Current vs. Capitalized Expenses

Tax rules cover not only what expenses can be deducted but also when -- in what year -- they can be deducted. Some types of expenditures are deductible in the year they are incurred but others must be taken over a number of future years. The first category is called "current" expenses, and the second "capitalized" expenditures. You need to know the difference between the two, and the tax rules for each type of expenditure. We'll try to make it easy on you, but there are some gray areas.
Generally, "current expenses" are everyday costs of keeping your business going, such as the rent and electricity bills. Rules for deducting current expenses are fairly straightforward; you subtract the amounts spent from your business's gross income in the year the expenses were incurred.
Other business expenditures, such as the cost of equipment, land and vehicles to name a few, cannot be deducted in the same way as current expenses. Asset purchases, since they are expected to generate revenue in future years, are treated as investments in your business. They must be deducted over a number of years, or "capitalized," as specified in the tax code (with one important exception&emdash;§ 179&emdash;discussed below). This, theoretically, allows the business to more clearly account for its profitability from year to year. The general rule is that if an item has a "useful life" of one year or longer, it must be capitalized.Check out the new expense tracker

Capitalizing Expenses

The deduction taken over a number of years is usually called "depreciation," but in some cases it is called a "depreciation" or "amortization" expense. All of these words describe the same thing: writing off or depreciating asset costs through annually claimed tax deductions.
There are many rules for how different types of assets must be written off. The tax code dictates both absolute limits on some depreciation deductions, and over how many future years a business must spread its depreciation deductions for all asset purchases. Businesses, large and small, are affected by these provisions (IRC §§ 167, 168 and 179).

Repairs and Improvements

Normal repair costs, such as fixing a broken copy machine or a door, are current expenses and so can be deducted in the year incurred. On the other hand, the tax code says that the cost of making improvements to a business asset must be capitalized if the enhancement:

• adds to the asset's value, or
• appreciably lengthens the time you can use it, or
• adapts it to a different use.

"Improvements" usually refers to real estate -- for example, putting in new electrical wiring, plumbing and lighting -- but the rule also applies to rebuilding business equipment.

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http://www.inc.com/articles/2003/02/18954.html

Excel Statistics for SEO and Data Analysis

Everybody has probably already realized that there is almost no data that we cannot get. We can get data about our website by using free tools, but we also spend tons of money on paid tools to get even more. Analyzing the competition is just as easy, competitive intelligence tools are everywhere, we often use Compete or Hitwise. Opens Site Explorer is great for getting more data about our and competitors backlink profile. No matter what information we are trying to get, we can, by spending fortunes or no money. My favorite part is that almost every tool has one common feature and that is the "Export" button. This is the most powerful feature of all these tools because by exporting the data into Excel and we can sort it, filter it and model it in any way we want. Most of us use Excel on the regular basis, we are familiar with the basic functions but Excel can do way more than that. In the following article I will try to present the most common statistical techniques and the best part it is that we don't have to memorize complicated statistical equations, it's everything built into Excel!

Statistics is all about collecting, analyzing and interpreting data. It comes very handy when decision making faces uncertainty. By using statistics, we can overcome these situations and generate actionable analysis.

Statistics is divided into two major branches, descriptive and inferential.

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Source : http://www.seomoz.org/blog/excel-statistics-for-seo-and-data-analysis

Semantic Web and Link Building without Links > The Future for SEO?

Rand’s recent WBF about co occurrence was a real wake up call for those still transfixed with link building practices of old. While anchor text based links may still have some effect there is little arguing the fact that the factor’s importance is dwindling. In its place are things like social signals, link age and most importantly a growing reliance on relevancy and how that is deciphered.

For those that haven’t read it yet, I wrote a piece a few weeks ago about what I felt recent Google penalties are really trying to solve. My view is that Google is really trying to clear up the link graph and with it valueless links so that it can clearly understand relevance and associations again.

It’s something that web ‘creator’ Tim Berners Lee first wrote about back in 2006 in this magazine article and Google has been talking about ever since, ploughing lots of cash into acquisitions to get it there.

So, why invest so much time, effort a resource into such a game-changing project? Quite simply because its existing keyword based info retrieval model is in danger of being bettered by semantic search engines.

To understand why this is the case we must first delve into semantics and why it changes the way search engines work.

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Source : http://www.seomoz.org/blog/semantic-web-and-link-building-without-links-the-future-for-seo

Improve Your Web Site’s Visibility Using Structured Data Formats

Microformats, Microdata, RDFs and so-called Schemas are sets of standards used to mark up particular data in a body of HTML code. For example, one can highlight their company’s name, address, phone number, etc. on their web site using special tags. Such data is often referred to as structured, and has become widely used by webmasters with the development of the semantic Web.

‘What does it have to do with SEO?’ one may ask. Thing is, structuring information on your site makes it easier for the search engines to recognize it. As the result, your site may rank higher in Google and other search engines. At the same time, semantically marked-up data looks more appealing in the SERPs (think of rich snippets), which leads to higher click-through rates and better conversions.

Nowadays, one sees structured data all over the search results. Pretty much everything that’s not a title or a description is semantically marked-up information: a business’s address, phone number and hours of operation, product ratings and reviews, etc.
The difference between Microformats/Microdata/RDFa and Schema.org

There are several sets of standards one can use to mark up information semantically. Semantic structuring is built up on top of existing HTML standards. Among the formats available today are Microformats/Microdata/RDFa, Schema.org, and others.
They differ in syntax and a number of other characteristics, but their purpose is essentially the same.http://www.searchengineoptimizationjournal.com/structured-data-formats/

Before Disavowing Links

  Earlier this month, Christmas came early for many in the SEO industry. Google launched its wildly anticipated disavow links tool bringing with it a way for you to remove some of those shady things you your former SEO company have done.

The biggest problem with disavowing your links is that at first glance, it looks like the easy way out. Instead of taking the effort to remove your unnatural inbound links by hand, there will be people who assume this tool will do it for them. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Matt Cutts warned about using the disavow links tool with caution, and if it were me, I take any warning from him to the heart.

So before you go and throw up the Hail Mary, think carefully if you really should deny your link building past to get to your ranking future.

You May Be Shooting Yourself
People who were penalized by Penguin will be the biggest users of the disavow links tool, but because it’s so user-friendly, people may be too quick to jump on the disavowing bandwagon.

If you haven’t actually been penalized and you start disavowing your links, you’re essentially outing yourself to Google that you manipulated the system. Make sure that you equivocally know you were penalized and it’s not just some random fluctuation in rankings, a sitemap or indexing problem, or an accidentally no-indexed page....click here to read morehttp://searchengineland.com/6-things-to-think-about-before-disavowing-links-137807

Calculate PPC ROI

Calculating ROI is one of the basic tenets of PPC, and yet many advertisers don’t consider it or even understand it. A lot of advertisers perform campaign optimizations based solely on conversion rate or cost per conversion, choosing the ads and keywords with the best metric and calling it a day.

This might be sufficient if you’re collecting leads and not selling goods. You’ll probably end up with more leads in the end. But even if you’re just using PPC for lead generation, you should still calculate the return on your advertising investment.

So what are the different ways to calculate PPC ROI?
Ask SeoCompany21 : http://www.seocompany21.com/pay-per-click-marketing/