If your business is a registered LLC in California or registered to do business in California, then you know full well how annoying those nasty LLC fees are. Not only do you have the annual tax of $800, but you also are forced to pay another LLC annual fee, which is based on the total gross income and cost of goods sold from your business. This fee is calculated based on income earned both inside and outside of California.

The LLC annual gross income fee breakdown is as follows:

Total Income between 250k – 500k: $900
Total Income between 500k – 1M: $2500
Total Income between 1M – 5M: $6000
Total Income over 5M: $11,790

There have been two separate court rulings in California that now state that these LLC fees are unconstitutional. The first case of Northwest Energetic Services LLC, v California Franchise Tax Board, the California Superior Court found that the annual fee based on worldwide gross income violated the fair appointment requirements of the US Constitution. Northwest, like many companies, were paying for California LLC fees when they had no business activity in California for several years.

The second case of Ventas Finance LLC, v. California Franchise Tax Board, the Superior Court again ruled that the annual LLC fee was unconstitutional on the grounds the worldwide grosses of Ventas were not proportionally taxed based on their in-state business income. Ventas contributed less than 10% of its business activity in California, but was taxed for their entire annual gross.

This is obviously unfair to businesses, and many tax attorneys are saying that the LLC fee will soon be deemed unconstitutional regardless of whether the LLC conducts all of their business activities in California or not. This is good news for business like ours, and many others like us, who do conduct all or a far amount of business in the Golden State. But unfortunately, until the appellate court reviews these courts rulings we still have to fork over the ridiculous annual sums to the FTB or face heavy fines. This kind of thing brings into question the usefulness of having an LLC in the first place.

All businesses registered as an LLC in California should file a protective claim pending the final outcome of the LLC fee litigation. At the very least, these unnecessary fees could be done away with soon and quite possibly be recuperated by business via a refund. Fingers crossed everybody.

Source: California Tax Attorney Blog

A key to the long tail is having as many pages as possible that combine your main keywords with other words that are likely to be found in a query. Lets use widgets as an example. It may be difficult to get “widgets” as a keyword your ranking numbers one on. So make a “Frequently Asked Widget Questions” page.

This can include questions like.

• How much does a widget cost?
• My favorite widget broke, is it covered under warranty?
• Will this widget put my family at danger?
• How often do you carry widget models?

You may have noticed that we here at Frye / Wiles post in our blog a lot. Why, you ask, do we do it? Are we really that full of ourselves?

Well, yes. But that’s not the reason. When it comes down to it, Google (and the other major search engines) loves blogs. They prioritize indexing on blogs (and other sites that are updated very frequently), to really a quite ridiculous degree. Whereas a normal, well developed website may get indexed once every couple of weeks, if you are running a blog on your site, you may get indexed as often as every couple hours - basically, search engines expect your blog content to be changing frequently, so they visit them often. That means that in the eyes of Google, our site is worth keeping on the radar. And that, in a slightly indirect way, means that we rank better on search results. Better search results means more traffic, more traffic means more customers, more customers means….well, you get the idea

Additionally, beyond that amazing search benefits, blogs can be a great way to keep in contact with your customer base - use them to post the latest news about your company, as an additional way to post press releases, keep customers abreast of happenings in your industry, inform the world of new projects you are working on, exciting happenings, awards you may have won. You name it, you can blog about it.

So what does that mean for you? Well, it means you should let Frye / Wiles add a blog to your site too! It’s fairly inexpensive, as far as web development goes, and the software is easy to use (if you can use Microsoft Word, you can be blogging). We have seen great results from our clients who have been convinced to start blogging. Blogging is moving to a much more business-oriented activity than it was originally intended for - don’t let your company get left behind!

Photo courtesy of cboyack

Throughout the day of fast paced and sometimes frustrating world of web development, I find myself sometimes less focused on the task at hand. I don’t know if it’s because I’m getting older and I developed AADHD, or hopefully it’s just the case of not staying focused.

Thanks to my co-worker Julian Sutter, he sent over a link from Zen Habits that helps with maintaining focus on the job. Such examples are: Take more breaks (my personal favorite, maybe not for Rob or Nate), make tasks that you can check off, and turning off extra inputs such as RSS feeds like from Digg (I am totally guilty of this).

1. www.fullyillustrated.com

Currently one my favorite sites for inspiration in 2D, 3D, and Design Layout.

2. www.cgsociety.org

A concept-art-reference goodie bag that I dive into daily.

3. www.massiveblack.com

Another source of inspiration and awe inspiring ideas.

This HTML UTF-8 Entity Encoder is what we use to make sure that our text is clean when we drop it in the HTML.

Just paste your text in, convert, copy the clean text and paste that in your html doc. That simple.

So George W. Bush has decided that what our sluggish economy really needs is for nearly everyone to get thrown a couple monetary bones to spend on ‘stuff’. This is intended to drive our economy as people are encouraged to go out and spend the $300 or $600 or whatever it is, on commercial products you don’t need. In honor of the bountiful sum that most of us are about to receive, I’ve listed 7 items that you, the mid to late-twenties male such as myself, might be tempted to blow all your hard earned government monies on, but shouldn’t.

1) Video Game Consoles

I’ve head this from a number of friends that when that treasury check is added to your bank account, a brand new PS3, Xbox 360 or Wii will find its way into your closet-sized apartment. But really, if you’re intent to take the next-gen system plunge, wait until the holiday’s when they’re expected to be cheaper. Your low-res PS2 and DS will do for now.

2) New Computer

Assuming your current laptop or PC are still in working order, I think you can hold out on handing over your entire tax rebate check to Best Buy or Dell. Everyone thinks they need the newest, fanciest computer around because some braggart on some blog praised their new E-Machine. Leave the 32″HD monitor and Intel quad-core platinum centrino processor to those with practical reasons to use them.

3) New iPod/iPhone

Similar to the computer issue. How is spending your check on one of these Apple money printers enhancing your life? By being able to listen to Maroon 5 and Mariah Carey back to back while you power walk after work? Please. How about you instead think hard how our country got entrenched into this downward spiral economy and let that anger spur you on your workout.

4) New Clothes

Here’s the deal. If you have a girlfriend, you don’t need new clothes. If you have a wife, you don’t need new clothes. If you have neither, you don’t need new clothes. Women like dirty guys anyways. You’re better off going out to a bar with torn jeans and a pit-stained white shirt with grease and snot on the front of it. Target and American Eagle don’t need your tax rebate check so don’t fork it over to em’.

5) Car Pimping

You find that after depositing that sweet, sweet check into your account that your car could really use a new muffler. Or Body kit. Or rims. Then you realize that you’re a dolt who just blew your W approved check on useless car crap that in no way assists with the way your vehicle normally operates. Life is simple. Don’t bother with the excess.

6) Action Figures

If you’re anything like me, you’ll be tempted to nerd out on some amazing new action figures like the ones shown above. But that would be a mistake. Your room is cluttered enough as it is and adding yet another Halo or Spawn figurine isn’t helping the situation. And don’t fool yourself into thinking you’ll buy a $350 sideshow collectible in hopes that it will appreciate in time, thus turning your obsession into an investment. We both know that’s not why you bought it. Save your cash for when you have a proper job position to support your habit.

7) Exercise Equipment

Please, let’s talk reality here. You’ll buy your expensive BowFlex or mechanized ab cruncher and use it for a week for actual exercise and then use it as a dirty clothes depository for the duration of its existence. You might as well blow your check on a gold encrusted laundry basket for all the good it will do you. Just don’t even think about this one.

So what should you use your government issued tax rebate checks for? Well, I’m not your mother and I don’t know your exact financial situation but I might try depositing that check into a high yield (or as high as you can find these days) interest income account. Or use it for the crazy rise in food or gas prices. Pay down your credit card or school loans. Maybe put that money into stocks. Point is, the check you’re about to receive should be put to practical use, and everything listed above is clearly in the ‘want’ and not ‘need’ category. Be smart and either invest that cash or spend it on something you need, not on something you want. You’ll thank yourself later.

Better yet, just take that check and bet it all on black in Vegas and see what happens.

1. Google owns the world.
2. Search marketing is increasingly the most effective way to spend your marketing dollar.
3. Most websites, especially those NOT designed by Frye / Wiles in the first place, are not built correctly to show up when people search for you or your industry.

With that introduction out of the way, we’re happy to announce our latest happy SEO customer. As a California Real Estate Investment resource, The Norris Group benefits immensely from search returns. They came to Frye / Wiles when the site they built internally was not returning on their desired search terms. We streamlined their code, brought them into conformity with standard SEO practices, and worked with them to flesh out valuable parts of their site and content. SEO is a long process, so it’s too early to start giving you statistics, but if history is any indicator of success, the Norris Group will now begin the glorious process in increasing natural search traffic! We wish them the best, and will report back with new information as it becomes available.

How much content do you want me to write?

LOTS!

Google only indexed 15% of my site, why?

Because Google is like that.

Google’s Supplemental Index is the bane of my existence. Now that it’s out in the open, we may continue.

Google’s Supplemental Index is best thought of as the secondary listing. It’s the cloths that you don’t use very often but keep around incase you have to mow the lawn or go skiing or paint balling. When Google crawls a page, it looks at the content and decides not only how important that content is for specific terms, but also what sort of quality it is overall. Content that is not considered top rate is then stuck into the supplemental index “just in case” it is found useful later on.

The problem for a website owner with content in the Supplemental Index is that the content will not benefit from long tail searches. In fact even searches that match your page title exactly will likely not return your page. There are a few other issues, but those are the main relating to content.

Why did I write all that content if its rotting in the Supplemental Index?

You write all that content because thats the name of the game. If you wanted to have your entire site indexed by Google, 100%, then you would be best served with a 1 or 2 page website. There are measures to getting some supplemental pages into the index, but it is never guaranteed. This is why it is important to develop so much content.If you throw enough content at the Google wall, some of it will stick. Especially the real sticky content.

How do I get out of the Supplemental Index.

The basic keys to getting out of the Supplemental Index are to show Google that those pages matter. Get good inbound links to those pages. This is a bit time intensive, but if you notice a really important landing page slipping into the index this is a good method. Plus I should add that SEO Maintenance is time consuming, but worth it

It takes time to get into the main index.

In my last post about Google’s Content Index Time, I mentioned that it takes time to get into Google’s Main Index. It takes even more time to get from the Supplemental into the Main Index. This is why as SEOs we have to be able to roll with the punches.

Can The Supplemental Index be avoided?

There are some things you can do to stay out of the Supplemental. If you launch a Large Amount of content at once, you have a higher likely hood of having that new content put on the back burner. New website launches are a tough one here, cause you can’t launch a whole site piece by piece (Captain obvious, I know). Again, this is why it’s important to maintain your cool, take some time and watch the website do its thing.

I have probably typed site:www.fryewiles 10 times today alone (Site:www.yoururl.com returns every page indexed of your site). Reason? We just launched a large amount of new content last week, and It’s my job to keep track of the search progress. Truth is that it’s become a nervous tick of sorts. Why is it taking so long to index? Well the best answer I have, is the same one I tell all our clients. It can take a long time for new content to index, that’s just how it is.

There are of course a few things you can do to decrease the wait time.

The main thing you can do is find a blog that is indexed regularly by google, and make an announcement (or link) on that site. If you have noticed, when ever we launch a new site here at Frye / Wiles we make an announcement blog post. Since it usually takes 20-45 min. for Google to crawl a new posting by our blog, this helps our new sites get noticed by Google quickly. If Google sees a new domain name as it crawls over a post, it will likely follow that link.

What about relaunches of sites? Try doing the same thing but link to an internal page. For instance a sitemap that didn’t exist before. Make sure the page you link to has lots of cross links (why I choose a sitemap) that way Googlebot will have lots of pathways to crawl.

Submit an XML sitemap to Google Webmaster Central.

Although Google will not necessarily crawl your site each time you submit a sitemap. If it’s a drastically different sitemap, then it will increase the chance of a crawl. Besides that reason, it’s important to have an XML sitemap. You can get one auto generated at xml-sitemaps.com.

So to back our case.

We did all of the above and more when we launched the new fryewiles.com site. So why did it take so long to index? Previously our site consisted of 6 pages. We increased that by over 10 times in the new site. It’s the new and improved site, or course there will be more content! Although this is not a large increase in pages compared to the Millions of pages launched on the web daily, For our site it is a large increase. Google has a history of taking time to increase the volume of an indexed sites pages. Especially when it’s in mass.

Last resort.

Calm down and watch time go by. Seriously one of the most frustrating parts of SEO is having to sit and wait on Google/Yahoo/MSN. This is why it’s helpful to have multiple projects going at any given time. Even on one site. To have a multi-pronged SEO campaign is crucial both for success and sanity. It’s a waiting game.