Tax planning is the process of minimizing the amount of tax that an individual or business pays by taking advantage of all deductions, credits, and other tax strategies available. It involves making financial decisions based on how to structure income, expenses, investments, and other transactions in order to reduce taxes owed. Tax planning should be done each year as laws may change and new strategies may become available. It’s important to consult a qualified tax or financial advisor for accurate advice, as every situation is different. Additionally, individuals should stay up-to-date on any changes to the tax code that might affect their individual or business taxes. For example, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2018 (TCJA) includes several provisions that could affect the amount of taxes an individual or business pays.
Tax planning can be beneficial for both individuals and businesses. For individuals, it may involve taking steps to lower taxable income and maximize deductions in order to reduce the amount of taxes owed. This might include contributing to a retirement account such as a traditional IRA or Roth IRA, maximizing deductions for charitable contributions, or adjusting the filing status.
For businesses, it can involve maximizing deductions and taking advantage of tax credits and other incentives available to businesses, such as research and development credits or investment tax credits. Additionally, businesses may be able to take advantage of certain tax strategies, such as asset depreciation or restructuring entities, in order to reduce taxes owed.
Tax planning should be done each year as laws are constantly changing and new strategies become available. Additionally, it’s important to consult with a qualified tax or financial advisor for accurate advice, as every situation is different. By taking advantage of all available deductions, credits, and other strategies, individuals and businesses can save money by reducing the amount of taxes owed.
Cost Segregation Strategy
Cost seg is a tax strategy used by businesses to reduce the amount of taxes owed by reclassifying assets. It involves breaking down assets into multiple categories, each with its own depreciation schedule, in order to take advantage of different tax rates and timeframes. By segregating an asset’s components and depreciating them over shorter periods of time, more deductions can be taken in the earlier years of ownership. This strategy can be beneficial for businesses that purchase new equipment or buildings as the cost seg study will help identify which components should be depreciated over a shorter period of time. Additionally, it can also result in a reduced overall tax bill due to the increased deductions taken in earlier years.
Cost seg is an effective tax planning strategy that can be used to reduce the amount of taxes owed by businesses. It should be considered when purchasing new equipment or buildings, and a qualified tax professional should be consulted for accurate advice.
Features and Methodologies of Cost Seg
1. Detailed Engineering Approach from Actual Cost Records
Detailed Engineering Approach from Actual Cost Records is a methodology used by businesses to analyze the cost of assets and equipment, as well as identify how best to reclassify them for tax purposes. This approach takes into account the exact costs associated with acquiring an asset, such as purchasing price, installation fees, delivery charges, taxes, and other costs. It then breaks down the cost into its component parts, such as land improvements, building components, and personal property, in order to determine how each part can be reclassified.
2. Detailed Engineering Cost Estimate Approach
The Detailed Engineering Cost Estimate Approach is a methodology used to estimate the cost of assets and equipment for tax purposes. This approach uses a combination of engineering principles, industry standards, and cost-estimating techniques to calculate the cost of an asset or equipment without relying on actual cost records. It takes into account the cost of labor, materials, overhead costs, taxes, and other costs associated with acquiring an asset. It then breaks down the cost into its component parts in order to identify how each part can be reclassified for tax purposes.
3. Survey or Letter Approach
The Survey or Letter Approach is a tax planning strategy used to estimate the cost of assets and equipment for tax purposes. This approach uses surveys and letters from vendors, suppliers, contractors, etc., to obtain information about the costs associated with acquiring an asset. It can also be used to obtain information about the types of materials used in constructing an asset. The information gathered can then be used to estimate the cost of an asset for tax purposes.
4. Residual Estimation Approach
The Residual Estimation Approach is a tax planning strategy used to estimate the cost of assets and equipment for tax purposes. This approach uses the residual value of an asset or equipment, which is the estimated value at the end of its useful life, to calculate its cost for tax purposes. The residual value is determined by subtracting the total depreciation taken over the life of the asset from its original cost. This method is often used by businesses that have depreciated their assets over a period of time and are looking to reclassify them for tax purposes.
5. Sampling or Modeling Approach
The Sampling or Modeling Approach is a tax planning strategy used to estimate the cost of assets and equipment for tax purposes. This approach uses statistical sampling and modeling techniques to determine the cost of an asset without relying on actual cost records. By taking a representative sample of similar assets, businesses are able to identify the typical costs associated with acquiring such assets and estimate the cost of an asset for tax purposes.
6. “Rule of Thumb” Approach
The “Rule of Thumb” Approach is a tax planning strategy used to estimate the cost of assets and equipment for tax purposes. This method uses general industry knowledge, such as a rule of thumb or benchmarking technique, to estimate the cost of an asset without relying on actual cost records. The rule of thumb approach seeks to identify typical costs associated with acquiring an asset and can be used to determine the cost of an asset for tax purposes.
As an employer, you have plenty of responsibilities beyond hiring and managing employees. You also must ensure that your company complies with various laws and regulations. One area where this is especially important is human resources (HR).
Translating your HR documents is essential to doing business in any country. For example, employee handbook translation is critical to ensure that your employees know the rules, regulations, and benefits that apply to them. You must translate your HR documents into the local language to ensure that everyone on your team understands it.
The Overview: Translating HR Documents
HR documents are written materials related to rules and regulations for personnel. This can include employee handbooks, staff manuals, policies, and other documents that convey information about your company’s HR practices. You may have different types of HR documents depending on the size of your company, but most organizations have at least one such document.
HR documents are often the first point of contact between your company and new employees. That’s why it’s so crucial for them to be clear, easy to understand, and error-free. A poor translation can lead to confusion, misunderstandings, and even legal issues — which means you will have a lot more on your plate than just hiring suitable people.
An experienced translation agency can help ensure that your employees receive accurate translations of all your HR documents. So, you can rest assured that your company’s HR documents will be translated into a language that both you and your employees understand.
Here are some of the most pertinent HR documents you must translate:
1. Employee Handbooks
Employee handbooks are often written in English and must be translated into other languages for your employees. The guide is an important document that outlines the company’s policies, benefits, vacation time, pay rates, and expectations of its employees. This can be extremely helpful for new hires to understand their rights and responsibilities and get acclimated to your company’s culture.
2. Code of Conduct
The code of conduct is another document that needs to be translated into other languages. This document outlines the company’s policies regarding harassment, discrimination, conflict resolution, and other ethical issues. The code of conduct can also help employees understand what behaviors are not tolerated by your organization and how they should handle those situations if they occur.
3. Training Documents
Training documents are also essential for the local employees to understand the company’s culture and values. This can include training manuals, new hire orientations, video presentations, and other forms of media. You must translate these into the local languages so everyone in your organization is on the same page regarding their responsibilities.
4. Health and Safety Documents
Health and safety documents are also essential to understand. These include fire evacuation plans, first aid procedures, and emergency contact information. If an employee is unfamiliar with the layout of your building or what to do in case of an emergency, they will need help to assist others around them properly.
5. Contracts, Terms, and Conditions
You must translate the terms and conditions of your contracts. Everyone must know what they agree to when working with a global audience. By translating these documents into the native languages of your customers, suppliers, and partners, you can build a mutually agreed-upon framework that will make it easier to work together.
Translating your HR document is crucial because it gives you the following benefits:
1. It Helps Attract More Workforce
A translated HR document is an easy way to attract more talent. If you’ve ever tried to hire someone from a different country, it can be difficult if their English needs improvement. By translating your HR documents into the native languages of your employees and hiring managers, you can make it easier for them to understand what they need to do at every step.
2. It Helps Improve Employee Retention
Translating your HR documents can also help improve employee retention. This is because employees will better understand what’s required of them from the moment they begin working with you. Not only that, employees who aren’t native speakers will appreciate your effort in translating the necessary HR documents.
3. It Helps You Stay Compliant with Local Laws
Translating your HR documents can also help you stay compliant with local laws. If you are operating in a country with strict labor laws, it’s essential to ensure that your HR policies comply with those regulations. By translating your policies into different languages, you can ensure that everyone who works for your company understands their roles and responsibilities and how they should behave toward one another.
4. It Helps Maintain a Strong Team
Translating your HR documents can help maintain a strong team. When you have employees from different countries working together, it’s crucial to ensure they are all on the same page. By translating your policies into other languages, you can ensure that everyone has access to the same information and understands everyone’s role in the company.
5. It Helps Avoid Confusion and Misunderstandings
When you have an international workforce, it can be easy for misunderstandings to arise. These misunderstandings may sometimes lead to confusion or arguments between employees. By translating your HR documents into different languages, you can help avoid these situations from happening in the first place.
Conclusion
In today’s global economy, ensuring that your company clearly understands what constitutes proper employee conduct is paramount. By translating your HR documents into different languages, you can ensure everyone has access to the same information and understands their roles and responsibilities. This will help your company run more smoothly and ensure that employees can perform their jobs safely and legally.
Rayobyte, the award-winning ethical proxy provider, helps home business owners overcome common challenges and achieve greater success with web scraping technology. Web scrapers are computer programs that can automatically collect information from websites and save it in a database, such as on an Excel spreadsheet.
This technology is valuable because it collects data very quickly from many websites at once. Popular public-facing websites that use this capability include travel aggregators like Expedia and Kayak or the used-book marketplace Bookfinder.com.
Home businesses can benefit from Rayobyte’s web scraping services for many reasons.
Web Scraping Explained
Web scraping, which is also known as screen-scraping or data mining, is the process of extracting data from websites. When search engines like Google crawl the internet for new content, they often use web scrapers.
One of the most important things to remember when trying to collect data from websites is that each will have its own set of rules about how much information it allows users to access. Some websites don’t allow any sort of scraping at all, while others allow limited scraping but require that users provide credit by linking back or citing the source material in some way. Still more allow full access, but only under certain conditions — for example, only after registering for an account.
In order for your web scraping efforts not to get shut down by these restrictions — or worse yet, blocked completely — you’ll need some way around them. That’s where proxies come into play.
Proxies allow businesses to pretend like they are located somewhere else while accessing those protected sites. They hide your IP address so that your activity can’t be traced back to you or anyone else in your company. Acting as middlemen between a user’s computer and a website, they allow businesses to web scrape without fear of being discovered.
Proxies allow for web scraping of any site on the internet, even if it has an “anti-scraping” policy in place. With their assistance, you can gather all sorts of useful information without getting blocked or banned.
How Home Businesses Can Use Web Scraping
Businesses, marketers, and entrepreneurs often use web scraping to save time when collecting information that would otherwise be time-consuming or expensive to obtain. Organizations can use it for both customer-facing and internal functions.
Many e-commerce businesses use web scraping to identify trends in customer purchasing behavior, enabling them to leverage customer preferences to increase sales. For instance, let’s say you have an online store that sells handmade soap. Web scraping can tell you which products sell better than others at different times of the year. With web scraping, this process is automated, so you won’t have to check each product over and over again yourself.
Home businesses also employ web scraping to track competitors’ prices. As a post on Rayobyte’s blog explains: “Many people who run online stores scrape the web for product prices so they can come up with their own prices. This allows you to undersell the competition. For instance, if you scrape the data and find out that the lowest price on the web is $9.99, you can mark your prices at a few cents less and overtake the competition.”
Web scraping also helps businesses analyze how competitors’ prices fluctuate over time. If you sell products on Amazon Marketplace or eBay, then web scraping helps keep those listings up-to-date. According to Neil Emeigh, CEO of Rayobyte, “Amazon even encourages its vendors and sellers to conduct web scraping, since this boosts competitiveness, which keeps the entire ecosystem healthy.”
Web scrapers can also harvest online reviews, which enables businesses to gauge consumer sentiment. Other applications include evaluating competitors’ marketing efforts or verifying that your own advertising campaigns are running.
The best thing about web scrapers, however, is that you don’t need a computer science background or know how to code to use them. All you need to know is what kind of data you would like to harvest.
The Rayobyte Advantage
Not all web scrapers are the same, and Rayobyte’s innovative technology stands above the rest for many reasons.
First and foremost, Rayobyte provides a dependable hosted solution for your web scraper that can easily be scaled up as your business grows. While it’s possible to buy software that would enable you to web scrape right from your own computer, this approach would limit your projects to the amount that software can handle. When the time comes for your business to expand, you will need to buy a new app, which is time-consuming and expensive. With Rayobyte, you simply upgrade to a different package.
In addition, if you use a desktop app, simple technical issues can bring your scraping to a halt. This problem doesn’t occur with Rayobyte, which has vast computing resources to keep your web scraping running smoothly.
Additionally, many organizations that web scrape from their desktops fail to use proxies. Their single IP address acts like a red flag to competitors’ websites, which quickly blocks access. Conversely, Rayobyte offers access to thousands of IP addresses throughout the world. Moreover, Rayobyte can offer proxies of the highest quality — residential proxies sourced from ordinary people’s electronic devices.
Unlike other proxy providers, Rayobyte follows the highest ethical standards when acquiring these proxies. The owners of the IP addresses that Rayobyte uses are fully informed and have chosen to serve as proxies for monetary reward. Rayobyte only uses their devices as proxies when they are more than 50 percent charged and are not otherwise in service at the time. Participants in the program can leave at will.
A Fast, Efficient Path to Success
Web scraping is a powerful tool for home businesses to find customers, increase sales, and make more money. The main advantage of web scraping over other data collection methods is that it’s faster and requires less effort. No manual inputting of information into spreadsheets or databases is required before analysis can take place.
With the help of Rayobyte’s large network of ethical proxies and web scraping tools, a wide variety of home businesses can build valuable analytics that help make strategic decisions.
About the Author:
As featured on the Price of Business radio show, PR News, Communications Intelligence Magazine, and SheVentures, Elizabeth Galewski is a professional writer and media relations expert. In her previous career, she taught English composition at the college level for more than twelve years. She earned her B.A. from Wellesley and her M.A. from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, as well as completed doctoral coursework in Rhetoric at the University of Wisconsin – Madison.
Regardless of where you are located, do meticulous audits so that you understand your financial situation. You must apply knowledge and devise ways for your company to reach colossal growth.
For any company, getting on track financially is essential. If you want to crush the financing growth goals, check into taxation, budgets, banking, and online personal protection, among others. Reach greater success this year. Apply these tips to help kick your business finance into gear.
It is possible to save up a considerable amount of money in a year by implementing healthy financial strategies in your business.
Set financial growth goals
Before you come up with a budget or learn to manage your finances well, you will need to set financial goals. What do you truly want with your finances? Is it a house, retirement investment, or children’s college fund? You can create your ideal financial growth goals from these factors. Working with financial firms like Allen and Atherton Accountant may help in this task. Allen and Atherton Accountants have various offices around the world and over 200 employees. Develop a financial snapshot that outlines your objectives. Write them in a notebook, on your smartphone, or even on your computer. Add all your short-term, mid-term, and long-term goals.
Ensure that these goals are depicted clearly so that you work hard to achieve them. If you intend to buy a car, be specific, and so on. Write down how you want to buy a car in three years and explain how you will make payments. Have clear steps and an action plan.
Create a budget
Draft a budget to follow up on your set goals. Determine your incomes and expenses so you know what to save and what to invest. Creation of a budget will help you to be careful with finances. Here’s what to do:
Write your budgeting plan;
Figure out after-tax income;
Track progress;
Automate savings; and
Revisit your budget regularly.
You can also focus on the 50/30/20 budget rule. This means you allocate about 50 percent of your after-tax income for essentials, leaving 30 percent for your wants and 20 percent for savings. Your business will be able to save money for new projects and future endeavors.
Protect personal information
Nowadays, many people are making money online, which draws in security threats. Safeguard your wealth and business overall by protecting personal and professional data. Only use safe websites when associating with online stores and business vendors. Protect your information at all costs by integrating smart cyber practices and security measures.
Increase income
The best way to ensure your financial growth is by increasing your income. This can be achieved in many ways, including getting side gigs and inquiring about raises, etc. Learn new skills or get a better side job to supplement your business capital. To increase savings, stick to the above guidelines.
Can you really make money from your old shampoo bottles? If you love a hair and beauty binge then you are not alone.
It is estimated that over 552 million shampoo bottles end up in our landfills yearly and 83% of women wear makeup daily.
But shelling out for new products, particularly with the cost of living crisis, can frequently leave your bank account feeling a little empty.
That is why beauty recycling schemes are a great incentive to help the planet and your purse.
88% of UK households consider recycling an established norm and 12m tonnes are recycled annually. But when it comes to beauty products and shampoo empties things can get more complicated.
Many products are made up of multiple plastics, which often have different recycling practices for their different components.
This means it’s not just a simple process of throwing everything into your normal recycling bin and hoping for the best, as unfortunately they won’t always be accepted at the other end.
But fear not, there is a better solution… that can even bring a little extra cash back to you.
Enter the beauty recycling scheme that many big brands and household names are signed up for.
You simply take your washed empties back to the company you brought them from and in return, they give you money, a voucher or discount to spend in-store.
What can you get?
By returning your empties to retailers across the U.K you could receive cash incentives and discounts galore. If you already use the product regularly anyway it’s a win-win and you will be helping the environment, one bottle at a time.
Supermarket and chain store recycling
Boots
If you always shop at Boots then their recycling scheme will be great for getting extra Boots points on your card to spend in-store.
The Boots scheme allows you to bring your empty beauty, health, wellness and dental products, from any brand, into all Boots retailers.
When you bring five empty products into one of the in-store recycle bins, Boots will generously give you a total of 600 Boots Advantage Card points when you spend £10 or more – that’s worth £6.
John Lewis
Recycling just got easier with John Lewis’ Beauty Cycle. If you’re a My John Lewis member, you’ll instantly get £5 off when you spend £20 or more on Beauty when you bring in five or more clean, empty beauty product containers to any of their beauty counters.
Individual beauty stores recycling
Lush
Lush has a popular Bring it back scheme which gives 50p back per bottle, no matter what product you are recycling. You can even return your 10ml sample pots for an additional 5p off your shopping per item!
Mac
MAC lipsticks are always a good idea and are designed to be accessible to all. Mac was originally created for photoshoots and live shows, so the lipsticks are typically more pigmented than other lipsticks and also have a creamy texture that is created to last on the lips.
With their Back to Mac scheme, you can now return six empties and get a lippie of your choice and colour.
Kiehls
Most Kiehl’s stores now have recycling hubs where once you bring in ten empties you can receive a free £9.75 voucher to spend on any product you like.
Even if you bring in just 1 empty, you can still receive points in their Family Loyalty Rewards Programme.
The Perfume Shop
The Perfume Shop has always set out to host luxury perfumes at affordable prices but now you can get a further discount when you recycle your old bottles.
Bring back any of your old perfume bottles to The Perfume shop and you can get a 10% discount off any product.
The future of recycling
Set to launch in 2025, the government is producing a Deposit Return Scheme to be rolled out across the country.
The scheme aims to give everyone the opportunity to recycle with an extended monetary incentive included.
The scheme would include unique machines, known as reverse vending machines, and designated sites where people can visit to return their bottles. The aim is they will receive cash back, similar to schemes in America which are already in place.
In most cases, it would be the retailers who sell drinks or products covered by the scheme who would host a return point. What to do with your empties if you have product left
When it comes to leftover products that are past their use-by date, it may seem simple to wash them down the sink, but this should be avoided.
Most beauty and skincare products contain chemicals, microbeads or even microplastics which can get washed down the drain and can pollute the ocean.
If a product is still within its expiration period but you know you won’t use it, Toiletries Amnesty charity accepts used beauty and hair products to help others in need.
Don’t forget you can also recycle clothes, with most high street shops offering similar offers when you take unwanted clothes into the store they were from. Read more about that here.
I won’t pretend to know which SEO and digital marketing functions ChatGPT and AI software will and won’t replace. But becoming an expert at creating prompts for these tools can already be a valuable skill (and will likely increase in value over time as the tools improve).
This article will discuss what to keep in mind when creating ChatGPT prompts for SEO and share an extensive list of SEO-focused prompts to use in your day-to-day work.
ChatGPT prompt engineering strategy
Before getting into specifics, it is helpful to have a general approach to ChatGPT prompts (and AI chat / writing prompts) so that you can create prompts for your specific applications and be aware of great SEO prompts other folks have come up with.
First, it’s vital to understand ChatGPT’s limitations:
ChatGPT is trained on a large data set and finished training in early 2022, meaning not all of the information is up to date and – as you likely know as a user of the internet – not everything it’s trained on will be correct.
ChatGPT does not crawl the web! It has access to information about the web from when it was trained, but it will not go to a page and crawl it (but often, it’s responses will lead you to believe it did or does!)
There are a variety of things ChatGPT can get flatly wrong: facts, math problems, code.
While it has access to a lot of data and can organize that data in interesting ways, it’s unlikely to have an expert-level of “taste” or knowledge about any individual subject (yet, anyway).
ChatGPT wasn’t designed to be an SEO tool, so while you can create prompts for things like keyword research, clustering, link building, etc. keep in mind that it’s responses and suggestions frequently won’t be using the same types of data sets (driven by search popularity and competition) as your favorite SEO tools.
So if you ask ChatGPT for a list, don’t expect it to be curated at an elite level. If you ask it to write code, don’t just assume it will work.
If you ask it to write an article, don’t assume everything it generates will be accurate or well-written (particularly on topics that would require up-to-date information).
QA is your friend!
I like to think of prompts kind of like I think of tasks like creating a content brief, or using a search operator, or creating an SOW.
Based on that approach, here are specific tips for crafting a good prompt:
Be as clear and thorough with your prompt as possible.
Make sure ChatGPT is capable of doing what you’re asking it to.
Refine your prompt as you see output, and use your experiences with ChatGPT to inform future prompts.
Try to anticipate and address the areas where it may get tripped up as much as possible with the prompt itself.
The best (and worst) ChatGPT SEO prompts
As with most topics, many people are sharing great information about ChatGPT prompts you can use for SEO. And then there are some sharing prompts which are somewhere between mediocre and downright harmful.
Below, I listed examples of what I think are largely “good” (or helpful, to steal a term from Google) prompts and what I think are “bad” (unhelpful to harmful) prompts.
These examples offer specific ideas for prompts that can help make you more efficient, and also some prompts that can get you into trouble (or waste your time).
The good
We’ll start with some useful prompts. Again, I can’t emphasize this enough: QA the output of everything you get from ChatGPT!
Information can be (dangerously) wrong or misleading and code can break in the worst ways (more on that later in the article).
While Google has stated AI-generated content isn’t explicitly in violation of their search guidelines, it’s certainly possible to get your site into trouble with it.
Keyword and topic brainstorms
Due to the possible downside above, I like to think of ChatGPT as a helpful brainstorming tool for various tasks, including keyword research.
It is particularly useful as an early starting point for getting ideas for keywords and topics.
Let’s assume I’m creating a site aimed at delivering information about coaching for youth basketball coaches:
As someone who is frequently looking for specific youth basketball drills I can tell you that this is a pretty good starting point.
Adding the note about popular websites and not just asking for ideas got me an extra layer of both topics and some examples of suitable sites in the niche. (Again, remember, these are from early 2022 or before!)
Let’s dig a little deeper into keywords:
OK, interesting. I wonder how ChatGPT is determining that these are “popular and low competition.”
Wow, ChatGPT uses Ahrefs, Moz and Keyword Planner to generate keyword ideas? It only took a few seconds too!
I felt like my LinkedIn and Twitter timelines would have been flooded with information about this, so I decided to ask a follow up:
So this is not what I asked. I’m getting a “Did you eat these cookies ChatGPT? Well you know the thing about cookies is…” vibe here, but let’s clarify:
Ah! (Much quicker to apologize than my kids, anyway).
Let’s take a quick look at whether these terms are actually low competition according to Ahrefs, one of the tools ChatGPT initially claimedto have used (tough break for Semrush and other tools here, incidentally):
Yeesh. Well, not much search volume here, but let’s check competition, particularly against this initial claim:
“SERP Analysis: I also did a manual search on Google for each keyword to see what kinds of results show up. If the top results are from high-authority websites with strong backlink profiles, it’s a good indication that the keyword is highly competitive. Conversely, if the top results are from low-authority websites with weaker backlink profiles, it’s a good indication that the keyword is less competitive.”
This isn’t an impossible term competition-wise, though it is likely not feasible for my brand new site any time soon. I can see with the volume for other terms these pages are ranking for that there’s likely search volume in this area generally.
A popular prompt framework is to get ChatGPT to answer a prompt “as an X” with X being a person with a specific job, level of experience or expertise, etc.
Let’s see how that impacts things here:
These seem pretty good again! Let’s dig deeper – the combination of volume and competition maybe tripped the tool up. I’ll ask for terms with volume this time:
And let’s see the data on that round via Ahrefs:
Not much better! Keep in mind here that ChatGPT takes my “prompt history” into account for a specific chat, so if I’d opened a new chat and focused more on volume, I may have done a bit better.
Generally, it’s often the case that if you feel like you’re down a rabbit hole with ChatGPT and aren’t getting the data or responses you want, you may want to consider starting fresh and better orienting the tool to what you want.
These prompts and responses are a perfect encapsulation of ChatGPT for a lot of functions:
The initial set of results gave a pretty good framework for sites to check out and general topic areas
As I niched down and needed to develop specific, actionable plans with search-specific data things got murkier.
Those terms don’t look great in terms of volume, my site can’t rank for those terms, and ChatGPT flat out told me something that wasn’t true about how it generated the suggestions! It also states everything very emphatically.
If I were looking for general topic ideas here, this might have been a useful exercise.
If I had just started writing (or paying writers) to create content to target these phrases without checking ChatGPT’s suggestions, I might have wasted a ton of time and resources.
Title ideas
You should probably have your own ideas about creating titles and title tags for blog posts, but again ChatGPT can be a good place to generate some ideas:
List ideas
Similarly list types like X examples, tips, quotes, etc. require some digging to come up with ideas – while you want to curate your own list you can quickly get ideas from ChatGPT:
FAQ ideas
To quickly get FAQ ideas for an article the tool can be useful as well – again layering in specific instructions and a persona can help:
Content outlines
This is also true for content outlines. Again, keep in mind that tools like Clearscope, Content Harmony, Market Muse, Frase and Surfer SEO are creating briefs and outlines based specifically on what’s ranking in search results, while ChatGPT isn’t.
Here is the prompt I used:
“Create an outline for an article about teaching middle school players to move off the ball. The article should be for someone new to coaching basketball but with an understanding of the sport, and is aimed at beginning players. It should include things like: the types of offenses that encourage movement, specific examples of movements players should be making off the ball (cuts, picks, etc.) as well as some specific drills coaches can run to encourage movement.”
And here is the output:
Again, not perfect, but a pretty decent framework!
Keyword clustering
Standard caveats: Clustering is not going to be search-specific like tools like Keyword Insights or similar. It won’t necessarily be driven off of volume and competition, but you can create clusters either semantically or by things like levels of intent:
And/or just add things like search intent as an additional column.
Summarizing
Be careful with how you use these summaries (as they may get “flagged” as anything from low quality to AI over time). But if you have something like a study or a lengthy article that you want to feature in your own content, (and also let folks know you’ve featured in outreach) in something like a tips list, you can get help there:
You can also ask for an outline of an article if you want to understand it quickly.
Technical SEO: Code snippets (schema, hreflang, etc.), robots, .htacess and more
Among the most dangerous ChatGPT prompts of all: code snippets! These can be great time-savers, but again: give as much detail as possible and QA, QA, QA!
A simple prompt along the lines of “Wrap FAQ schema around these questions and answers” will get you the code to copy:
Same for different types of schema like organization schema:
I have had various schema come back from ChatGPT that didn’t work when rendered on a live page, so again, be sure to check everything.
You can also have a robots file created:
And create rewrite rules. Be careful, though! (More on this later)
Meta descriptions
A lot of SEOs or people responsible for maintaining lots of pages hate creating meta descriptions. This is really a perfect function for ChatGPT:
Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics 4, Google Search Console and Looker Studio
You can get troubleshooting ideas for these platforms:
Get instructions for building specific reports:
Or even get code to use to interface with their APIs:
Translation
You can translate text to create country-specific pages:
Formatting
As an SEO, many quick and simple formatting tasks come up where ChatGPT can be very helpful. Things like converting a page to (or from) HTML:
Extract links from a page:
(It missed the distinction between internal and external links here, obviously.)
You can also take a list of URLs and extract just the domains from them or convert a list of sites into HTML links (or vice versa).
Additionally, you can perform some functions you might typically perform in spreadsheets (which may or may not be more helpful than just performing them in spreadsheets, depending on your proficiency with spreadsheets and workflow).
Instead of concatenate or having to find a list of cities / copy and pasting a list of states:
In place of VLOOKUP / IF types of functions, you can create a prompt like:
“Create lists of basketball drills from site A and site B, then show me A) the drills they both cover and B) the drills that are missing from each list that the other covers.”
Code for simple tools and widgets
As I walked through in this article, you can use ChatGPT to help you build simple tools like calculators that can enhance content, give you a chance to rank for specific terms (like {subject} calculator), and give you something to promote via outreach.
Rewrite content
If you give ChatGPT specific instructions on things like tone and what to include, it can help you rewrite or flesh out content:
Outreach assistant
While ChatGPT can’t find contact information for you (at least for now), there are some specific outreach tasks it can perform.
Like getting a list of ideas of places to guest post:
Or drafting a template for an outreach email. This is potentially particularly valuable if English isn’t your first language:
Infuse your prompts here with your own tone and content preferences to make sure the template you get is closer to being consistent with your typical outreach emails.
You can even craft an entire auto-responder sequence:
Or you could create different types of outreach lists:
And as you work through the outreach process, you can likely find even more opportunities to leverage ChatGPT.
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The bad
In my experience, most of the trouble you’ll run into with ChatGPT will be:
Asking the tool to complete a process whole-cloth for you (rather than particular functions).
Not providing enough oversight.
Publications have already been accused of publishing AI-generated content with errors and plagiarized content.
If we’d unleashed ChatGPT to do all of our keyword research for us, we likely wouldn’t have gotten a lot of traction.
When you try to assign it tasks like strategy, you’ll often get the same kind of boilerplate advice you’d get from a beginner-level X tips article on Google:
And without a lot of human input (specific prompts, editing, and likely a mix of human and AI content weaved together), you’ll likely get warmed-over content.
Depending on your purpose (and your risk threshold), that may be fine.
You may not need your meta descriptions, FAQs or certain articles or pages to be “10x”. But make sure you understand what you’re getting.
The ugly
Of course, some areas, like health-related content or critical tasks, on your site can go sideways:
The AI has already started messing with us.
I recently used ChatGPT to fix some .htaccess code for a side project
Rather than deindexing part of my site, it noindexed the entire site. I only realized 5 days later
When I asked ChatGPT, it could easily find the mistake
Google is sunsetting Universal Analytics (UA) on July 1st. Starting in March, Google will automatically create Google Analytics 4 (GA4) properties for any customer who does not set up a GA4 property with basic settings.
If you do not opt-out of auto migration by February 28, 2023, Google will transition your UA account to GA4 without any custom strategy. To ensure accurate tracking and analysis, you should make the switch to GA4 now and customize the setup as needed.
GA4 is much more than just a new “version” of Google Analytics. It’s a completely new platform – built from the ground up to collect, process, and report on data differently than before. Migrating to GA4 is a complex and integral process that requires strategic planning and expert implementation.
Need help? This 5-minute GA4 preparation guide from MoreVisibility will provide the insight and assistance you need to get started. Visit Digital Marketing Depot to download the GA4 Preparation Guide.
New figures show London residents lost the most to pyramid scheme scams last year, with over a whopping £1.2 million (£1,292,540.74) lost per 100,000 people. This is 13 times more than neighbour county Essex, which lost £92,941 per 100,000 residents.
Despite losing the most to pyramid scheme scams, London had the lowest report rate. Only 8.03 reports were filed per 100,000 people. This is almost four times fewer reports than the Welsh region of Gwent, which showed an average of 28.36 reports per 100,000 of the population.
Wales also saw the fewest overall reports, at just 2 reports per 100k of the population.
According to Investopedia, a pyramid scheme is a ‘fraudulent and unsustainable investment pitch that relies on promising unrealistic returns from imaginary investments’. It is called a pyramid scheme due to the different levels within the company, with the money trickling down the pyramid, benefiting those at the ‘top’ more than those at the ‘bottom’
For example, early investors in the company will get paid big returns, which leads to them recommending the scheme to others. Returns are paid by new money flowing in from new recruits, who may struggle to recruit others and make money.
Pyramid schemes may or may not involve the sale of products. In all pyramid schemes, however, the sale of a product is far less important than recruiting new investors.
areas that lost the most in 2022
Areas that lost the least in 2022
Avoiding pyramid scams
Does it seem too good to be true? It probably is! If someone is offering you huge amounts of money every month, or says you could earn thousands alongside your day job, it may be worth reconsidering getting involved.
If there are huge upfront costs, it may be a scam. Remember, you shouldn’t have to pay to earn money! Many pyramid schemes will ask you to pay for your products to then sell them at a higher cost. On average, only 10% of people profit from these schemes.
The products sold are overpriced and low quality. If this is the case, it could be a front for a scam to make the business seem more legitimate. The products will also be harder to sell, meaning you may lost out on money.
If you think you have been scammed, contact Action Fraud or your local police authority.
Have you been the victim of a pyramid scheme scam? We want to hear from you! Leave a comment below or email isobel@moneymagpie.com.
Did someone say dream job? No, this is not a joke. You could become a Derry Girls critic from the comfort of your own home. Belfast-based news outlet Meanwhile In Ireland is recruiting one lucky person to watch Derry Girls – and get paid for it!
The official job description is ‘Derry Girls TV Show Critic’ – very fancy. It is a short-term temporary contract, and is open globally – as long as you’re a Derry Girls fan, you can apply!
Meanwhile In Ireland was launched in 2014, and covers everything from Irish pop culture and bizarre news to comedy, travel and satire. The site reaches over half a million viewers per day, with this popular site a great one to add to your CV.
Joining a thriving team, the candidate will have the opportunity to contribute to one of Ireland’s most popular websites.
the role
The iconic series first took to our screens in 2018, with the final series ending in 2022. It follows the lives of four Derry teens and an English boy as they navigate their primitive years. It quickly became a favourite, not only in Ireland but worldwide. Even famous director Martin Scorsese is a fan!
Now, Meanwhile In Ireland are on the lookout for a fan who knows Derry Girls inside and out to creative a definitive ranking of the best Derry Girls episodes. You will be required to analyse every single episode, putting them in order to create the ultimate guide.
If you have previously worked as a critic, or want to kickstart your career, this may be the role for you.
Duties include:
Short-term temporary contract.
Expected hours: 4-6 per week.
Term: 3 weeks.
Watch and review all Derry Girls episodes.
The research will include detailed notes on each episode of the series, ranking them accordingly.
The ideal candidate:
Knowledgeable in TV and film.
Self-confessed Derry Girls fanatic.
Analytical and observant.
Fluency in spoken and written English.
Confident in working remotely to deadlines.
Partial to the craic (i.e. an understanding of Irish banter).
Must be 16 years or older.
Critic experience (preferable).
Benefits:
Pay: €15/£13.25 per hour.
This is a dream job; a once in a lifetime role which is short but unique.
This will be a remote role; you will not be required to commute, so you can work from anywhere!
Join a thriving team with an excellent culture.
The Process:
Closing date is 10/03/2023
Interviews start 20/03/2023 (aiming for a 27/03/2023 start date)
The first stage will be a short assessment
The final stage will be a Zoom interview.
How to apply
Submit the following to jobs@meanwhileinireland.com.
Include an up-to-date CV
Write a cover letter explaining why you are the best person for the role.
Provide a 300-word summary of your favourite Derry Girls scene and why
Research has shown time and time again that existing customers are 50% more likely to try new products of yours and spend 31% more with you when compared to new customers. So how are you fostering these relationships and delivering repeatable and measurable revenue?
In this session, marketing experts will share how you can build customer relationships that not only scale but drive revenue for 2023 and beyond.
