Category: Internet Marketing

ChatGPT announced the rollout of its API (GPT 3.5 Turbo) on March 1. 

I’m bullish on ChatGPT’s utility for several different SEO-related functions like keyword research, local SEO, content, and link building. Having spent much time using ChatGPT, I’m also painfully aware of its limitations.

While the API won’t be a panacea (and the web interface is actually much better for some tasks), it can help address some of the shortcomings of the web interface.

This article will show you how to maximize ChatGPT’s API with specific SEO use cases.

How to use the ChatGPT API

To leverage the ChatGPT API, you need to be able to access the API in the first place. ChatGPT’s parent company OpenAI has extensive documentation for using the API.

If you’re looking to learn more about building a tool or interacting directly with the API there’s also a good walk-through here.

You can also use AppsScript to query the ChatGPT API in Google Sheets, which we’ll walk through here step by step.

Regardless of your approach, you’ll need to start by getting an API key.

Getting your ChatGPT API key

Once you have an OpenAI account, you can generate your API key either by following this link while logged in or clicking View API keys in the profile dropdown:

Then click Create new secret key.

Copy the API key you generated.

Connecting the ChatGPT API to Google Sheets

There’s a straightforward way to connect ChatGPT to Google Sheets (h/t Keith Mint).

First, create a new Google Sheet, then click on Extensions and choose Apps Script:

You then paste the following code (with your API key in place of YOUR API KEY):

const SECRET_KEY = "YOUR API KEY";
const MAX_TOKENS = 800;
const TEMPERATURE = 0.9;

function AI_ChatGPT(prompt, temperature = 0.4, model = "gpt-3.5-turbo") {
 const url = "https://api.openai.com/v1/chat/completions";
 const payload = {
  model: model,
  messages: [
   { role: "system", content: "You are a helpful assistant." },
   { role: "user", content: prompt },
  ],
  temperature: TEMPERATURE,
  max_tokens: MAX_TOKENS,
 };
 const options = {
  contentType: "application/json",
  headers: { Authorization: "Bearer " + SECRET_KEY },
  payload: JSON.stringify(payload),
 };
 const res = JSON.parse(UrlFetchApp.fetch(url, options).getContentText());
 return res.choices[0].message.content.trim();
}

Click save within Apps Script:

Then you can use the following function format to apply a prompt to a cell:

=AI_ChatGPT("YOUR PROMPT HERE")

As Mint points out in his article, you can also reference a cell if you want to have multiple cells use prompts that refer back to one cell (like the title or topic of a blog post):

In the example above, I used simple prompts like the one pictured, then created a second paragraph for this topic. (We’ll walk through more specific applications for the API shortly.) 

ChatGPT API pricing

Before you start leveraging the ChatGPT API for SEO tasks, it’s essential to understand the pricing.

The price for the gpt-3.5-turbo API (the ChatGPT API) is $0.002 per 1,000 tokens, which is 10x cheaper than the existing GPT-3.5 API.

To better understand what the pricing actually winds up looking like, you need to understand how tokens work.

ChatGPT API tokens

OpenAI has a good breakdown and a helpful free tokenizer tool to help you determine how many tokens a specific text will be and how the text is broken down (in case you need to reduce the number of tokens for a prompt or response).

A few key things to keep in mind:

• By default, the API can return a maximum of 4,096 tokens.
• Tokens are a representation of how much text your prompt and response are. This is a key factor, as longer prompts can shorten your response output.
• Text is translated into tokens and roughly breaks down to around 4 characters in English.

OpenAI also provided this helpful breakdown of how tokens are calculated from text:

• 1 token ~= 4 chars in English
• 1 token ~= ¾ words
• 100 tokens ~= 75 words

Or

• 1-2 sentence ~= 30 tokens
• 1 paragraph ~= 100 tokens
• 1,500 words ~= 2048 tokens

To get additional context on how tokens stack up, consider this:

• Wayne Gretzky’s quote, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take,” contains 11 tokens.
• OpenAI’s charter contains 476 tokens.
• The transcript of the U.S. Declaration of Independence contains 1,695 tokens.

So if you used a short prompt to generate a 1,500-word article, it would be less than half a cent.

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Specific API use cases for SEO

The API can help with a lot of the same SEO-related tasks as the ChatGPT web interface, but the two have some significant differences, making some tasks better for one than the other.

Understanding that will help you determine which to use for SEO tasks.

ChatGPT API vs. web interface

The biggest differences include the following:

Scale and bulk tasks

If you want to integrate ChatGPT with an existing application or spreadsheet, you’ll need to use the API. 

Additionally, the API will be your friend if you want to perform a specific function applied across multiple instances (e.g., generate meta descriptions for several keywords).

Fine-tuning and relationship between prompts

Currently, ChatGPT’s API does not support fine-tuning. If you create multiple prompts through the API, they won’t have a relationship. 

You can create a system message to apply to multiple prompts and responses, but OpenAI has said that these are frequently currently ignored by the gpt-3.5-turbo API. 

This means if you have a task that requires several prompts and for ChatGPT to keep the context of an entire conversation, you’ll want to use the web interface.

Character limits

The API has a token limit of 4,096 which translates to around 16,384 characters per interaction for each prompt and response. 

Character limits for the web interface can vary, but generally, the prompt and response are limited to around 2,048 characters, or 4,096. 

So for tasks that require more extensive prompts or more significant responses, the API will be a better option. 

There are also more options for structuring prompts and tasks in a way that gives you a lengthier combined output if you’re using code rather than something like the Google Sheets integration.

Pricing 

Again, the API is priced by usage (and offers a free trial with $18 worth of tokens), and the web interface currently offers a free version and a $20/mo. paid version. 

Example ChatGPT API prompts

Let’s look at specific use cases where you’d want to consider the API over the web interface.

Title tags and meta descriptions

An obvious use case where the API makes sense is having ChatGPT generate title tags or meta descriptions at scale.

You can use similar prompts to those that work in the web interface here, but if you structure them properly and lay out your spreadsheet right, you can take the first prompt and then quickly apply that to several URLs or keywords: 

Note that the free plan particularly is rate limited, so you may have errors where the cells time out, in which case you need to delete and re-paste:

And as always, keep in mind that:

• ChatGPT can’t crawl the web, so it’s either using prior knowledge of a URL from the training period or an assumption about the URL based on terms in the URL to generate suggestions
• ChatGPT’s output can often be wrong or misleading and needs to be edited.

You can use this same format for title tags. (I’ll have an article focusing specifically on using ChatGPT to generate and update title tags coming out soon).

Longer content and post outlines

You can use the web interface in ChatGPT to create chunks of content and outlines pretty easily.

If you want to make a longer article or if you’re going to create a series of outlines on different topics, however, it can be a clunky experience.

The API is smoother for these tasks.

First, you can chunk off a post you wrote into sections. Then line up the sections and pull your prompt down:

Alternatively, you could have ChatGPT generate several outlines that you then have a writer (or writers) fill in:

Then, you could have the API write the content one section at a time:

Again, here you could take these prompts, load them one by one across the outline (changing each prompt for the appropriate section), and then just pull the same formulas across multiple outlines and have a lot of text specific to the subsections of each post generated.

My experience is that this helps you steer clear of token limits, and even pedestrian prompts like the one above combined with having ChatGPT create an outline will generate better content than if you ask the tool to “write a blog post.” 

Beyond that, you can further improve content quality by doing things like:

• Ask it to include specific phrases (either because you want them on the page or you want to add internal links for that phrase).
• Feed it statistics or quotes to work into specific sections of the post. (This is particularly helpful if you have a topic that requires up-to-date tactics and statistics, given that GPT-3 was not trained on recent data.)
• Tweak your prompts to output the tone and formatting you want (more on this shortly).

And, as always, layer on human editing.

FAQs

There are multiple FAQ-related functions the API can help with.

First off, you can generate a list of FAQ questions to be associated with a blog post:

Next, you can have the ChatGPT API answer these (again: proceed with caution when it comes to output quality and accuracy):

Schema

You can also have ChatGPT generate schemas for you across multiple pages. 

In this case, we can apply FAQ schema to the FAQs it created for us:

Convert content to HTML

Another cool use case for ChatGPT is to convert text to HTML. 

First, let’s convert our post from text to HTML:

A few things to note here:

• As you can see, the headers in each section were initially formatted with paragraph tags. I fixed this in the prompt by adding, “Format the header of the section as an h2, and any other headlines in this section as an h3.”
• I wasn’t able to combine the entire post (which was around 1100 words) into one cell to be converted to HTML, so I had to chunk it off and gave specific instructions in my prompt for each cell to make sure ChatGPT didn’t layer in the formatting for an entire HTML document in every cell.
• You may also get some wonky formatting, like additional quotes you didn’t expect in the output. 

As with all aspects of ChatGPT, keep refining your prompts and always check the output.

Add internal links

Now that we have our post in HTML, we can start to do some cool things with internal linking.

We can tell ChatGPT to add internal links from specific phrases to specific pages anywhere in the HTML we just generated:

If we were creating a cluster of pages, we could create rules specific to each page and apply them to the relevant HTML.

This way, everything we generate is interlinked the way we want, the HTML is ready to go, and the FAQ schema is added appropriately.

I tried to create a rule that was a little more complicated, asking ChatGPT to hyperlink phrases. Here is what I added to my prompt:

• “Any time you see the words making and laugh within 5 words of each other, create a link with those two words and all of the words in between them to standupexperience.com/make-them-laugh.”

Here is the link that was added:

That’s not what I asked for, and also, it didn’t link every instance of stand-up as I asked it to.

I’ll need to refine my prompts and check my outputs.

Outreach templates

If you’re reaching out to multiple places for link outreach or guest post placements, you can use the ChatGPT API to create multiple outreach templates for you:

If you have different kinds of templates, get creative with applying these prompts across different outreach targets.

Using the web interface and the API in tandem (a.k.a., bring your prompts)

Two things are true:

• The API is better for larger projects and performs many prompts simultaneously.
• The web interface is frequently better at getting you to an excellent output since you can go back and forth with ChatGPT to give context, review the output, provide feedback, etc.

One way to get the best of both worlds is to create your prompt in the web interface and then apply it to multiple items via the API.

Let’s look at a specific example from this post. My internal linking prompt didn’t work via the API. It’s challenging to troubleshoot via the API because you can’t give ChatGPT feedback or ask why the prompt failed.

Enter, prompt generation via the web!

My typical ChatGPT process is to: 

• Give it chunks of context.
• Check for understanding. 
• Review the output for errors and give it additional feedback to achieve my desired result.

To be able to do this for internal linking rules, let’s start with the web interface to clean up our ChatGPT prompt.

First, I want to give ChatGPT some context. (Remember: ChatGPT doesn’t know about its own API!) 

I want to give it information about the API, share the HTML I’m starting with, share the prompt I used, and share the output I got and then ask ChatGPT to diagnose the issue and rewrite the prompt for me.

Let’s see how it goes:

If you don’t pre-empt it, ChatGPT will repeatedly interrupt you to fire (frequently irrelevant) answers and suggestions (like an eager student who didn’t do the reading).

I copied and pasted the text from this page in four prompts, the HTML I was trying to add links to, the full Sheets function I’d used, and the output I’d gotten.

Next, I finally shared the issue with the output:

And then ChatGPT fixed the prompt for me.

Well, it wasn’t actually fixed.

ChatGPT is relentlessly polite even if you’re getting a bit testy, and when I shared the prompt, it analyzed it for me:

The suggestions on HTML size are good ones, but I was still getting the error:

This time, the prompt worked!

To address the max tokens issue, I can go to Apps Script to adjust that number:

Or obviously, if I’m not using Sheets, it’s not likely to be an issue (until I hit the 4096 tokens).

Get creative and look for solutions

SEO applications for the ChatGPT API go well beyond what’s listed here. 

If you’re on the lookout for ways to use the platform and can get creative you’ll find many more applications like:

• Programmatic solutions: You can go beyond Google Sheets to find exciting and scalable uses for the ChatGPT API.
• Combining multiple APIs: Think about how you might be able to use the ChatGPT API in unison with APIs like Google Search Console, Ahrefs, Semrush or similar. What problems do you want to solve? 
• More efficient or better workflows: Take stock of the tasks you and your team complete daily. Are there items that ChatGPT’s API may be able to either allow you to do just as well but more efficiently, or to improve your work product around?

With the recent release of GPT-4, more opportunities for leveraging the platform will likely continue to crop up.

The post Your SEO guide to the ChatGPT API appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Original source: https://searchengineland.com/chatgpt-api-seo-guide-394411

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, just announced on his Instagram channel that the company’s paid verification program, Meta Verified, is now available in the United States.

How it works. The program is designed to provide users with a blue verification badge on both Facebook and Instagram, as well as “proactive impersonation protection” and direct access to customer support. Meta Verified costs $12 per month if accessed via the web, and $15 per month if accessed through iOS or Android to account for those platforms’ cuts of in-app payments. In addition, subscribers will receive stars that can be used to tip Facebook creators, as well as extra stickers for Stories and Reels.

Initial testing. Meta initially launched the program in Australia and New Zealand last month. Verified differs from Twitter Blue, a similar program that allows users to pay for a blue checkmark and other perks, as Meta Verified requires users to provide a piece of government ID that matches the name and photo on their account.

Once a user is verified, they cannot change their profile name or photo, username, or date of birth without going through the verification process again. Accounts that were previously verified on Instagram or Facebook will keep their blue checkmark.

What Meta says. The launch of Meta Verified is part of Meta’s effort to enhance security and transparency on its platforms. By providing users with a blue verification badge and proactive impersonation protection, Meta aims to reduce the number of fake accounts and impersonations that occur on Facebook and Instagram.

Sure, Meta could be rolling out this program to enhance security. Another reason could be to generate additional or diversify their revenue streams. They did, after all, blame weak ad demand for their recent decrease in revenue, an area that makes up 97% of their overall revenue.

For reference. Not sure if the $12-$15 a month is worth it? Here are other monthly subscription services you can get for $15 a month or less:

• YouTube: Free (with ads), or $11.99/month for YouTube Premium (ad-free, includes YouTube Music Premium)
• Spotify: Free (with ads), or $9.99/month for Spotify Premium (ad-free, unlimited skips, offline listening)
• Pandora: Free (with ads), or $4.99/month for Pandora Plus (ad-free, unlimited skips, offline listening)
• Apple Music: $9.99/month for an individual subscription (ad-free, unlimited skips, offline listening)
• Amazon Music: $7.99/month for Prime members (ad-free, unlimited skips, offline listening), or $9.99/month for non-Prime members
• Hulu: $5.99/month for the basic plan (with ads), or $11.99/month for the ad-free plan
• Disney+: $7.99/month or $79.99/year
• Netflix: $8.99/month for the basic plan (SD, one screen at a time), $13.99/month for the standard plan (HD, two screens at a time), or $17.99/month for the premium plan (Ultra HD, four screens at a time)
• HBO Max: $14.99/month

Why we care. The new verification could help to improve the quality and authenticity of the platform’s user base. By requiring government ID verification, Meta may be able to ensure that users are who they say they are and reduce the incidence of fake accounts and bots on its platforms. This could result in a more engaged and authentic user base, which could in turn lead to more effective advertising.

The post Meta rolls out paid verification appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Original source: https://searchengineland.com/meta-rolls-out-paid-verification-394469

Home Business Magazine Online

Search engine optimization is a tried and tested way to gain more exposure for your brand and bring more traffic to your website. It’s also a process that requires real expertise to handle effectively.

Working with a dedicated agency can deliver a better SEO experience, but there are so many to choose between that you might not know which is right for the job. The best way to narrow down the field is to keep the following factors in mind when coming to a decision.

Reputation and Track Record

First and arguably most important of all, you want to look at the reputation of any prospective SEO agency, and check that they’ve got a solid history of serving their clients successfully.

Don’t be afraid to ask questions and expect clear answers. For instance, have they worked with other businesses that share the same industry niche as yours in the past? If so, what kind of results have those businesses seen from their services?

Talking to previous clients will give you a better idea of how reliable the company is, and what they can bring to the table through the work they do.

It’s also worth doing some research into industry awards and accolades that the agency may have received, such as the US Search Awards. This will help ensure that you are hiring one of the top SEO experts, rather than an unproven or imperfect operator. Taking time to verify credentials like these will go a long way toward guaranteeing that your investment pays off.

Range of Services Available

Another linchpin aspect when considering an SEO agency is the question of whether they offer services tailored to your business needs, and what shape these services take.

Are they able to handle technical tasks such as website optimization and keyword research? Do their strategies include content marketing activities like blog post writing or social media management? Can they handle both SEO and CRO services simultaneously, so that you’re not only increasing site traffic but also boosting conversions?

A thorough understanding of what you need from an SEO perspective is essential. Investigate which offerings are included within each package, so you can be sure that all areas of potential growth are covered by your chosen partner.

Cost vs Quality

Finding the right balance between cost and quality when hiring an SEO agency makes a major difference. It’s important to remember that cheap, short-term solutions are not always the answer. You should instead look for a reliable partner who can provide lasting results at a reasonable price.

Consider what kind of budget your business has available, and then compare it to competing agencies in terms of features offered, services provided, and past successes.

Don’t be afraid to negotiate on pricing, as many companies are willing to work within certain budgets if they know there will be long-term benefits involved.

Accurate Reporting on Performance Metrics

Little matters more than transparency when it comes to SEO. You should always be aware of the progress your agency is making, and you need to know that they are providing accurate reporting on performance metrics like website visits, keyword rankings, and organic search traffic.

Ask potential agencies about their reporting process in detail. A good company will be able to provide comprehensive data for all campaigns so you can track what works best for your business and make informed decisions moving forward.

Make sure that the data presented by an SEO agency is consistent with industry standards. If not, this could hint at problems that might arise further down the line.

Openness to Collaboration

Lastly, when hiring an SEO agency, look for indications that they are happy to collaborate with you to reach the goals you set together.

An effective partnership requires communication between both parties, so you should feel confident that your ideas and feedback will be heard and taken into consideration as part of the strategy development process.

Finding an agency that is willing to take the time to understand your business objectives and goals can help ensure more successful outcomes from their services, so don’t hesitate when asking about how closely they work with clients during campaigns.

Final Thoughts

Ultimately this isn’t just about finding an agency to take on your SEO duties. Rather it’s also about finding a partner that will appreciate your aims and ambitions as an organization, and work with you to reach them. That’s why choosing carefully is crucial.

The post 5 Factors to Consider When Hiring an SEO Agency for Your Business appeared first on Home Business Magazine.

Original source: https://homebusinessmag.com/businesses/seo/5-factors-consider-hiring-seo-agency-business/

Home Business Magazine Online

While all new professionals want to achieve success and job stability as quickly as possible, few are willing to take the smartest path to achieve it. Choosing or changing your career path can be a turning point in many people’s lives. In this article, we’ll guide you towards the right steps so you can find the right job.

According to a FlexJobs study, more than 68 percent of American workers consider changing careers. On the other hand, 19 percent would analyze that option if they find an amazing job opportunity. If you have doubts about your current work status, read the tips below to make an informed decision.

Key Circumstances When Changing Careers

Before looking for a new job, the most important thing to think about is the set of factors that will benefit you with that new decision. Let’s review them below:

Interests

Make a list of interests that you identify with and assess whether your new career path offers these goals. Concentrate on how to connect your areas of knowledge or greatest interest with the goals that your potential career demands. If you find a job offer that helps you become better and learn more, you are on the right track.

Skills

Choose a job that requires the technical skills you have developed during your education process. However, keep your mind open to learning new skills. If you are good with numbers and complex calculations, consider a career path in data science. If you are interested in the science of understanding and healing the human body, you may lean towards a healthcare career.

Attitude

Professionals have different approaches to different work environments. If you have a leadership mindset, choose a career that involves managerial roles. But if you’re looking to stay constantly mentally active amid a dynamic learning process, work as a data analyst or software developer, for example. If you don’t have any technical background, you might want to sign up for a coding bootcamp.

Job Availability

Verify that your career has a potential job outlook in the market. The fields with the best economic growth and demand projections are the healthcare and tech industries. Focus on the statistics of wages, level of demand, and work conditions of the highest-rated majors in the global economy.

Salary

Evaluate the different salary offers for each career and the proposals of each company for the same job position. Take into account whether you want to choose a career that offers 6-figure-salary, whose income allows you to cover basic expenses, save, recoup your investment in financing studies, and pay your student loans.

Experiences

The profession you choose should bring out the best in you and exploit your skills. That ideal career should offer you appropriate work resources, knowledge, travel experiences, great colleagues, and high-performance projects for your professional level.

When Is It a Good Time to Change Your Career?

A key fact to take into account when considering changing careers is that, according to the State Higher Education Executive Office, advanced degree holders earn an average salary 35 percent higher than bachelor’s degree holders. In addition, consider the following reasons why professionals may migrate from their current industry:

• Job Dissatisfaction: If you feel that your job does not meet your expectations in terms of success, results, or performance, then it is time to seek a new career path.
• Toxic Work Environment: When there is no camaraderie, cooperation, or collaboration in the shared vision of the company, the personal and professional relationships of the employees will be affected. Therefore, your performance will also be affected.
• Low Salary: A professional who does not have a good income loses financial autonomy. If this is your situation, look for better salary offers to improve your quality of life and socioeconomic status. Stability is always essential.
• Negative Effects to Your Personal Life and Health: Work stress causes illness. If work overload has you chronically exhausted, losing sleep, suffering from headaches, or experiencing other physical symptoms, your body and mind may be telling you that this is not the right career for you.

Conclusion

Although there is no ideal formula when striving to choose a new career, these tips and parameters should lead to the most suitable decision for your goals. Economic, labor, and personal factors are the keys for you to build a track record of success and long-term stability.

The post The Smartest Ways to Choose a New Career That Will Lead You Towards Success in 2023 appeared first on Home Business Magazine.

Original source: https://homebusinessmag.com/businesses/success-tips/smartest-ways-choose-new-career-lead-towards-success-2023/

Reading Time: 4 mins

In his first Spring Budget, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has today set out the government’s plans for tax and spending. At the same time the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) published their economic and fiscal forecasts for the next five years.

Mr Hunt opened his budget by announcing that the OBR has confirmed that the UK will not enter a technical recession this year. They forecast that the government will meet the Prime Minister’s five points for growth.

He continued by stating that the difficult decisions that he needed to make in the Autumn to deliver stability are now paying off and that the government are committed to growth and “prosperity with a purpose”.

Before going into the specifics of what his budget will do for the UK, he said that the government was “following a plan and that the plan is working”.

The OBR has forecast that inflation will fall from 10.7% to 2.9% by the end of year and that the UK economy will grow throughout the forecast period. The OBR also expect the unemployment rate to rise more slowly than previously predicted.

Mr Hunt finished his opening preamble by saying that this return to growth has direct consequences for our role on the world stage.

HERE ARE THE KEY POINTS FROM TODAY’S SPRING STATEMENT

Energy Price GUARANTEE

The Energy Price Guarantee will remain at £2,500 for the next three months. This will save the average family £160 on top of the support already announced.

Prepayment Meters

Over 4 million households on pre-payment meters will get help. Their charges will be reduced so that they align with households who pay their bills by direct debit.

Swimming Pools

Mr Hunt has responded to concerned about the effect of high energy costs on our leisure centres and swimming pools. He announced a fund of £63 million fund to keep our public leisure centres and pools afloat.

LOCAL CHARITIES

£100 million to support local charities and community organisations to support their fantastic work.

Suicide Prevention

£10 million over next 2 years to help the voluntary sector who work in the area of suicide.

Great British Pub

The Chancellor will significantly increase the generosity on draft relief, which will be 11p lower than the duty on supermarkets. He called this the ‘Brexit Pubs Guarantee’. (“British Ale is wam but the duty on a pint is frozen!,” he added). This will apply to every pub in NI too (thanks to the Windsor Protocol).

Fuel Duty

Will be frozen.

DEFENCE

A total of £11 billion will be added to the defence budget over next five years.

VETERANS

Mr Hunt announced support for veterans amounting to £30 million.

The Chancellor broke down his approach to economic growth into four sections: Enterprise, Education, Employment, Everywhere. He started with Everywhere:

12 new investment zones

Using Canary Wharf as a model for success, Mr Hunt announced 12 new investment zones across the country:

West Midlands, Greater Manchester, the north-east, South Yorkshire, West Yorkshire, East Midlands, Teesside, and Liverpool. There will also be at least one in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

REGENERATION

• £200 million in high quality regeneration projects
• £161 million for mayoral combined authorities and Greater London
• £400 million for new levelling up partnerships in places such as Oldham, Mansfield, South Tyneside, Rochdale
• £8.8 billion over 5 years for sustainable transport schemes
• £200 million for potholes

He also confirmed investments for Scotland, Wales and NI

ENTERPRISE

Measures include

• a new investment allowance that means that every £ a company invests in IT equipment, plant or machinery can be deducted in full from taxable profit. This will be worth £9 billion over 3 years
• a new tax credit for small and medium firms in the Life Sciences sector that spend 40% or more of their expenditure on R&D
• Tax relief for the creative industries

ENERGY and NUCLEAR POWER

Measure include

• Carbon Capture Usage and Storage – £20bn for early development of CCUS, Paving the way for CCUS across the whole of the UK
• To encourage investment, nuclear power will be classed as environmentally sustainable (subject to consultation)
• creation of “Great British Nuclear” which will bring down costs and provide opportunities to help provide 1/4 of our electricity by 2050

Employment

• Disabled People

A new programme to help disabled people get into or back into work was announced. This will mean up to £4k per person will be invested in the scheme and it has the potential to help up 50,000 people per year.

£400million will be allocated for mental health and muscular skeletal support and £3million for people with special needs.

Earning thresholds to be increased to 18 hours per week (from 15 hours)

• Older (Experienced) People

The annual pensions tax free allowance will be increased from £40,000 to £60,000 and the lifetime allowance for pensions savings will be abolished.

• Childcare

Funding paid to nurseries to be increased by £204 million, going up to £288 million next year. A 30% increase.

Parents on Universal Credit will get around 50% more support for childcare to encourage them to get back to work. This will be paid upfront rather than in arrears. In real terms this means families will be able to claim £951 for their first child and £1630 for 2 children.

People joining the childcare profession will get incentive payments of £600, and £1200 if they join via an agency

By 2026 Mr Hunt wants schools to be able to offer wraparound care from 8am to 6pm (either on their own or in partnership with other providers).

30 hours of free weekly childcare is being extended to cover children below age of 3. Eventually the aim is cover all children from the age of 9 months where both adults work.

The post Spring Statement 2023: The Key Points appeared first on MoneyMagpie.

Original source: https://www.moneymagpie.com/make-money/spring-statement-2023-the-key-points