
Occupation: CEO, iVentures.ws
Website: http://www.iventures.ws

Luc Arnold (Outta Hand)
Total Posts: 1,221
Join Date: 09-12-2004
Location: Outside of Toronto, Canada!
Occupation: Full time hardass
Website: http://www.commercecubes.com

Ryan Glasgow (mxer210)
Total Posts: 1,083
Join Date: 03-27-2004
Location: San Jose, California
Occupation: Student and entrepreneur
Website: http://www.goblu.net

Nathan Waters (nado)
Total Posts: 1,058
Join Date: 08-28-2005
Location: Wollongong, AUS
Occupation: Student/Entrepreneur
Website: http://www.nathanwaters.com

Congrats guys and keep up the great work!

Evan Carmichael