Today I’m going to continue my series on onsite SEO factors. If you haven’t been following the series you can check out the first five posts here:

The 15 Most Important Onsite SEO Factors: Part 1 - The Document Title

The 15 Most Important Onsite SEO Factors: Part 2 - Meta Tags

The 15 Most Important Onsite SEO Factors: Part 3 - Body Text

The 15 Most Important Onsite SEO Factors: Part 4 - URLs

The 15 Most Important Onsite SEO Factors: Part 5 - Headline Text

Our topic today is link text. Link text, also known as anchor text, is the text that is underlined in blue on a link. For example, in the link above, the link text is “The 15 Most Important Onsite SEO Factors: Part 5 - Headline Text”.

Link text is important because if you are going to use the text in the link itself then the content of the page that follows is likely to be highly relevant to the text you used. Therefore Google sees that link text as being extremely valuable and will take it into consideration when ranking your site.

Many website owners make the mistake of using the link text “Click here” or “Learn more”. While it may be a useful method to get people to click through on the link, it won’t help you with your rankings. Chances are you are never going to rank for “Click here” or “Learn more” and even if you did, they aren’t keywords that will drive qualified traffic to your website.

You therefore always want to put your keywords in the link text of all internal links that point to other pages on your site. Make sure that the keywords are actually relevant to the page that you are linking to or the linking benefit won’t help.

You should also make sure to check the people who are linking in to your website from their own. Are they using “Click here” or “Learn more”? Are they just using your domain name which you already rank #1 for?

Ask website owners to use keywords in their link text to help you get higher ranking positions in Google. I would also suggest that you have them come up with what they believe are descriptive keywords for your site to use in the link text. If you get too many links to your site with the exact same link text then you can actually be penalized and dropped from the index for that keyword.

If, instead, webmasters are using their own descriptive keywords then you will have the variety needed to get the positive link text exposure and not get penalized by Google.

Fortune recently put out their list of the top 25 most powerful business people. Some are household brands while others you may know their companies but not their names. The top 5 are:

Chairman and CEO, Apple

During the first two decades of his remarkable 30-year career, the Apple Inc. founder twice altered the direction of the computer industry. In 1977 the Apple II kicked off the PC era, and the graphical user interface launched by Macintosh in 1984 has been aped by every other computer since. Along the way Jobs conceived of “desktop publishing,” gave the world the laser printer, and pioneered personal computer networks. As a side gig he bankrolled Pixar, which fostered the development of the technology and a brand-new business model for creating computer-animated feature films.

Chairman and CEO, News Corp.

News Corp. is a global force across the board - film, television, print, and even online (it owns the social networking site MySpace).

Murdoch wanted more, and he got it with the $5 billion acquisition of Dow Jones. It was the crowning achievement of a career that started in 1953 when he inherited control of two Australian newspapers. Murdoch expanded to Britain in the 1960s, the U.S. in the ’70s, and Asia in the 1990s. In Britain he owns the biggest tabloid, the Sun, and in the U.S. the New York Post and his Fox News Network are known for their take-no-prisoners attitude.

Chairman and CEO, Goldman Sachs

Wall Street firms are taking multibillion-dollar write-offs. Titans of finance are losing their jobs. But through it all, Goldman Sachs keeps making money. The i-bank reported stellar third-quarter results: Earnings per share almost doubled from the prior year, and return on equity was 36.6%.

CEO; President, Products; President, Technology; Google

The ambitions of Brin and Page, Google’s 34-year-old founders, are pretty much boundless. Sure, they’ve already revolutionized - okay, massively disrupted - the advertising industry. But the billionaires aren’t stopping there. They’ve set their sights on altering how mobile telephones work, fixing climate change, utterly redefining the very nature of work, that sort of thing.

Chairman and CEO, Berkshire Hathaway

Of course it matters that Buffett has built Berkshire Hathaway into a massive holding company with interests ranging from underwear to private jets (2006 revenues: $98 billion). Of course it’s impressive that since 1965, Berkshire has performed more than twice as well as the S&P 500. Of course it’s amazing that Buffett has made millions from something as toxic as Enron bonds. And of course it is somehow unsurprising that he managed to help broker a deal between A-Rod and the New York Yankees.

Rounding out the list are:

The man who had one of the most fertile imaginations in history, who managed to turn his musings into a billion dollar company and whose legacy would continue to live on for decades after his death, was born Walter Elias Disney on December 5, 1901 in Chicago, Illinois.

The family quickly moved from the increasingly dangerous city of Chicago to Marceline, Missouri, where they purchased a farm.

Because he was too young to work, Disney spent most of his time on the farm playing with his four siblings and the animals. He would later reflect on this period as the best years of his life.

He created the world’s first multimedia empire and he did it by making people smile. An entrepreneur with a natural flair for animation, Disney became one of the world’s most well-known and respected entertainers, creating a company that continues to gross over $30 billion yearly.

What was the secret behind the magic?

“When you’re curious, you find lots of interesting things to do. And one thing it takes to accomplish something is courage.

Somehow I can’t believe there are any heights that can’t be scaled by a man who knows the secret of making dreams come true. This special secret, it seems to me, can be summarized in four C’s. They are Curiosity, Confidence, Courage, and Constancy and the greatest of these is Confidence. When you believe a thing, believe it all the way, implicitly and unquestionably.

I have been up against tough competition all my life. I wouldn’t know how to get along without it.

When we consider a project, we really study it–not just the surface idea, but everything about it. And when we go into that new project, we believe in it all the way. We have confidence in our ability to do it right. And we work hard to do the best possible job.

Biggest problem? Well, I’d say it’s been my biggest problem all my life. MONEY. It takes a lot of money to make these dreams come true. From the very start it was a problem. Getting the money to open Disneyland. About seventeen million it took. And we had everything mortgaged including my personal insurance.

The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing. If you can dream it, you can do it.”

This week’s Entrepreneur University comes courtesy of Eva Gregory. Eva is the International Coach of the Year 2006, “America’s Feel Good Coach”, speaker and author of The Feel Good Guide To Prosperity. She shares with us her tips on how to live an inspired life and not a tired one:

“Do you feel like you are just going through the motions and nothing you truly want in life is coming to fruition? Do you feel tired and drained more often than not? Are there things you know you have to get done, but you are lacking the motivation to do them? How about changing things around so that they become “inspired actions”, and not “required actions”?

One definition of inspire is “to exert an animating, enlivening or exalted influence upon”. Even the definition sounds fun, does it not? I will go one further and say that it is also powerful and empowering. I call it powerful because it can create a great deal of positive energy, and empowering because you will gain control back over a situation. Can you image finding joy in everything, having life be lively and exciting on a regular basis? Inspired actions are those that you get so excited about that wild horses could not stop you from doing them and will usually flow effortlessly and quickly. Believe me, it IS possible.

How does one become inspired and create a world of inspired actions? It goes back to setting your intentions for what you want, visualizing it, getting into the feeling place “as if” it has happened exactly the way you want it and let the inspired action “come to you”. Cool, huh? Sounds easy? It is. But if you get stuck, you can work backwards by focusing on what motivates you to complete your project. Is it your family, having free time to play, or perhaps just the satisfaction of having everything checked off of your “to do” list? Better yet, write down your tasks and your motivations. Things seem to become more concrete, more “real” when they are written down. These tools will help you turn a project or task into something that provides you with major inspiration. Just like Jack.

Jack was in the process of writing what he termed his “great American novel.” In fact, he had been in the process for four years and despite what he told his friends and family, he was not feeling very inspired. His novel had become the joke amongst his friends and the proverbial albatross around his neck. When Jack decided to set his intentions and visualize the outcome, he had a difficult time doing this. He realized that he could not get into his feeling place because the story he was writing did not fuel his passion. He could not even visualize himself completing this book. His writing had taken a wrong turn, and instead of backing up or starting over, he had felt compelled to continue because of the expectations of others. Jack was so surprised and energized by this realization that he immediately started outlining the book he wanted to write. Writing had become an inspired action and Jack did not feel like it was a required one.

So, what are you waiting for? There is NO time like the present. Find a little quiet, turn on your favorite music, light a candle, and get busy setting those intentions to create inspired actions. Remember, inspired actions will make you feel alive; before, due to the planning and anticipation, during, as you will be relishing actually putting your desires to action, and after, when you are remembering the task and your feelings while it was being done. So, get out your pen and paper and get busy. The time has come to be inspired, not tired!”

Congratulations to YoungEntrepreneur.com co-founder for being mentioned in a recent BusinessWeek article, Globalization, Small Biz-Style.

Some of Adam’s quotes are:

“Over the last nine years, we have had the opportunity to witness extremely strong growth of entrepreneurial members from all over the world. Within the last couple of years, we have noticed more and more members networking within the YoungEntrepreneur.com community from less developed nations.”

“Web experts and designers from less developed nations have created small yet rapidly growing businesses that assist small- to medium-size businesses with their Web site design, coding, illustrations, and even live technical support. It really seems as though the Internet is starting to bring all continents, races, cities, and villages together into a global network of trade and communications.”

Congratulations Adam and keep up the great work!

Well the results are in from our poll last week on why young entrepreneurs decide to go into business for themselves.

The most popular answer, with over 82% of the votes was “To see your dream come true.”

Tied for second with almost 53% of the votes were “To be your own boss” and “To do what interests you.”

Rounding out the top five were “To make more money” with 47% of the votes and “To be creative” with 29% of the votes.

The least popular answers were “To set your own deadlines” (17%), “It’s easy to startup” (17%), “To learn new skills” (11%), “To have a second career” (5%), and “To cut the commute” (5%).

The YE Blog Poll will be a regular series in the coming months to explore how young entrepreneurs feel on a variety of topics.

For our next YE Blog Poll we’re interested to learn who you think are the top celebrity entrepreneurs? To cast your vote, click here.

I wanted to continue my series on onsite SEO factors today. If you haven’t been following the series you can check out the first four posts here:

The 15 Most Important Onsite SEO Factors: Part 1 - The Document Title

The 15 Most Important Onsite SEO Factors: Part 2 - Meta Tags

The 15 Most Important Onsite SEO Factors: Part 3 - Body Text

The 15 Most Important Onsite SEO Factors: Part 4 - URLs

Today’s theme focuses on headline text. The most popular headline text tags h1 and h2 and can be found in the html between

< h1 > important text < / h1>

or

< h2 > important text < / h2>

Putting words inside a h1or h2 makes the words appear much larger on the screen (h1 more so than h2).The way that the Google filters work is that if you are going to highlight some keywords over others and make them appear larger then they must be more important than the other words on the page.

A headline on top at the page is also generally descriptive of what is below therefore Google will consider your headline text to be of critical importance.

You should therefore a) always include h1 and h2 tags and b) be very strategic over what keywords you put inside the tags.

You should also limit the usage of the h1 and h2 tags on the page. If your entire text is inside a tag then you won’t get a SEO benefit. The point of the headline tags is to highlight important sections only. You could, for example, have a h1 tag at the top of the page to introduce your content and h2 tags below to introduce different sections of the content.

One factor to consider in doing all this, however, is the layout of the page. h1 and h2 tags make the text appear quite large and could interfere with the look and feel of the webpage.

Will you lose customers because the text is too big and doesn’t flow with the rest of the site? You can always hide headline tags through CSS to make them appear like normal-sized text but this is a questionable SEO practice that could earn you a Google penalty.

Daniel Tenner wrote a great post in his Inter-Sections blog about how to hire a computer programmer. If you’re a young entrepreneur who is involved in a technology business, eventually you’ll likely need to hire a programmer. Either you don’t have the programming skills yourself and you need someone to help or you have the background but can’t continue to be the person doing every job in the company and you’ll need to hire to expand.

Here’s a summary of what Daniel looks for when hiring a programmer:

#1 : Passion

“In my corporate experience, I met a kind of technical guy I’d never met before: the career programmer. This is a person who’s doing IT because they think it’s a good career. They don’t do any programming in their spare time. They’re shocked when they find out I have a LAN and 3 computers at home. They just do it at work. They don’t learn new stuff unless sent on a training program (or motivated by the need to get a job that requires that technology). They do “programming” as a day job. They don’t really want to talk about it outside of work. When they do, they talk with a distinctive lack of enthusiasm. Basically, they lack passion.”

#2 : Self-teaching and love of learning

“Programming is the ultimate moving target. Not a year goes by without some new technology robbing an old, established standard blind and changing half the development universe. This is not to say that all good programmers pick up these changes and ride the bleeding edge. However, there’s a class of programmers that will never, ever pick up a new technology unless forced to, because they don’t like learning new stuff. These programmers will typically have learnt programming at university, and expect to get by on whatever skills they picked up there, plus whatever courses their company is willing to send them on.”

#3 : Intelligence

“Some business people assume that lack of social tact and lack of intelligence are the same. Actually, intelligence has several facets, and emotional/social intelligence is only one of them. Good programmers aren’t dumb. Ever. In fact, good programmers are usually amongst the smartest people you know. Many of them will actually have pretty good social skills too. The cliché of the programmer who’s incapable of having a conversation is just that - a cliché. I’ve been to a few meetings of the London Ruby User Group and I can say that with only a very few exceptions, most people there are smart, talkative, sociable, have varied interests, etc. You wouldn’t look at them chattering away in the pub and think “what a bunch of geeks!” - at least until you approach a group and realise they’re talking about the best way to design a RESTful application with a heavy UI frontend.”

#4 : Hidden experience

“This is correlated with the “Passion” point, but it is such a strong indicator that I’d like to emphasise it with its own point. I started programming when I was about 9, on a Commodore 64. I then migrated onto the PC, did some Pascal. When I was 14 I wrote a raycasting engine in C and Assembler, spent a large amount of time playing with cool graphic effects that you could get your computer to do by messing directly with the video card. This was what I call my “coccoon stage”. When I entered that stage, I was a mediocre programmer, and lacked the confidence to do anything really complicated. When I finished it, I had gained that confidence. I knew that I could code pretty much anything so long as I put my mind to it.”

#5 : Variety of technologies

“This one’s pretty simple. Because of the love of learning and toying with new technologies that comes with the package of being a “good programmer”, it’s inevitable that any “good programmer” over the age of 22 will be fluent in a dozen different technologies. They can’t help it. Learning a new technology is one of the most fun things a programmer with any passion can do. So they’ll do it all the time, and accumulate a portfolio of things they’ve “played around with”. They may not be experts at all of them, but all decent programmers will be fluent in a large inventory of unrelated technologies.”

#6 : Formal qualifications

“This is more a of non-indicator than a counter-indicator. The key point to outline here is that formal qualifications don’t mean squat when you’re trying to recognise a good programmer. Many good programmers will have a degree in Computer Science. Many won’t. Certifications, like MCSE or SCJP or the like, don’t mean anything either. These are designed to be accessible and desirable to all. The only thing they indicate is a certain level of knowledge of a technology. They’re safeguards that allow technology recruitment people in large corporations to know “ok, this guy knows java, he’s got a certification to prove it” without having to interview them.”

What I would add: Running an online business myself I have had my fair share of programming hires. I generally liked to start working with someone on a small project and then expand from there. See if they deliver on time or deliver excuses. See if they come up with their own creative suggestions or work strictly inside the box. See if they are doing just the bare minimum or if they are working to give you the best end outcome possible.

A good programmer should be able to understand what it is that you are trying to accomplish and translate that into effective code. If they take the time to understand your business then they will likely bring up suggestions and ideas for modifications that you hadn’t considered before. A good programmer is worth his / her weight in gold if you run an online business and I hope you find this list of suggestions valuable!

What has your experience been when hiring programmers?

With an estimated net worth of around $42 billion, Warren Buffett is considered the second wealthiest person in the world. He has used his unique personality and management style to master the art of investment and create an empire, owning a 38% stake in Berkshire Hathaway. In recent years, he has committed himself to giving away 85% of his fortune, primarily to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Whether he is making money or giving it away, Buffet has made a name for himself as one of the most astute entrepreneurs and investors in history.

He is the second richest man in the world and arguably the most successful American investor in history. Although Buffett has not strayed far from his Nebraska upbringings, his career has soared for over 50 years. How did this once shy boy who took a Dale Carnegie course on public speaking rise to become the stock market guru that he is today?

“I always knew I was going to be rich. I don’t think I ever doubted it for a minute.

The business schools reward difficult complex behavior more than simple behavior, but simple behavior is more effective. I don’t look to jump over 7-foot bars: I look around for 1-foot bars that I can step over. I like to go for cinches. I like to shoot fish in a barrel. But I like to do it after the water has run out.

You do things when the opportunities come along. I’ve had periods in my life when I’ve had a bundle of ideas come along, and I’ve had long dry spells. If I get an idea next week, I’ll do something. If not, I won’t do a damn thing.

You ought to be able to explain why you’re taking the job you’re taking, why you’re making the investment you’re making, or whatever it may be. And if it can’t stand applying pencil to paper, you’d better think it through some more. And if you can’t write an intelligent answer to those questions, don’t do it.

The first rule is not to lose. The second rule is not to forget the first rule. You’ve been drafted into a war you didn’t start, … Focus on your customers and lead your people as though their lives depended on your success.

Somebody once said that in looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if they don’t have the first, the other two will kill you. You think about it; it’s true. If you hire somebody without the first, you really want them to be dumb and lazy.

I get to do what I like to do every single day of the year. I get to do it with people I like, and I don’t have to associate with anybody who causes my stomach to churn. I tap dance to work, and when I get there I think I’m supposed to lie on my back and paint the ceiling. It’s tremendous fun.

Working with people who cause your stomach to churn seems much like marrying for money - probably a bad idea under any circumstances, but absolute madness if you are already rich.

It’s better to hang out with people better than you, … Pick out associates whose behavior is better than yours and you’ll drift in that direction.“

Are you hanging around the right people to get your business to the next level?