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Tax Time Again
Yes, azalea and dogwood blooms-and tax forms-are all signs of spring. This year your tax return must be postmarked by midnight on April 16th. Since the calendar has granted you an additional 24 hours, take a moment to check out these tax tips. Remember, the following information isn’t professional advice, please contact your tax advisor for that.
To deduct or not to deduct, that is the question. Actually, the IRS uses three questions to determine whether a business expense qualifies as deductible against business income. If you ask yourself these three questions, determining what expenses qualify is pretty clear.
1. Is the expense reasonable and customary for your trade or business?
2. Was the expense paid for or incurred during the taxable year?
3. Is the expense connected with the conduct of your trade or business?
If you can answer yes to all three of these questions about a particular expense, then you can use the expense as a deduction. Though there are thousands of pages of tax litigation that parses these three criteria to the nth degree, for most of us a common sense answer to these questions will give us a correct result.
Once you have answered yes to these three questions, the next key area is record keeping. Do yourself a favor, if you don’t have a record of the expense, don’t deduct it. Just resolve to be more thorough during 2007.
Right now, the most helpful tip may be that you can always file an extension request. Businesses need to file IRS Form 7004; individuals must use IRS Form 4868, Request for Extension of Time to File. You or your business will automatically be granted a six month extension of time in which to file your return. Please remember, this is an extension of time to file your return, NOT an extension of time to pay any taxes due. Any taxes due should be submitted with your extension request to avoid paying penalties and interest when you file your return. Download a PDF of the forms you need and get complete instructions at www.irs.gov.
10 tips for getting your press release published
News editors and reporters receive dozens of press releases each day. So how do you make yours stand out? PressReleaseWriting.com offers these 10 tips for ensuring your release makes the news.
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1. Make sure the information is newsworthy.
2. Tell the audience that the information is intended for them and why they should continue to read it.
3. Start with a brief description of the news, and then distinguish who announced it, and not the other way around.
4. Ask yourself, “How are people going to relate to this and will they be able to connect?”
5. Make sure the first 10 words of your release are effective, as they are the most important.
6. Avoid excessive use of adjectives and fancy language.
7. Deal with the facts.
8. Provide as much contact information as possible: individual to contact, address, phone, fax, email, website address.
9. Make sure you wait until you have something with enough substance to issue a release.
10. Make it as easy as possible for media representatives to do their jobs. |
The Fine Art of Search Engine Optimization
The World Wide Web is the number one place to market businesses or organizations of any kind. However, having the best looking and easiest to use website doesn't do any good if nobody sees it. This is where SEO (Search Engine Optimization) comes in. A goal of your website should be to appear as the first selection in Google, Yahoo or MSN when a web user types in a keyword that matches your industry. Unfortunately, nobody can guarantee your website the number one spot, unless you pay big bucks for it. It may take a little work to gain a good spot for your website on its own, but it is far cheaper than pay per click advertising. Take a look at our list of tips below. We can't guarantee your ranking will go higher, but if you aren't doing these things WE CAN guarantee your chances of climbing the rankings are slim to none. If you have questions about any of our tips you may want to ask your web administrator or send us an email at jlawrence@semaphoreinc.com.
1. Proper meta-tags:
Meta-tags are just codes hidden within your website for search engine spiders to read. In the early days of the web meta-tags were the only way search engines could see what was on your site. It's a common misconception that all search engines today ignore meta-tags: there still are some meta-tags that are read by search engines. Some of these meta-tags include...
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Description tags: Describes what your site is about so the search engine can have a summary under your link. Otherwise, the search engine will just use whatever text it can find.
Keyword tags: Tells the search engine what keywords fit your site best. Don't get carried away, it can have a negative effect if you have too many. It can also hurt you if your keywords contradict what your content is actually about.
Geographical tags: These can be helpful if your site is only to be used by people that live in a certain city, state or country.
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Be careful using any other tags because plenty of other tags will hurt you if they are used at all or used improperly.
2. Submission to web browsers:
If you've just launched a website it doesn't hurt to submit your new domain name to a search engine just to let them know that you're there and to go check you out. Just submit it once. If you submit it multiple times, it could hurt your ranking.
3. Submission to online directories such as DMOZ and Yahoo:
Search engines trust where your website is listed in these directories because they are run by humans that make sure your website belongs in its category. You should only be submitted in one category that best describes your site. Submitting to multiple categories can hurt your site and cause them to remove you from the directory all together. Don’t submit to a directory if you have any incomplete pages, dead links or pages that say “under construction.”
4. Content, Content, Content:
Have plenty of content in your website that says exactly what you do. The closer your content matches what your keyword meta-tags are, the better your chances are to get a high ranking. Updating your website on a regular basis is positive as well. Search engines don't tend to list stagnant websites. Also, a beautiful flash website that's full of images may look nice but if there's no content then it might as well not even exist. Search engines can't read images, just text. Just strike a happy medium of quality content and cutting edge design.
5. Links, Links and More Links:
This is as important in the web as “location, location, location” is in real-estate. Most search engine spiders will enter a website and follow any links in it to other websites and so on. That means that if hundreds of other websites have links that go to yours, then that's hundreds more chances for spiders to index your website. It's best not to have any external links on your home page. If you do then a search engine spider could barely index your site before it follows a link out to another site and leaves your site in the dust.
Follow our five points to greatly increase your website’s chances of being on top of the heap. If you're not sure how your website is doing, contact Semaphore Inc. and we'll help you prepare for search engine optimization success!
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State Credit Union Selects Semaphore as Agency of Record
