(Originally seen on Mashable by Scott Gerber)

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Scott Gerber is the founder of the Young Entrepreneur Council, a nonprofit organization that promotes youth entrepreneurship as a solution to unemployment and underemployment. The YEC provides young entrepreneurs with access to tools, mentorship, and resources that support each stage of a business’s development and growth.

It goes without saying that entrepreneurs know the importance of search engine optimization, and how to boost their Google search rankings. Right? Or is SEO a foreign language that you haven’t quite mastered?

Google rank is critical to a business’s success in this digital age. Savvy entrepreneurs know that search engine optimization is a necessary part of the marketing toolkit — and it doesn’t have to be difficult.

Instead of letting your Google rank get you down, apply these tips and techniques from a group of successful, young entrepreneurs in order to boost your company’s SEO results.

1. Create Evergreen Content

You’ll want your content to take the top slots for your name and various keywords and phrases, so you’ll want to have high-quality, authoritative content. The best way to make sure your content is seen this way to is create content that is forever useful, not trendy and disposable. Create content that people will be reading 10 years from now, and you’ll be getting linkbacks for a decade.

- Colin Wright, Exile Lifestyle.

2. Audit Your Online Profiles

Take a few minutes to login to each of your company’s online profiles. Is the biography up to date? More importantly, is your website’s URL listed somewhere? The incoming links from these profiles may not weigh too much in Google’s mysterious algorithm, but you’ll be surprised what it can do if you have more than a handful of accounts online.

- Logan Lenz, Endagon.

3. Think Like Your Customer Types

Think about what your ideal clients and customers might be typing into Google, and then find out if your hunch is right by looking keywords up in Google’s free Keyword Tool. Keep in mind that 25% of keywords have never been typed in before, but you’ll want to aim for popular keywords with low competition if you can. Then write content around these keywords and learn to optimize.

- Nathalie Lussier, Nathalie Lussier Media.

4. Hire an Expert

I suggest hiring a search engine optimization company or freelance specialist to develop an effective strategy to improve your rankings. The Google Panda updates has made the SEO space even more challenging to produce results, so I suggest outsourcing this task to the professionals. Look for individuals or companies with proven track records, and monitor their bi-weekly reports closely.

- Anthony Saladino, Kitchen Cabinet Kings.

5. Guest Post

Start guest posting on tons of relevant blogs. Blogs love fresh content, and for you it’s a great way to build links, which will boost your rankings on Google.

- Ben Lang, MySchoolHelp.

6. Content is King and Links are Queen

Yes, creating good content is very important to make your business rank higher in Google. But links are even more important. Google loves links, especially those from other relevant, authority websites. Join any and all industry associations, guest blog with a link back to your website, and submit your site to any relevant directories to grow your backlink profile and your searches.

- Warren Jolly, Affiliate Media Inc..

7. Bust Out the Camera

Video is such a huge thing now for business owners. Not only does it give your company personality, but it can also be spread across networks while linking back to your site. Create great videos filled with information people can share and then repeat. Now videos can be distributed across multiple platforms from one single platform, causing Google to love you.

- Ashley Bodi, Business Beware.

8. Colleges and Universities

The biggest SEO secret is that when .edu sites link to your website it gives you a higher Google ranking. Contact college and universities and find a reason for them to link to your site by running a special internship opportunity, for example.

- Nick Friedman, College Hunks Hauling Junk.

9. Update Your Site Frequently

The more often you update your site, the more important Google thinks it is. If you can publish content to your blog every day, Google will start to recognize you as a great source of information for whatever your keywords are. With every blog post, you have another chance at ranking for new search terms, so each article increases the odds of your site being found.

- Matt Wilson, Under30CEO.com.

10. Use the Right Keywords

Two effective ways of increasing your SEO rank are tagging articles and keyword analysis. You want to make sure your headlines are descriptive. You should also choose keywords that people are going to look for — so imagine yourself as a searcher.

- Lauren Perkins, Lauren Perkins.

11. Move Away From Flash

Many small businesses, especially restaurants and bars, use Flash for their sites because it’s easy to launch, looks good and is fairly cheap. While the sites might look decent, they rank really poorly in Google (without doing some tricks). Change your Flash-based site to WordPress or another platform, and you’ll rocket up the search engine rankings.

- Nathan Lustig, Entrustet.

12. Have You Taken Advantage of Local Search?

Are you a local business? Have you claimed your listing on Google, Yahoo! and Bing? If not, stop reading this article now and go claim your business listings immediately! I’ve seen a huge jump in traffic for businesses by simply claiming and filling out all the fields on these local profiles. The future of search is personalized local results, and these valuable profiles are often overlooked.

- Andrew Saladino, Just Bath Vanities.

13. Know Exactly What Words People Use to Search

The biggest mistake people make in trying to rank high in Google is having no clue what people are actually typing into search engines to find you. An easy way to find this out is to go to the Google homepage and slowly start typing in your phrases. You’ll notice Google suggested searches come up. Use those exact phrases in your titles. That’s what people want, so give it to them.

- Trevor Mauch, Automize, LLC.

(Originally published on Under30CEO)

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Q. What websites and social networks have provided you with the best peer-to-mentoring as a young entrepreneur?

Richard B., Brooklyn, NYThe following answers are provided by the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC). Founded by Scott Gerber, the YEC is an invite-only nonprofit organization comprised of the country’s most promising young entrepreneurs.  The YEC promotes entrepreneurship as a solution to youth unemployment and underemployment and provides its members with access to tools, mentorship, and resources that support each stage of a business’s development and growth.

A. Use Facebook to Extend Real-Life Relationships

I use Facebook to keep in touch with peer mentors that I meet in person. Nothing beats a face-to-face connection, but it can be hard to keep that connection alive with friends that live all over the globe. Everyone is on facebook, it’s simple to use, and it’s fun. Meet mentors in person then use Facebook to keep the flame alive.

Laura Roeder, LKR

A. Take the Brazen Route

My best peer mentoring has come from a site called Brazen Careerist. Although the site is more focused on Gen Y folks who are career oriented, it has been one of the best places for me to find answers to lingering questions on various subjects. What really blew me away was the speed at which the responses came. The site is very committed to helping its members be successful.

Ambassador Bruny, Ambassador Bruny.Com

A. Use Quora for Thoughtful Questions and Answers

Many social networks can add value to aspiring young entrepreneurs, but some are better for feedback and mentoring. One of these sites is Quora.com. Quora is a collection of questions and answers created, edited and organized by its users — many of whom have honest, mature and intelligent advice to share. It’s a supportive, brainstorming community of like-minded entrepreneurs. Check it out.

Kent Healy, The Uncommon Life

A. About.Me

Surprisingly, just having an About.Me profile has yielded me the most contacts and friend requests than any other online source. I don’t do anything proactive to network within About.Me, but others find me and reach out to me daily hoping to do business with me. I don’t know how they are finding me but these are great contacts that have led to some great opportunities.

Logan Lenz, Endagon

A. Email — The Original Social Network

From the time I started working for myself, I’ve sent emails constantly. I’ve reached out to a wide variety of people that I knew I could learn from — and I’ve gotten a lot more responses than I ever expected. There’s a new social network every day, but email isn’t going anywhere.

Thursday Bram, Hyper Modern Consulting

A. Use Twitter to Network, Converse and Build Relationships

Twitter has, by far, been my most valuable social networking tool for creating relationships with peers, contemporaries and mentors — many of whom have become close friends and business partners. Twitter’s genius is in the low barrier to connection: simple, short, unintrusive. You can connect with mentors, strike up friendly conversation or just ask for help.

DaveUrsillo, Lead Without Followers Ltd.

A. Under30CEO

Under30CEO.com features informative business articles and fantastic interviews with high level entrepreneurs. Most of all, I get great value from the NYC networking events coordinated by Under30CEO, which gather all types of young entrepreneurs and encourages them to connect in an informal manner.

Anthony Saladino, Kitchen Cabinet Kings

A. Visit and Participate in Blogs About Your Industry

It’s easy to look to Twitter or Facebook for your social networking, but blogging and commenting on blogs is just as much of a social network. Once you become active as a commentor in a circle of related blogs, you become familiar and can turn this into real relationships with the bloggers and peers in that group.

Nathalie Lussier, Nathalie Lussier Media

A. WeMedia.com

WeMedia is a great organization which combines online networking, physical conferences and start-up cash for entrepreneurs. They have tons of great tips on their website, speakers at their conferences and tangible advice from their staff on how to build your business. Many websites/networks are very hands off, but WeMedia takes a more hands on approach with resources, guidance and capital.

Lucas Sommer, Audimated

A. 85 Broads

85 Broads is a great community that connects and empowers women to help each other succeed. The mission of this organization is to generate professional and social value for its members. It offers workshops for members featuring industry experts and connects women in more than 90 countries around the world.

Lauren Perkins, Lauren Perkins

A. YoungEntrepreneur.com

The Young Entrepreneur website has a great blog section which contains information to help young entrepreneurs who are just starting out. They also have a very active forum section where young entrepreneurs ask and answer each other’s questions. The best part of their website is the “Ask an Expert” section where you can ask a question to be answered by their successful panel of experts.

Andrew Saladino, Just Bath Vanities

NEW YORK, NY – May 19, 2011 – Perks Consulting, a creative and digital boutique specializing in the fusion of lifestyle and technology, announced the addition of Jessica Miller as Project Manager to the Perks Consulting team to increase the streamlining of client service delivery and internal operations.

The addition of this role supplements Perks Consulting executives, CEO Lauren Perkins and COO Chris Agnos, a former senior manager at Accenture, who together have developed a customized project management and service delivery method that serves as the foundation of the agency’s internal and external delivery structure.  With Jessica’s operations management role, Perks Consulting strives to provide a premium experience for clients in its output and delivery, while continuing to expand its delivery bandwidth and service offerings.

With a strong understanding and connection to the tech and startup ecosystem in her past role at Apple, Jessica brings innovation relevance and insight to the management of Perks’ creative and digital service capabilities.

About Jessica Miller

Jessica comes to Perks with 5 years of experience at Apple in a number of roles from product training and trouble shooting to visual merchandising and productization. Coming from Apple’s strict standard operating procedure, Jessica offers a keen retail sense coupled with her organization ability provides structure as Perks’ project manager.

About Perks Consulting

Perks Consulting is a creative and digital boutique specializing in the fusion of lifestyle and technology. We create brands, products and campaigns to build relevant and innovative businesses. Our team includes a diverse mix of strategists, social media pros, website designers, copywriters, bloggers and marketing visionaries who use a fresh approach and traditional tactics to provide our clients with high impact results.

For more information, contact: info@perksconsulting.com or visit www.perksconsulting.com

Watch the video here:

“Encourage Introspection

This question is great because it not only requires the interviewee to expose some sense of vulnerability, but also to demonstrate how they can speak around their shortcomings to remain the ideal candidate for the position –”

What are your weaknesses and how do you overcome them?

May 24, 2010 (New York, NY) At the height of the online privacy debate, DataRockit, a leader in data services technology, is opening up its 3.1B criminal, consumer, sex offender and real estate records for an application development contest. Launching today, with TechCrunch Disrupt, the contest challenges developers to construct an application that utilizes the database records in DataRockit’s comprehensive infrastructure to help look after the communities where we live. The Disruptive contest will run through June 7, 2010, the kickoff of New York Internet Week.

In line with DataRockit’s dedication to protecting communities, the company will fully partner with the winning developer to build out a functioning application, powered by the DataRockit platform. All data for the Disruptive Contest will be provided FOR FREE (record queries may otherwise cost up to $30 per query).

“Our goal is to challenge how developers capitalize on user information to create applications that help our societies, rather than to exploit them,” says Roy Johnson, CEO of DataRockit. “Nobody has ever released this amount of information on such a large scale, and I believe there is a huge opportunity for the person who finds just the right way to work with the data.”

All developer proposals will be due by June 7, 2010, and the winner will be announced on June 14, 2010 as Internet Week comes to a close. The winner will then have the summer to build out a application and present it to DataRockit. The winning application will be unveiled in the fall, and will receive a contract from DataRockit offering (1) the data necessary to run the proposed application, (2) data infrastructure and hosting services, and (3) developer support.

ABOUT DATAROCKIT

DataRockit, Inc. is the leader in data services technologies powering some of the largest online information applications in the world. DataRockit’s state of the art data infrastructure stores and processes billions of records serving millions of requests daily in sub-second times to the world’s most demanding clients. The DataRockit platform allows businesses to utilize the most comprehensive, current, and relevant consumer, criminal, sex-offender, and real-estate data with none of the management and technology overhead of acquiring and utilizing these enormous data sets.