Why I Hate the Federated States of Micronesia

Yap, Chuuk, Pohnpei and Kosrae:
The Federated States of Micronesia

I live in Florida. That's why.

Every time I fill out a form online, I eventually come to the dropdown menu for "State" and hit the "F" key to jump directly to Florida (the only state in the union starting with the letter "F").

But does Florida pop up? No.

The Federated States of Micronesia does!

For the record, I have nothing against Micronesians or whatever they call themselves. My beef is with the database programmer who listed "Federated States of Micronesia" as one of the fifty U.S. states decades ago, and the millions of other programmers who have blindly followed his or her lead ever since.

Do the Federated States of Micronesia really need a spot on that list? Of course not.

Then why does everybody do it that way? Because we always have.

How many things in your business model are done just because that's the way you've always done it?


How many of them infuriate your customers?

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For the record, according to Wikipedia:

The Federated States of Micronesia, or FSM, is an independent, sovereign island nation, made up of four states from west to east: Yap, Chuuk, Pohnpei and Kosrae. It comprises approximately 607 small islands in the Western Pacific Ocean spread over almost 1,700 miles (2,700 km) longitudinally just north of the equator some 2,500 miles (4,000 km) southwest of the main islands of Hawaii and about 1,800 miles (2,900 km) north of eastern Australia, lying northeast of New Guinea, south of Guam and the Marianas, west of Nauru and the Marshalls, and east of Palau and the Philippines.

If anyone can explain to be why everyone lists them as one of the 50 states, please leave a comment!

How to Form an LLC in Florida

LLC?   INC?   WTF?

I recently had an email exchange with a client about whether and how to form a Limited Liability Company (LLC) in the State of Florida. At the end of our exchange, I wrote "I think I'll do a blog post about this - we can't be the only ones with this problem!".

So without further adieu, here is an excerpt from that email exchange:

You form an LLC by registering with the State of Florida at https://efile.sunbiz.org/llc_file.html. It's actually a very easy process.

It's sometimes easier to make your LLC kind of an "umbrella" with a generic name ([Your Name] Services, LLC or something like that), then you can register a fictitious name (a "DBA") for each entity you operate under the LLC. So you could have DBAs ("Doing Business As") registered to the umbrella LLC such as: 

• Business Name A
• Business Name B
• Some new crazy idea you come up with in the future

That way, you're not forming a new LLC every time you enter a new venture, rebrand,  or branch off into a new area of growth. You just register the new name as a DBA and you're all set - you can open bank accounts and everything.

Once you get your LLC documents, you can apply for your DBAs at https://efile.sunbiz.org/ficregintro.html. You'll normally want to register the LLC as the owner of the fictitious name(s).

And that's really all there is to it. Forming an LLC in the State of Florida couldn't be easier. But why would you want or need to?

First of all, you should check with your tax professional and seek legal advice from a qualified attorney (as my friend Roz likes to say, "I'm no lawyer, but I know who to ask for one!") before forming any type of business venture.

But the fact remains that a Limited Liability Company, or LLC, is the simplest and most pragmatic option for the vast majority of small business owners. An LLC combines the "limited liability" of a corporation with the simplicity of "pass through income". So, as a general rule:

1. Your personal assets are protected from the liability generated by your business activities*, and
2. Any income generated by your business activities simply "passes through" to your personal income for tax purposes.

*According to Wikipedia, "It is important to understand that limited liability does not imply that owners are always fully protected from personal liabilities. Courts can and will pierce the corporate veil of corporations (or LLCs) when some type of fraud or misrepresentation is involved".

Trust me, you do not want to have your corporate veil pierced!

Have you ever been sued or otherwise been subject to liability and had your assets protected by your LLC (or exposed by the lack of one)? Have you ever had your veil pierced? Please feel free to share your experiences by leaving a comment below!

An Englishman's Guide to SEO

1. Do you have a website?

2. Do you want it to rank well in Google?

3. Do you have 18 spare minutes?

4. Do you like British accents?

If you answered "yes" to the above questions, then boy do I have a treat for you! Make yourself a cup of tea, press play, and enjoy the video below. It was put together by Mike Mendel of Wordtracker.com, and is a perfect complement to my What the Heck is SEO? Series!

(If you have trouble loading the video, you can watch the original here.)

Click here for more information about the cool SEO tools available from Wordtracker!

Disclaimer: Tampa Bay Search is an official Wordtracker Affiliate.

Monday Morning Quote

"You have to go where the competition is not. The further, the better."

                                                                    Seth Godin in Purple Cow

The Five Dollar Typo Challenge

This could be yours!

I hate typos. Despise them.

 In fact, I hate them so much that I will give you five bucks if you find a typo on my blog.

 The rules:

1. It has to be something I wrote. Comments, guest posts, and ads do not count.
2. You have to be a subscriber to my blog. No smarty-pants passers-by.
3. PayPal only. I am not going to the post office or giving you my credit card number.
4. This offer stands until December 31st, 2010 or until I go broke, whichever comes first.

The process:

1. Subscribe to my blog.
2. Read it zealously. Every word. Every page. Every post.
3. If you find a typo, email me. No phone calls please.
4. Collect your $5.00 via PayPal.
5. It is recommended, but not required, that you spend it on rum.

What the Heck is SEO? Series Post 6: Keyword Research

In my last post in this series, we talked about the power of links. By now you should be starting to realize that SEO is not rocket science or black magic - it's a simple set of guidelines that Google and Bing ask webmasters to follow so they can figure out what web pages are about. You're probably eager to start revising your content and building links that contain your keywords. But what are your keywords? And how do you know which keywords to use?

This post will provide a brief introduction to the concept of keyword research, and show you a couple of tools for getting the job done.

"SEO is not rocket science or black magic - it's a simple set of guidelines that Google and Bing ask webmasters to follow so they can figure out what our web pages are about"

While Google and Bing are getting very good at semantic analysis, the fact remains that using the right keywords can make the difference between getting lots of traffic and new business, or having a beautiful website that no no ever sees. The key to using the right keywords is knowing what people actually search for on Google and Bing. And this information is not as top secret as you might think!

I'm going to let you in on a little secret many SEO companies don't want you to know - Google (which you'll recall from my first post in this series has a 70% market share in the U.S.) gives away this information for free! Just follow these easy steps:

• Go to https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal.
• Enter some keywords or phrases you think people may search for.
• Have fun playing around with Google's keyword tool and exploring the many phrases people actually search for on Google. The tool is actually pretty intuituve and user friendly.

Google's Keyword Tool

According to Google:

You can search for keyword ideas by entering a keyword related to your business or service or a URL to a page containing content related to your business or service. Or, you can go straight to filtering keyword categories next to the statistics table. You can use one or the other or both together; the tool is completely flexible depending on how you'd like to use it. Things to try:

• Open Advanced Options to further refine your search by: Country, Language, and Mobile search.
• Relevant Categories will be highlighted in bold to the left. However, you can still select and explore non-highlighted categories.
• Check or uncheck the Keyword Match Types boxes beneath the available categories to further refine your search in the main browser pane.
• Click "Filters and Views" above the results table to customize the columns you see within your results data.
• Add -keyword to exclude the keyword from your search results. (For example, add -classes to a search for tango.)

A special word of caution about the third bullet above (Keyword Match Types) - There are three match types you can select in the Google Keyword Tool:

• Broad Match - Includes traffic estimates for all similar phrases and relevant variations
• Phrase match - Includes traffic for searches that contain the exact phrase
• Exact Match - Includes traffic for searches that match the exact phrase exclusively

If you leave it set to "Broad", the traffic estimates you see will be greatly inflated.

And another word of caution about the Google Keyword tool in general - This tool was designed for use by Google Adwords advertisers, and opinions vary on how accurate the tool is. Obviously, the numbers will be slightly inflated due to the fact that webmasters and business owners frequenlty search for their own keywords to see where their sites are ranked in the search results.

"Using the right keywords can make the difference between getting lots of traffic and new business, or having a beautiful website that no no ever sees."

If nothing else, the Google Keyword tool is great for comparing different keyword combinations and checking their relative traffic. For example, if the tool says the phrase "Tampa Auto Repair" generates 250 searches per month, and the phrase "Tampa Mechanic" generates 25, you can safely assume you'll get a lot more traffic if you rank well for the first phrase. But your actual mileage will vary.

My two favorite things about the Google Keyword tool are 1) it's absolutely free, and 2) it's from Google, so this is about as close to the horse's mouth as you're going to get.

But while this free tool from Google is certainly a good place to start, if you're serious about your SEO and you're looking for something more sophisticated, then I recommend Wordtracker (affiliate link). They have several tools available to help you with keyword research and linkbuilding, and most of them come with a free trial and a moneyback guarantee.

And that's it in a nutshell*. If you do your homework as you begin the SEO process, you'll get a lot more bang for your buck!

So now that you know what your keywords are and you've got them in the right place on your website, you're ready to start building links, right? But how the heck do you do that?

Stay tuned for my next post in this series - Link Building Strategies (or better yet, subscribe to my blog to get it delivered to your inbox).

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*I fully realize that this was a very brief introduction to keyword research. The truth is it's a complex subject that is difficult to cover in a single blog post. I just wanted to introduce you to the idea and show you a couple of tools to get you started. I am planning an in-depth e-book on the subject in the future - please subscribe to my blog and I'll send you a discount code when it comes out!

Monday Morning Quote: Ask the Right Questions

"Relentlessly asking the right questions is a long term career, mostly because no one ever knows the right answer on a regular basis."
                                                                                                                 Seth Godin