There are now guides and forms relating to most aspects of business and tax available through our ‘Free Business Development Resources‘ page.

Here’s a list of the resources that will help you deal with Companies House and the Taxman;

Companies House

• AA01 – Change Of Accounting Reference Date

• AA02 – Post October Dormant Company Accounts

• AD01 – Change Of Registered Office Address

• AD03 – Change Of Location Of The Company Records To The Single Alternative Inspection Location

• AD04 – Change Of Location Of The Company Records To The Registered Office

• AP01 – Appointment Of Director

• AP02 – Appointment Of Corporate Director

• AP03 – Appointment Of Secretary

• AP04 – Appointment Of Corporate Secretary

• CH01 – Change Of Director’s Details

• CH02 – Change Of Corporate Director’s Details

• DS01 – Striking Off Application By A Company

• Form 42 (2009)

• NM01 – Notice Of Change Of Name By Resolution

• RP01 – Replacement Of Document Not Meeting Requirements For Proper Delivery

• SH01 – Return Of Allotment Of Shares

• TM01 – Termination Of Appointment Of Director

• TM02 – Termination Of Appointment Of Secretary

Inland Revenue

• 64-8

• CWF1

• SA1

• To Pay Class 2 DD

If you would like to access any of these forms or guides, then please click here. If there are any forms or guides that you would like uploaded, please leave a comment and we’ll get them up as soon as we can. Tax Accountant.

• Growth is forecast to be 1.2% this year, taking into account the budget measures. It is forecast to be 2.3% next year, 2.8% in 2012, 2.9% in 2013 and 2.7% in both 2014 and 2015.

• Debt will be falling, and structural current deficit should be balanced by 2014.

• Consumer Price Inflation (CPI) is expected to reach 2.7% by the end of the year, returning to target in the medium term.

• Unemployment rate forecast to peak at 8.1% this year, and then fall for each of the next four years to reach 6.1% in 2015

• 77% of total consolidation to be achieved through spending reductions, and 23% through tax increases.

• Public sector net borrowing will be £149bn this year, £116bn next year, £89bn in 2012-13, £37bn in 2014-15, falling to £20bn in 2015-16.

• Additional current expenditure reductions of £30bn a year by 2014-15.

Public Sector

• Two year public sector pay freeze on staff earning more than £21,000.

• People earning less than £21,000 will each receive a flat pay rise worth £250 in each of the two years.

• Operational allowance for troops in Afghanistan doubled to £4,800.

• Will Hutton will draw up plane for fairer pay across the public sector, without increasing the overall pay bill, so that those at the top of the organisation are paid no more than 20 times the salaries of those at the bottom.

• An independent commission chaired by John Hutton will review public sector pensions. There will also be consultation on scrapping default retirement age.

• Rise in the state pension age to 66 will be accelerated.

• Government will seek private capital injection into the Royal Mail Group

Welfare

• Benefits, tax credits and public service pensions will increase in line with consumer prices rather than the Retail Price Index

• Child benefit to be frozen for the next three years

• Caps on housing benefits to be introduced – from £280 a week for a one-bedroom property to £400 a week for a four-bedroom or larger. Together with other measures, this will reduce the costs of housing benefit by £1.8bn a year by the end of parliament.

• Sure start maternity grant will go to the first child only.

• Eligibility for child tax credits to be reduced for families with a household income of more than £40,000 from April 2011.

• The baby element of the child tax credit will be abolished from April next year.

• Child element of the child tax credit to increase by £150 above indexation next year.

Taxes

• Corporation Tax, currently 28%, to fall by 1p in the pound a year for four consecutive years until it reaches 24%.

• Small companies tax to fall to 20%

• New firms outside south-east/east to be let off employer nation insurance contributions, up to £5,000, for each of the first 10 employees recruited.

• VAT to increase to 20% on 4 January next year. Will generate over £13bn a year of extra revenues.

• Government to work with local authorities to freeze council tax for one year from April next year.

• Capital Gains Tax, currently 18%, to increase for higher earners to 28% from midnight. Low and middle-income savers will continue to pay 18%.

• Personal income tax allowance to be raised by £1,000 from April to £7,475. Will take 880,000 people out of tax altogether.

• Higher rate income tax threshold frozen until 2013.

• The standard rate of insurance premium tax to rise from 5% to 6% and the higher rate to increase from 17.5% to 20%.

• 50p-a-month levy on phone lines to pay for the rollout of superfast broadband scrapped.

• Planned tax relief for video games industry to be scrapped.

Banking and Savings

• Bank levy to be introduced in January next year, to apply to the balance sheets of UK banks and building societies, and to the UK operations of banks from abroad. Expected to raise over £2bn of annual revenues.

Drinks, cigarettes and fuel

• No increase in duties.

• Reversal of government decision to increase duties on cider by 10% above inflation confirmed.

Pensions

• From April next year the basic state pension will be re-linked with earnings.

• Basic state pension will increase every year by highest of earnings, inflation or 2.5%.

Businesses

• Regional Growth Fund to provide finance for regional capital projects over the next two years.

• The 10% Capital Gains Tax rate for entrepreneurs, which currently applies to the first £2m of qualifying gains made over a lifetime, will be extended to the first £5m of lifetime gains.

• Capital allowances for the majority of plant and machinery assets to fall from 20% to 18%, while the allowance for longer-lived assets will fall from 10% to 8% from April 2012.

• Annual Investment Allowance to fall to £25,000 a year in April 2012.

Contact Us, or Get a free Quote, to see how we can help you deal with these changes. Tax Accountant.

VAT

On the 4th January 2011, VAT will rise to 20%. This will earn £13bn a year by the end of parliament.

Capital Gains Tax

The higher rate of Capital Gains Tax will be increased to 28% from Midnight tonight. The lower rate will remain the same, as will the Capital Gains Tax allowance (£10,100)

Entrepreneurial Relief

Instead of £2m of lifetime gains, the first £5m of lifetime gains will qualify for Entrepreneurial relief.

Income Tax

There is no increase in the rate in which Income is going to be taxed; but the personal allowance will raise to £7,475 a year from April 2011. This is one step towards gradually increasing the allowance to £10,000.

Public Sector Pay Freeze

There will be a 2 year pay freeze for Public Sector employees

Tax Credits

Tax credits for families earning over £40k a year will be reduced.

Child Benefit

Child benefit will be frozen for 3 years.

Housing Benefits

Maximum limits on housing benefits will be introduced.

State Pension Age

The plans to raise the State Pension age to 66 will be accelerated.

Corporation Tax

Corporation Tax will be reduced by 1% each year for the next four years, bringing it down to 24% by the end of parliament.

Bank Tax

Starting in January 2011, there will be a bank tax. This tax, by the end of parliament, is expected to raise £2bn a year.

Why not visit the best Tax Accountant in Sussex’s website?

I’m not bitter, but I haven’t found a quality link builder that isn’t out of most people’s price range. I think this is the case with many SEOs, which is why most of the affordable link builders deliver what they can for the price, which is why the link quality tends to be sub-par. As for the link builder’s who’s rates are unaffordable – well, you can’t afford not to use them. See? Love/Hate relationship!

Links are the motorways of the web; without links, no-one would be able to navigate, move from place to place, or from one site to the next. The only way to find anything on the internet without using links is by directly typing the URL into the URL address bar.

In SEO terms, the simplest meaning for a link is that it’s a vote for the web page it leads to. It’s a lot more complicated than that, but for now that definition will suffice. If you like something, you link to it.  If someone likes you, hopefully they’ll link to you.

Links spread like word of mouth; if you have something worth telling, or linking to, then more people will spread the word via their sites, blogs, or Facebook. The easiest way to get links is to have something worth linking to; which involves some hard work!

Apart from providing a way to navigate through the web, links provide a way for the visitor (and search engines) to know what any page is about before they even click on it. Or, at least, they should.

Far too often, I see links that say ‘Click here’. Sure, it tells the visitor what to do, but it doesn’t explain why they should be clicking the link. The reader will likely be forced to read around the link, just to understand it. That’s not a problem for people who read a webpage word for word, but unfortunately, these are an endangered species!

Most people skim pages, simply looking for something that will interest them. Obviously, a link will stand out from ordinary text; so you don’t want to say ‘Click Here’, you want to say ‘Click Here for …….’. If you do this, the link will catch their attention, and they won’t have to read around it to know roughly what the link will take them to.

The Search Engines use this as a signal toward analysing the topic of a page. If people link to a single page using words such as ‘pre-owned vehicles’, ‘buy Mazda’ and ‘low mileage cars’, then the search engine gets a pretty good idea as to what’s included on the page. The more content links pointing to a page, the more the Search Engine can glean what the page is about.

The search engine can match up the links with the content for additional relevancy and ranking factors. Not to mention the visitor looking to buy a Mazda knows that licking the link likely gets them to the information they need.

I hope you enjoyed this post; keep your eyes peeled for the next one!

Why not check out the Best Accountants in Sussex?Tax Accountant

The process of researching your keywords isn’t one that you want to rush. Each phase of the research process needs to be performed deliberately, ensuring that you take the time to find all relevant terms and discard the irrelevant. An attempt to rush the research process will, more than likely, result in you being lead down the wrong path; which could mean that you have to start the research process all over again.

Unfortunately, the research process isn’t always linear. You can often be working on several phases of the research process at any one time, depending on what your focus is on. There is a lot of overlap and moving backward and forward through the processes, but care needs to be taken to ensure that you don’t skip over, or leave out, and of the keyword phrases.

Brainstorming

You can start the keyword research process anywhere, but it’s usually best to start from scratch. What keywords do you start the research process with? Do some brainstorming.

Brainstorming allows you to get a list of keywords from an unbiased perspective. The brainstorming process doesn’t mean just sitting around and thinking up phrases, although this can be a part of it. Good brainstorming starts with asking questions that lead to answers. More often than not, these answers will be your keywords.

So; first, think of questions that are relevant for you. Don’t try to answer them yet; you’ll have time for that later, but compile your list of questions that will help you find the keywords you are looking for.

Once you have a good, comprehensive list of questions, do whatever research is necessary to find the answers. Those answers give you a base of keywords that you can then take to the online research tools to look for related phrases. These related phrases produce a wide range of variations in how your topic is searched. Some relevant, others not so much.

Find core terms first

Without a doubt, during the brainstorming and research processes, you’ll amass a list of hundreds of phrases. You want to keep the process as simplified as possible, so we’ll start by eliminating everything that is not a core term.

A core term is a keyword phrase boiled down to the essentials. It’s specific enough to produce a relevant result, but broad enough to cover a wide range of much more targeted phrases. Generally, a good core term is two, maybe three words. On the rare occasions, a core term could be a single word, but only where there is no room for alternate interpretations.

Only use qualifiers on a core term when it is necessary to ensure that the searcher will be led to a relevant page. For example, the word bag could mean anything from a from a travel bag to a sleeping bag. This is a core term that needs a qualifier in order to be relevant to the searcher. If it’s not relevant, then it isn’t a core term.

Each page of your website should have a single core term associated with it. You may find several pages on your site that are a good fit for a single term. That’s fine during the research process, but later you’ll want to make sure you select only the most appropriate page for any single core term. The others will have to find their own core terms.

Don’t stop your core term research until you are certain that there are no more possible variations that produce measurable traffic. Using keyword suggestion tools available in most keyword research programs, find all relevant variations on each of your core terms. For example, a travel bag can also be a back pack, or luggage (one of the rare cases of one-word core terms). Each of these can be searched to find even more possible core term variants.

Core Term Site Mapping

After you have put together an exhaustive list of core terms, and before you start performing deeper research into finding specific phrases, you want to map out where your core terms will be integrated into your site. For some industries, it’s as easy as looking at the content and assigning core terms to pages. For others, where there are a lot of core term variations that mean the exact same thing, it can be more difficult.

Assigning core terms to pages must be done very carefully. You need to ensure that the content of each page is either a 100% natural fit, or the content can easily be adapted to fit that core term. A good example is ‘cost segregation’ vs. ‘cost segmentation’. Both, essentially, mean the same thing, but both are frequently searched. The content of a page about ‘cost segregation’ can easily be adapted for ‘cost segmentation’ without altering the meaning or focus of the page.

If you can’t make a keyword fit without significantly altering the message of a page, then find another core term; or another page for that core term.

I recommend prioritising your core terms before assigning them to pages. Figure out which terms get more search volume, are most relevant, bring in targeted audiences and produce the best sales. These are all important factors of determining which core terms are more important than others.

By prioritising your core terms, you can research and optimise those that are most important first, before moving on to lower priority terms. The optimisation of your high priority terms can take some time, so leaving the secondary terms for later is a good optimisation strategy.

Before you move into the next phase of the keyword research process, you have enough information to start optimising your website. With the core terms and the map of where each core term will be implemented, you can begin to perform a very broad and quick optimisation of the website. Going a page at a time, optimise title tags, Meta description tags, headings and even a bit of content.

I wouldn’t spend a lot of time on each page, as you can go do a more in-depth optimisation later, once you have more keywords to work with.

Why not check out the Best Accountants in Sussex?Tax Accountant

Personal Allowances – Before Election Day, it was well published that the Liberal Democrats wanted a £10,000 personal allowance; and we know that this was one of the concessions agreed under the new coalition government. The aim of this is to help low and middle earners, so I would expect it to be capped at a certain level of income. This is expected to come into effect during 2011.

Corporation Tax – There have been a lot of mixed messages regarding corporation tax policy. Over on Accountingweb, they have an article suggesting that the main rate of corporation tax for large companies will be reduced to make the UK more competitive. If this happened, to pay the difference, the rate of corporation tax for smaller companies may have to increase, together with the abolition of the annual allowance.

Others are suggesting that there will be a cut in both larger and smaller company corporation tax – but we’ll have to wait and see!

Capital Gains Tax (CGT) – This, in my opinion, is where we will see the most significant changes; CGT currently stands at 18%. If changes are made, we could see a future tax rate of 40%. There is also a lot of uncertainty as to when the government will introduce these changes. Changing it halfway through the tax year (budget date) would be the most effective for the Taxman in regards to revenue, but could cause them a logistical nightmare. Some commentators believe it will be introduced on a more realistic date of 6^th April 2011.

For those of you sitting on large capital gains at this point, look out for these changes, and be prepared to act quickly to release the gain at 18%; if the rules are introduced next year.

VAT Changes – The big question is will VAT be raised to 20%? When Labour reduced it to 15% in December 2008, there was much discussion that when the rate increased again, it would go up to 20%. At the time, this caused an uproar as VAT has an impact on almost everything we buy. Although it would be a quick way for the Treasury to bolster their piggy banks, could it be too unpopular for a new government to implement when they are still finding their feet?

National Insurance rises – This could be good news for employers as it is being suggested that the proposed 1% increase will be stopped. However, the 1% increase for employees could still go ahead.

For help with planning for the Tax changes in the Budget, Why not check out the Best Accountants in Sussex?Tax Accountant

So; let’s get on with these tips –

• Add the application to your Fan Page – At the moment, Static FBML is not available for personal pages. If Static FBML isn’t in your apps or recommended apps, type ‘Static FBML’ into your Facebook search bar, and then click ‘Add to my page’ to, well, add the application to your Fan Page. Once you can access the app, which I show you how to in How To Use Static FBML, you will see a field for the name of your tab, and a field where you can start entering your FBML code.

• Minimise Code – Just like HTML, FBML hates unnecessary code. If it’s in there, but doesn’t need to be, get rid of it; because it is slowing down your page. FBML also doesn’t read relative links, so store your images on a low-character server name.

• Consider your audience – What’s the whole point of you using FBML? To attract new fans? To increase sales? To increase traffic to your website? Either way, these all involve your audience – so consider what makes your niche tick, and conform to it.

• Use the necessary resources – There is no point trying to create a Fan Page with FBML without first reading which tags they use, and which they don’t. Have a look here – Allowed FBML and HTML Tags

• Tables – When you are designing your FBML-enhanced Fan Page, the easiest way to achieve the layout you want is to use tables, ie. <table><tbody><td> etc.

And one final tip – you can actually set your FBML application to be the landing page every time someone visits your Fan Page. To do this, go to your fan page, and click ‘Edit Page’. You will see a sub-section labelled ‘Wall Settings’. Go to this, and under view settings, you will see ‘Default landing tab for everyone else:’ Change this to your Static FBML tab. Note: It may not come up with ‘Static FBML’, but rather what you called it.

Why not check out the Best Accountants in Sussex?Tax Accountant

But, before we get into that, let’s have a look at how people search; it’ll help us understand how to segment and organise our keywords into an effective optimisation campaign.

So How do People Search?

Over the years, search trends have changed. In the beginning, the majority of searches were only one word queries. As time went on, internet users started realising that they can get better, more accurate, results when they give the search engine a bit more information about what they are looking for.

The more accurate the search phrase you use is, the more accurate the results will be. Studies have shown that four or five-word phrases often have a higher ROI that one and two word phrases, simply because the searcher is more likely to get the results that meet their needs.

The only drawback to this is that the keyword combination potentials are increased, so the number of searches for any one phrase reduces dramatically. This makes the optimisation process a little more difficult. Instead of optimising for one, general phrase, you have to optimise for five very specific phrases. This is known as the long-tail of keywords. These longer phrases obviously have far less competition, and are much easier to get ranked; although they produce lower traffic levels.

Long –tail phrases should not constitute the primary focus of your optimisation efforts. Nor should you focus on short-tail phrases either. A good keyword optimisation strategy goes after both, simultaneously.

The Keyword Buying Cycle

Every search user has different needs, and ultimately, different goals they wish to achieve when they begin searching. Many searches are quick with a sole purpose of learning something, and others have goals to buy a product/service that best suits their needs.

Every search starts with an interest. The interest generally uses broad keywords with one, or maybe two words. As the user moves through the other stages (gather, research, exclude and purchase), they make their queries more and more specific. Every change in query brings the searcher closer and closer to their goal, each giving them more information along the way.

Most businesses want to be ranked for the interest level searches, because that’s where the most traffic is. This can often be a mistake, because most searchers will use those sites as a springboard to get to other sites that meet their more specific queries. There are still valid reasons to be ranked for these broader searches as it can help brand your site, and bring people back; but the conversions come from the more specific terms.

Once you understand how the searcher progresses through the buying cycle then you can learn something from the keywords that were used to search. The information you can harvest can be crucial in determining how to develop the content and direction of your site. So here are some things that you need to know/learn about:

Target Audience – The more you know about who your target audience is, the better position you will be in to meet their needs. The keywords used by business professionals will often be different from keywords used by students and hobbyists. Both will be using keywords that appear to be relevant, but depending on what you offer, not all of them have the same intent.

Areas of Interest – Keywords can tell you what is important to your target audience. Are they looking to satisfy a quick query, or are they looking for in-depth information?

Needs to be met – Finally, your keywords can tell you what the searcher is looking to have met. Some hobbyists are looking for a strategy for tackling their next project and a business leader may be looking for a community of like-minded individuals.

It is important to stay up-to-date with what your target audience is searching for. The way people search is constantly changing, and to stay competitive, you must keep referring to your Keyword Research.

I hope you found this article helpful; if you would like to add any tips, please feel free to do so below.

Why not check out the Best Accountants in Sussex?Tax Accountant

If you want to move up in the search engine rankings, you have to be able to get your optimised content to the search engines in the most streamlined way possible. There are, however, some common problems that often stand in the way of this. These problems, while they may not stop the search engines from finding and indexing that content, they can greatly affect the performance of that content, in terms of how well it ranks in search results.

Too many URL Parameters

The internet is full of long, complicated URLs like this one;

web.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?storeId=10051&langId=-1&catalogId=10053&productId=100615137&N=10000003+90401+528374

Apart from changing the domain name, the URL above is a real one. Look closely; everything after “ProductDisplay?” are the various parameters, which tell the browser which content to display.

Every “=” in the URL represents a different parameter, and each parameter represents a slight variation of the content. In turn, each variation represents a potentially different page that can be indexed by the search engines.

The search engines want to index valuable content, but URLs such as this can often scare search engines away; they don’t want to be caught in endless loops of variation. While the search engines definitely have no problems indexing dynamic content, once you use more than three parameters, you risk losing the search engines all together. The search engines tend to shy away from sites with duplicate content or endless loops created by parameters, so your best bet is to keep the parameters to a minimum.

Inaccessible Content

Some great content around the web is often inaccessible to the search engines, either because it’s hidden behind search options, or buried deep within the site. Setting up proper navigation and a clickable link structure is essential for any site, but even more so for large sites with hundreds of pages.

Some pages do have to be buried; there just isn’t any other way to go about it. But they don’t have to be so deep that they can’t be found without a GPS tracking device! It’s just a matter of laying out your site’s architecture so that all the pages have a proper place and that the most beneficial content is the easiest to find.

Generally speaking, there are three basic directory structures you can use; flat, deep or somewhere in the middle.

A flat directory basically puts all of your site’s pages on one directory level. Each page is one click away from the homepage, and no page is given any type of prominence.

A deep directory structure is the opposite; only a few pages are accessible from the Homepage, then a few more are accessible from those, and so on. This puts some pages many clicks away from the Homepage, unnecessarily.

You will want to aim to be somewhere inbetween. You want a directory structure that makes sense. Pages should be grouped together in broad categories, and only sub-categorised as makes sense from the navigation standpoint. You can go a bit deeper with your URLs but again you don’t want half a dozen directories when just a few will do just fine.

Internal Linking

You want to do a good share of internal linking within your site. Not just the navigation, mind you, but link from within your content areas and product pages. Try and think what will be going through a visitor’s mind after they have read a given page, and then try to link to a page which represents what they would have been thinking.

Good internal linking helps your visitors navigate from page to page, and you can use it to direct the visitors to where you want them to go.

Use whatever opportunities you can to give your visitors opportunities to find these other sections of the site. If you talk about a product or service, link to it. If you have a related bit of information that you discuss, link to it. Using keywords in the links will also give the search engines more keyword juice for determining how pages should be ranked.

I hope that you enjoyed this post, the next one will be about Keywords.

Why not check out the Best Accountants in Sussex?Tax Accountant

One of the first architectural issues you need to address is how your URLs are going to be structured. This is especially important for e-commerce sites that will more often than not have long, complicated URLs. Saying that, it doesn’t mean that if you aren’t an e-commerce site, a good URL structure is any less important.

Here are a couple of things you can do to give yourself search engine friendly URLs;

Keep it Short

Just like your Domain Names, you want to keep your URLs short. We’re not talking ridiculously short, such as three words short, but short enough that it can be easily typed into the browser’s address bar.

A lot of sites have long, complicated URLs for pages that are just one or two levels deep. To emphasise this point, let me ask you this; What if your customer wanted to access a page directly? What if your SEO isn’t quite there yet and you’re buried deep in SERPs? How will your customer find that page?

Use Keywords

Once again, as with your Domain Name, you want to include your keywords in your URL. The URL is probably the best place to put your keywords, as they will have a lot more prominence and weight. A tip is to use your categories and sub-categories in your URL.

These two tips will go a long way to not only giving your URLs more context and assisting with your optimisation efforts, but also making it easier for your customers to find the page they want instantly.

What do you think; have you got any more tips to share with your fellow readers?

Why not check out the Best Accountants in Sussex?Tax Accountant