In my continuing series on Google Filters, today I will discuss the Link Farm Filter. Google’s search engine ranks web pages according to their incoming links. Before Google put a big emphasis on getting quality links, early search engine optimizers focused on quantity. The thinking was simple - the more incoming links you have, the higher you rank, so get as many incoming links as you can.

This led people to develop link farms which were websites set up for the sole purpose of generating links back to your website. There is no valuable or unique content on these sites. The only information they have are links out to other websites. The more link farms you had set up, the more links you would have to your site and your rankings would increase. Website owners began seeing results and they continued with their link farming strategies.

Google then updated their algorithm to focus on quality links instead of quantity and the values associated with being on a link farm dropped dramatically. More recently Google has even penalized websites for being on a link farm. Now, not only will you not get the benefit of the link but your ranking can actually drop if you are linked from what is perceived to be a link farm.

Website owners who are new to the game are still falling for many of these link farming scams. It is extremely important to focus on building links with recognized, industry leading websites that have high Page Rank and not be sucked in by the offer to get any random link. Not all links are created equal and some can even hurt you!

Evan Carmichael

Young entrepreneurs are always asking me where they can find the capital to launch their businesses or get to the next step. Your best bet, especially early on, is to connect through your network. Somebody knows somebody who knows somebody who can help you. That being said, I thought I would put together a list of other places you can try online to find the capital you are looking for:

Go BIG Network

The Go BIG Network is an on-line marketplace that connects the startup and small business community. The company allows startup companies, investors, advisors, job seekers and service providers to post requests for help on-line and have those requests routed to other members of the Network who can help them.

vFinance

vFinance  is a financial services company which specializes in emerging opportunities, providing investment banking, trading, trend forecasting, and consulting services to micro, small and mid-cap high-growth companies, and to institutional and high net-worth investors seeking above-market returns.

Funding Post

For over five years FundingPost has worked to bring entrepreneurs together with leading investors worldwide. We believe that it is important to reach investors in every medium possible - both online and offline.

Venture Capital Access Online
Venture Capital Access Online is a leading Internet-based marketplace for the venture capital and private equity industry. vcaonline.com provides online services and tools to entrepreneurs, investors and advisors/service providers worldwide. Our flagship product, VCPro Database, has become the most popular venture capital directory of its kind available today. We also offer valuable venture capital resources and timely industry news to entrepreneurs and professionals.

Angel Capital Association

The Angel Capital Association is North America’s professional alliance of angel groups. This fast-growing association brings together the 200 angel organizations in the United States and Canada to share best practices, network, and help develop data about the field of angel investing.

National Venture Capital Association

The National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) is a trade association that represents the U.S. venture capital industry. It is a member-based organization, which consists of venture capital firms that manage pools of risk equity capital designated to be invested in high growth companies.

Business Finance

Search the funding criteria of over 4,000 sources of business loans, venture capital, equipment leasing and commercial real estate financing.

Garage Technology Ventures

Garage Technology Ventures is a seed-stage and early-stage venture capital fund. We’re looking to invest in extraordinary entrepreneurs who have the ability to build great teams and great companies.

Evan Carmichael

On Monday I discussed Google’s Domain Age Filter and the importance of having a domain that has been around for a while. Well how do you find out how old a domain is?

A cool tool that I like to use is the Wayback Machine. You can put in any website and it will give you an estimate of how long the site has been around for.

Another cool feature is that you can actually go back in time and see what the pages used to look like. For example, you can see what the Young Entrepreneur website looked like back in May of 2000 or what Microsoft’s website looked like over a decade ago in October of 1996. How website design has changed!

Not all of the pictures or elements on the page will load properly because they might have been deleted but you can get the general idea of what the site looks like. When I have a few moments I sometimes look back on my site or the sites of my friends to see what they used to look like and how bad they were.

To explore the site yourself simply go to the Wayback Machine, enter in the url you are curious about, then click on the Take Me Back button!

Evan Carmichael.

According to the Telegraph, the hit TV series, The Apprentice, is being blamed for lowering the desire for young people to start their own businesses. The UK version of the show is aired on BBC and has Alan Sugar as its star instead of Donald Trump here in North America.

Apparently only four percent of young people in the UK want to become entrepreneurs and some feel that “The Apprentice accentuates a blame culture which doesn’t inspire young people to see the workplace as a positive and constructive environment but rather a place which fosters dispute, aggression and unhealthy competition.”

I have never seen the UK version of the show but am a big fan of the American one. In the first season I used to have Apprentice parties and fill my living room with up to 20 young entrepreneurs to watch the episodes and guess who would get fired (note - watching the Apprentice is always more fun in groups!). Things are a little busier now so I cannot commit to every show but I try to open up my Sunday evenings to tune in.

I have always found the show interesting and exciting. I think about what I would do on the tasks, how I would enjoy the rewards, and how I would position myself in the board room. Sure it is entertainment but there is also a business component to it. If anything it gets me even more excited to get back to my business and continue growing.

How do you feel? Does the Apprentice discourage you from moving forward with your business?

Evan Carmichael.

With Google’s most recent update, one of the results has been a great number of pages being dropped to the supplemental index. What this means is that your page will show up after the main results for important keywords. In my case I was ranking on page 30 for keywords that I used to rank for on the first page.

In my post from April 11th (Is Google’s New Algorithm Update Impacting Your Site?) I discussed the importance of changing your keyword density to make your pages seem less spammy and improve your results. This greatly improved my site results and I have since expanded it to most of the articles on my site.

On the weekend I did something else that helped drive even more traffic - I created deep internal backlinks.

Google will also put your pages into the supplemental index if the pages do not have any links or Page Rank. The best way to get Page Rank is to have outside pages link to you but this takes time and is part of a long term SEO campaign. A quick fix is to make sure that your own pages deep link properly. This is especially important if you have a large site. On my site we made sure that each page had a link somewhere on the site but many of them were not being picked up by Google.

On Sunday I decided to try something new. I increased the number of backlinks internally and made sure that each internal page was linked at least three times from another page on my site. This made sure that the pages would be picked up. I then created a Google Sitemap and submitted it to Google.

The result? Traffic was up 35% on Monday compared to the Monday from last week and it continued yesterday and today as well. As more of the pages get picked up I am looking forward to an even greater traffic surge.

Even if you do not have a very large site, if you are finding that your main page is getting picked up but your deeper pages are put in supplemental, make sure to have those deeper pages linked multiple times from other pages on your site so they can get properly indexed.

Evan Carmichael

One of the things that really helped me get my business going was to bring on foreign language student interns. There are a number of schools in my city where they bring in students from overseas who want to learn English. They are usually university educated and highly skilled. After they finish their semester at school they look for an internship opportunity with a local company.

The students are looking to improve their English skills as well as gain some additional experience. Having worked in a North American company looks really good on their resumes when they go back to their home country and because they are on student visas, the students can only volunteer at companies - legally they are not allowed to receive compensation which is a great plus for the entrepreneur!

I have had interns help out with programming, marketing, event management, research, and a number of other tasks. They are usually also excited to work and bring dynamic energy to your company.

The language schools are constantly on the lookout for companies to host their students and will provide you with replacements after the student’s term is up (usually 1-3 months).

As entrepreneurs we typically have to think outside of the box and make our resources stretch as much as possible. Having free, skilled help by bringing on foreign language student interns can be a great way to help give your company the boost it needs to get to the next step.

Evan Carmichael

Last week I talked about Google’s Sandbox filter as the introduction to a series on the filters that Google users to rank webpages. Today I’m going to discuss the domain age filter.

One of Google’s problems is that so many people are launching websites that is has to determine which to rank at the top because everybody wants to be #1. The domain age filter was set up to give older domains more credibility than the newer ones. If your website has been around and active for years then you are more likely to not be a spammy website. Using this logic Google gives your domain a better rating and you have a higher chance of ranking at the top.

By the same token, brand new websites have to wait a period of months before they are even allowed into Google’s main index. It will then take them even more time to rank once they are accepted in.

How can you use this information?

- Use old domain names. If you have the option between starting a brand new domain or taking an existing one and changing the content, it is far better to use the existing domain name. It has the credibility built up and will have a much easier time ranking.

- Get your domains now. If you are thinking of setting up new websites, buy the domains right now and put up a simple landing page. Then tell Google about it so you get into their system. You may not be ready to launch officially until months or even years but when you are ready to go, you will have an older domain name that can give a nice boost to your rankings.

- Purchase older domain names. This is a little bit underhanded but some people have taken to buying old domain names and then modifying them to suit new purposes. If you buy a site that has been around for years, it will become a lot easier to rise in Google’s index for important keywords. You should note that Google is watching out for this kind of activity and frowns upon it. If you are going to buy the domain name make sure you do not change the WHOIS registration so Google does not find out that the domain has a new owner or you could lose all the SEO benefits of owning the old domain name.

Evan Carmichael

I run a series of Mastermind Groups for entrepreneurs in the Toronto area and one of the exercises we’ve done with all three of the groups is to set a goal for where the members want to be at the end of the year.

Why goal setting is important
When you have a goal that you are working towards, your business has focus. Too many young entrepreneurs jump from one idea to the next and do not follow through on anything. It is easy to get distracted and end up not accomplishing what you want because you lost your focus. Also, when you set a goal you give yourself something to shoot for. It should be something that motivates you to get up every day and take action because you are reaching for a target.

How do you set a goal?
When you are doing goal setting it is important to find something that is very important to you. If you are not passionate about the goal you are setting then there is no way you are going to put the hard work in to achieve the goal. I would also encourage you to set a numeric goal because it is easier to track. Instead of saying you want to get more customers by the end of the year put down a number. For example, you could want to land 10 new customers or 100, or 1000… or more depending on your business. Having a due date is also important which is why we said December 31, 2007.

Commit to someone else
If you commit to someone else you are more likely to follow through on your goal so once you set them tell others it them and give them updates. Nobody wants to look bad in front of their friends and peers so it will drive you to accomplish what you said you were going to do. You will also build yourself a great support network and people will want to get involved to help you achieve your goal. If you do not commit to others then it is too easy to get lazy and not follow through. A quick example is a personal goal of going to the gym to lose weight. People who go to the gym together are more likely to continue doing it but if you are going alone you will find many reasons not to go and you end up not following through. Having your own Mastermind Group can also be a great way to hold you accountable.

What is your goal?
The goal that I have set for myself is to reach the 35,000 spot in Alexa for my website. I have been hovering at around the 50,000 mark for a while so it will be a stretch but I am excited to strive for it.

What are your goals for December 31, 2007? Where do you see yourself and your company?

Evan Carmichael

Most search engines like Google send crawlers out to your site to see what pages you have created and then proceed to add them to their index. But what if they miss some pages or you make changes and they do not come back for another few months? How can you let the search engines know? The answer is through sitemaps.

What is a sitemap?
A sitemap is a file that contains the details of all the pages on your website. If you add a new page or modify an existing one all you have to do is edit your sitemap file to let the search engines know. In November 2006, Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft all agreed to support the sitemap protocol. Ask.com has now also agreed which means the four leading search engines are all on board.

How do I create a sitemap?
There are a number of ways to create a sitemap. My personal favorite is the GSiteCrawler. It is a free download that you can download to your computer. Once you run the program it will crawl your website and automatically create a sitemap for you according to the sitemap protocal (saving you tons of time and energy!). Because of all the new content we are regularly adding to my site, I run a sitemap every week. As of the writing of this post my sitemap currently contains 16,639 pages.

How do I tell the search engines about my sitemap?

You should create a link in your robots.txt file to your sitemap. All the major search engines will look through your robots.txt file so it is a quick way to let them know. Google and Yahoo have also created tools to allow you to let them know as soon as you make a sitemap change. This is not yet possible with Microsoft and Ask.com.

If you are not yet using sitemaps chances are the search engines are missing some of your pages and have an out of date record of what you have on your website. Make sure the hard work you put into creating quality website content is not wasted and tell the search engines that you have updated your pages by creating and submitting your sitemaps.

Evan Carmichael

Apprentice UK winner Tim Campbell has come up with a new way to help fund young entrepreneurs. He is creating the Bright Ideas Trust in London with the goal of helping young entrepreneurs launch 365 businesses a year.

The startups will get financial backing and expert advice in return for an equity stake in their businesses. The money earned from the ventures will go back into the Trust to finance future young entrepreneurs.

If executed successfully it could be a great model for North America to follow as well as developing countries to help develop new ideas and foster entrepreneurship. I’m looking forward to seeing what kind of businesses come out of this experiment and if it can be built to become a self-sustaining initiative!

Who do you think would be the best person to set something like this up in North America?

Evan Carmichael