How to Build a Profitable Website - 3 Keys to Success You Need to Know

Building a profitable website is really about having relentless focus on what you are trying to sell. With this focus, and by using keywords while keeping your topic sufficiently specific, you will achieve ranking through search engines over time, and this is what will help drive organic search traffic to your site. Because organic search traffic can be among the most cost effective types to have, you need to make sure you design your site correctly from the beginning. A good start is to follow these keys to success. Having a keyword optimized site is also a huge advantage for most online advertising options you may be considering.

1.) Understand that a specific topic or focus, coupled by relentless keyword research is your key to success. Not to belabor the point, but many beginning marketers tend to think too broadly. It is always important to be specific in your focus, but even more so when you are a beginner with a low or no budget. Instead of focusing on MP-3 players, for example, focus on the specific make and model, or even a specific model number in the beginning. Then you'll need to begin using the Google Keyword tool to find out if there is traffic behind all the different variations of your initial keyword. This tool can be found by opening a free Google Adwords account.

For example, typing "Panasonic Model X2 Mp-3 Player" might bring up 50 different variations on that keyword phrase. Your goal is to focus on "late stage" traffic who might be searching this term online. Late stage researchers are often buyers who have already deeply researched a product online and often know exactly what they want.

Your job is to find this traffic using "long tail keywords". Long tail keywords are so named simply because they usually consist of phrase of 3 or 4 words. Normally, the more words in a keyword, the more specific it is. A long tail keyword using our example above might be "Buy Panasonic X2 Mp-3 player" or "Cheap Panasonic X-2 MP-3 player" or "Find Cheap X-2". People who would be using these types of terms are typically "late stage" traffic who are much more likely to purchase.

Therefore, you want to build your site around specific, long tail keywords. Make the list as long and comprehensive as possible; don't just focus on the top 10 keywords for traffic. Ideally, your list should grow over time to include several hundred keywords. It's often better to have a huge list of low traffic keywords you can rank your site for than competing for the competitive, high traffic words that are difficult or impossible to rank for.

2.) Don't Get hung up on Programming- At this stage of Internet technology, there is no reason that you cannot have a site up and running inside of 20 minutes. This includes purchasing a domain, installing the site, and putting up your first post. How do you do this? Use a blogging platform, such as Wordpress or Blogger, or a content management system like Joomla. If you want to go even simpler, web 2.o properties like Squidoo and Hubpages allow you to conduct ecommerce and provide a "landing page", however, the often have disadvantages from an SEO standpoint as their links are usually labeled "no follow". All the options listed above are completely free and require no programming experience.

I personally would recommend hosting your own site, with your own domain name as this will allow you complete control over future development, and the cost is under $90 dollars per year for the domain and hosting.

3.) Content is King - Your content must be good to excellent both from a readability perspective, and keyword optimization. Both humans and the search engines should want to read it. This means no plagiarizing others work. While you can certainly pull from many sources, the words should be your own. From a practical point of view, if you copy others work, search engines will often know this and discount your site's rank. Your visitors will know the difference too.

You will also need low cost ways to promote your content. Go back to your keyword list and create one article per keyword, between 300-500 words in length and submit to the top article sites, such as Ezine, ArticlesBase, etc. Make sure each keyword focused article links back to an equally keyword focused page on your site. This establishes the "chain of relevance" that search engines consider when ranking the article, as well as ranking the corresponding page on your site.

In conclusion, I hope you feel like you know a little more about how to build a profitable website. Getting things right as you can from the beginning is much easier than trying to fix it later on. For more specific information, a free course and loads of content about making money online, click the link below.

Neal Coxworth is an entrepreneur, internet publisher and affiliate marketing enthusiast. His blog on Affiliate Marketing is a no-nonsense overview of how to achieve success online.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Neal_Coxworth

How Your Words Can Increase Web Traffic

When people think about the things that they put on their website, they think about content. Many fail to realize that their words can actually increase web traffic numbers for their website. These words cannot be simply thrown up on the website, but must instead be planned with increased web traffic in mind.

There are different tools that can use your words to increase the amount of traffic on your website. Webmasters need to think about what they are adding to their website and how they are adding it to their website, as their moves can hurt or help their future traffic numbers.

Keywords

Keywords are an incredibly important part of any website or webpage. The keywords that you use will help you to connect directly with the users who are using those keywords to search on search engines.

These search engines scour the web for websites that feature content based on the keywords. If your content has those keywords, it will place higher on search engine results. Websites that manage to focus in on keywords will place higher on search engine results, which will help to seriously increase web traffic numbers and results.

Articles

Articles are a large part of the keyword process, as where the keywords are placed in the article and how often they appear in the article can help to boost your web traffic. With that being said, articles do much more than produce keywords.

Articles fill your website with content, making it more appetizing to both search engine aggregators and visitors. The amount of content that you have will effect how high your website ranks on search engine results. The quality of your content will help to determine whether or not those directed to your website actually stick around and become consistent visitors. The more the content you have and the higher the quality content you have, the greater the increase in web traffic that you will see.

Social Media

Social media can play an incredible roll for those who are trying to increase web traffic. It can also be a complete hindrance, pulling users away from your actual website. This is why it is important to consider social media when considering words and an increase in web traffic. What you post on your social media website will not help your general website to increase traffic. You need to use social networking and social media as a way to entice readers to get back to your website. Choose your words carefully, as too much information may keep your website from getting the hits that it deserves.

Working to increase your web traffic doesn't have to be difficult. You and your website simply need to make sure that you are making the right moves. Taking the time to think about how words can increase your web traffic will help to bring in impressive numbers, as your website will be making all of the moves that will increase web traffic. Taking the time to use articles, word placement, and social media in one web traffic push can and will make your website more popular and more successful.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Tom_Koh

Search Engine Marketing: Survival of the Optimized

In order to survive in the dog-eat-dog world of business, industry professionals have to understand their customers. They need to put on many different hats including: PR guru, copywriter, editor, and publisher, to name a few-all of which involve social media. Social media has become the key to running any successful business in this technology-driven world, and it's important to determine the techniques that will keep your company "LinkedIn."

Search Engine Marketing

These techniques are all a part of what is called Search Engine Marketing, or SEM. SEM is one of the most important factors in the survival of any company. The goal of using SEM is to attract new visitors to your company's website using online optimization. This can be a difficult task as the Internet is overloaded with infinite amounts of information that potential customers won't take the time to sort through. The key to attracting the customer is having the knowledge of how to stand out from the 100 plus pages of search results these potential clients are sorting through. Twitter, Facebook, WordPress, and other platforms are the answer to business promotions. People can use their social platforms as a way to tell their friends, fans, and followers what they are doing, where they are, and attribute it to a company's page. SEM can be broken down into two important subcategories: Social Media Optimization and Search Engine Optimization.

Social Media Optimization

Social Media Optimization is just an updated, newly-charged version of age-old viral marketing or word-of-mouth marketing. Word-of-mouth marketing, while still important and resourceful, isn't as profitable as it once was without the assistance of technology. Using this word-of-mouth concept, businesses are able to advertise their fares and wares without spending a dime. By using this form of in-bound marketing, companies can create instant exposure to their sites. This goes as far as connecting the right social media tool to the right industry with the right targeted consumer. Social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Linked In, Stumble Upon, and more play an important role in the presence of a company on the web. Making your company's presence on social platforms will keep potential customers and users aware of new features, promotions, or even the existence of any given company. Users of these platforms are able to follow, tweet, like, or link to the company's page. This in turn provides more data and pull in the search engines results as well as keeping up-to-date on what is newsworthy and meaningful to users on the Web.

Search Engine Optimization

This is where Search Engine Optimization (SEO) correlates. Search Engine Optimization allows for the promotion of a website without overloading the reader with too many results. For example, if someone is looking for software that will incorporate forms into their site, they may type, "online form" into their search engine of choice. In Google, online form comes up with over one million results. There is no way a potential customer will click through and research every company or result the search engine provided. This is where the optimization comes in. The search engine provided the results it did by crawling through the web and collecting any site with the keyword "online form." These results may or may not be what the person was looking for. In order to stand out at the top of the search list, companies need to optimize keywords and content. By creating good content and making it accessible, your company has that much more weight in results on the search engine. Google adWords is helpful in keyword research and targeting the things people are actually searching for on the Web. Tools like the already mentioned adWords are able to assist in keyword research, finding out how many times users are searching for them, expansions of phrases, and putting these words and phrases on companies pages in the right manner. In conclusion, Search Engine Marketing is the key to running a successful business with use of the Web through techniques such as Search Engine Optimization and Social Media Optimization. This grand-daddy marketing technique actively puts your company in direct competition with great competitors in the right markets if done correctly. Happy optimizing!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Krista_Mnichowski

All About the Basics of Search Engine Marketing

Search engine marketing involves an intricate process that uses various tools and techniques. Even for those with experience, looking for effective strategies may still be challenging. On the other hand, when you already have the knowledge about how the system really works, it will no longer be that difficult for you to develop a good plan aimed at reaching the primary goal -- increasing the number of visitors in your site.

During the initial phase of SEM, it is important to get the keywords for your websites before proceeding to the more advanced stages. Keywords are words or phrases that embody the name of your product or services offering. These are terms that the potential customers use in looking for any type of service or product. This is basically the way of enabling the target market find you upon typing the related keywords.

In effectively looking for the keywords, make sure you have already read about why these words are important, the different tools used in finding the best search terms, along with the list of terms that can be used in spotting the latest trends.

The next step would be the search engine optimization. This this step encompasses the preparations you need to make in creating your website. Before starting this phase, make sure you know all about the following:

- The definition of Search Engine Optimization.

- The domain names as well as the title tags

- The importance and uses of Meta keywords, and Meta description tags.

- The significance of copywriting along with the ALT tags.

- Basics in creating a Site Map.

- Handling Flash and other dynamic pages.

- Different file formats

- The frames of sites and pages.

- JavaScript.

- The Do's and Don'ts in SEO

In starting with the search engine optimization, it is recommended to ask for assistance from professionals. There are many forums and websites that offer free help and other resources that can guide you through completing the tasks needed in SEO.

After preparing all the things you need for your website, you will then have to increase the exposure of your site by linking various contents to different search engines. During this phase, you need to learn the process by which the engines can find your site. You should also acquaint yourself on how to submit your site with the use of a free form, along with the payment for search engines in indexing your site, what are the services you should avoid, and what can actually help you.

If you want to rank high in search engines, you need to increase the number of sites that is linked to your web page. You have to learn about how to analyse the traffic through different ways like using the site's log files in learning how visitors found your site, along with the terms used in finding it. During this phase, familiarize yourself with the importance of analysing traffic and log files as well as the tools that can help you drive more traffic to the site.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Wesley_Epperson

Marketing Research - Keyword Specific

In the world of the Web that we have now, no marketing professional can argue that marketing research that is keyword specific helps in laying the foundation of various websites. Without the right kind of knowledge regarding them, you could miss out on a huge traffic being diverted towards your own website thus it could probably amount to a huge loss. Keywords are those special terms or words entered by people on various search engines when they need to look for information or data relating a particular theme or subject.

So whenever information is needed relating any topic, just entering keywords concerning the same is needed on these search tools over the Net and various options sprig up. The trick to be good with this work is to carry out a thorough research before you choose to use any particular keywords that would boost up your site's popularity. There is no point using those terms which people may not be looking for. So the type of business you do, and prospective customers that you may have, target this particular aspect as well as study the latest trends in the same so that the best results can be seen in the end.

Your content if is keyword rich then you could be sure to get positive response from a lot of people which definitely is a profit for your business. Investing in the right keyword research utility would be one wise thing to do if you wish to strengthen the productivity and income of your business. You could always consider the following points.

1. Studying existing competition- This form of keyword marketing research lets you come to know about the competition that may be existing for you to face in your industry. On finding more such words, you would be able to find the count of opponents that you may have to encounter.

2. Connecting with the targeted audience- This is natural that the demand of the season if is fulfilled by you then your site would be a hit. Connect with the prospective audience for this.

3. Content- The most important aspect is about providing quality content that is bundled with the right keywords. People, by reading it would come across your website which is the ultimate goal

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Mike_Y_Anderson

How To Market and Sell Infinity Downline As an Online Home Business

Like most online businesses getting your website is just one part of starting your online home business. Once you have the website you still need to get customers and an Infinity Downline home business is no different. In order to get customers you will need to implement certain marketing strategies in order to build your marketing funnel. Some of the marketing strategies you need are ppc, creating backlinks, classified ads, making videos and social networking sites.

PPC advertising or pay per click is where you can have ads place on the side of search results or on website pages to advertise your business. The good part of using this is that it will give your business better exposure then just trying to get your blog or web page ranked high. The bad part is that you have to bid on keywords also you have to pay for every time someone click your ads and not everyone who click on your ad will become a customer.

Another thing to do to market your Infinity Downline business is to create backlinks from other websites to your website or blog. This should be part of you Search Engine Optimization strategy to increase the page ranking of your website or blog on Google or Yahoo or any other search engine.To create backlinks to your website you can post comments on forums that allow signatures or your website url, post comments on other peoples blogs, or submit articles to article directories.

Classified ads are a good way to get the word out about your business to customers. Some online classified ad site allow links from their website to yours. Some of the best know classified ad sites are Backpage, USfreeads, Craigslist.

Video marketing is a great tool to get backlinks to your site and also a great way to market your business to others on the internet. One on the things that you want to do when you are marketing an online business is to marketing yourself because people feel more comfortable buying from someone they feel they know. By using videos you can put a face on your Infinity Downline business and give people a chance to interact with you through comments section on your videos

Social network marketing sites such as Facebook, Myspace, People Sting are a great opportunity to connect to other people and build a network list of people you can sell to. Now on these sites you don't want to sell to anyone directly but as a way to meet new people and get a chance to forward people to your blog or website where you can sell Infinity Downline's products and online home business opportunity to them from there is okay. Also using these social site will give you more exposure and a chance to interact with potential customers.

This is just a summary of some of the techniques to use to market yourself and your Infinity Downine business once you have your capture page, website or blog setup. Making use of all of these will ensure that you are creating a large enough presence so that people can find your blog or website among the millions of websites that exist online.

Mic Rob is an internet marketer and coach who would like to show you how you can easily make money from home using the internet. If you are interested in gaining the knowledge to start your own internet business I invite you to vist http://InfinityDownlineMarketing.com from there I will give you 2 free ebooks that will show you how even if you have never startedd a business before and are new to computers and the internet how easy it is to start your own home business.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Mic_Rob

The Proper Way of Using Search Engine Marketing

Search engine optimization can really bring in what it promises to deliver, maximum exposure, massive website traffic, a winning profile with the search engines that just might send you over to the top of the results pages, the most exact sales targets, and lots and lots of conversions. But, just like any other task, you can get your own tool box but you have to know what tool you have to use first and if needs be, how to effectively use that particular tool, and correspondingly, with search engine optimization, you have all the available online tools most of them free and all you have to do is identify what to employ first and learn how to effectively utilize that SEO tool in order to achieve your goal.

One of most essential components of SEO is analytics which refers to the monitoring of your marketing progress, an exceedingly valuable facet of one's online marketing campaign because it provides a very supportive insight on what people view more on your website and what they ignore, the length of time they stay on a specific web page, and from what source they were directed to your website (back links). At this point, you may want to know what specific facet of your campaign you want to watch out for and then you would now what specific analytics tool you have to use.

One quick and easy way to publish new and exciting content that may lead people to your website is the creation of concise and interesting contents called blogs. Blogs are generally under-rated when people talk about creating a stir for your website to get noticed not realizing that blogs are read and followed by a great populace especially if the blogs are presented in a series of interesting topics.

If you already have discovered your way through the intricate maze of search engine optimization and have found the right SEO strategy, maybe even strategies, for you, the most important move that you should be doing now is to build your brand and make sure that people are made aware that your brand exists and that it is specifically made to solve an exact issue. Fortify your website by making it user-friendly, as user-friendly as can be, and you will soon discover that people appreciate a site that is easy to navigate and does not have those fancy, hard to decipher, tabs that some web designers and web site owners think would make them look sophisticated but the truth in it all is, lest you forget, not all those who buy online are computer savvy, in fact many of them are the reverse, hence the need for simpler web sites.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jason_Nyback

What Is Internet Marketing Anyways?

When looking for new and proven marketing techniques to promote your business, increase your sales or broaden your clientele, it is almost guaranteed that you've come across the term "Internet Marketing". If you have no idea what this encompasses on an entity as large as the World Wide Web, you're not alone. Further confusing the concept is the fact that, depending on who you ask, the answer can vary widely. And they're likely all right.

In a nutshell, Internet Marketing is a broad mix of online tools and components that businesses or individuals can use to market themselves and meet their business goals. These tools and components include your web presence (website), social media, email marketing, search engine marketing, blogging, public relations and online news media, virtual storefronts and online advertising.

Though it is up to you to decide how internet marketing will fit in to your business goals and marketing strategy, it is important to realize the increasing importance that internet marketing is playing in the global marketplace. Your customers are online and they expect you to be as well. They often research the product or service you are offering online, engage other consumers on online forums or even buy online without every contacting any of the businesses that offer what they are looking for. If you're not marketing online, you're losing business to companies that are. In fact, internet marketing is so effective that many companies only utilize this medium.

The most important part of internet marketing is your own online presence - your website. If you are going to market through any other online channel, you need a well-designed and informative website that will drive sales and highlight your key messaging to link your target audience back to. An email blast or banner ad will do you no good if there is nowhere your customer can go to get further information. So make a strong website your first priority in internet marketing.

After that, the possibilities open up and you need to study the available online channels and match them to your marketing objectives.

If your goal is to increase your web traffic and generate leads, search engine marketing (SEM)and online advertising are likely your most effective tools. Search engine marketing is promoting your websites through popular search engines such as Google, Bing and Sympatico. The most effective way to use SEM is by boosting your search ranking through search engine optimization (SEO) principles such as keyword rich domains and content, strong backlinks and good title tags. Another way to effectively use SEM is to employ pay-per-click (PPC) advertising services such as Google AdWords,or pay-for-inclusion (PFI) services that will list your business in online directories.

If your goal is to build long-term relationships with your customers and network in your industry, social media is a fast-growing and popular internet marketing tool. Networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Linked In and MySpace allow you to share valuable content with your networks and start real-time, two-way conversations with your target audience. This is invaluable when you are looking to build trust and credibility or when you're looking for feedback on new products or ideas. It also allows you to keep up with the movers and shakers that are leading the way in your industry. Blogging is also an effective tool for a relationship-building marketing goal as it allows you to generate and share valuable information with your target market and drive them back to your website if they like what they read.

If your marketing goals revolve around announcing interesting news or highlighting new products and innovations, tools such as email marketing and online public relations could benefit your business big time. For email marketing, you can either build a marketing list through your website and point-of-purchase opt-in's, or you can purchase e-marketing lists through many consumer research organizations or even a local chamber of commerce or tourism board. Use email blasts (e-blasts) to announce news, promote contests or make product/service recommendations. Make sure you use e-blasts sparingly or you risk ending up in your customer's trash bin. Nobody wants to be bombarded with email marketing. For announcements, also consider using online press releases and news services to get the word out.

The internet has made reaching your target market infinitely easier and has many channels available to work for any marketing strategy. When developing your internet marketing plan, never lose sight of what you are trying to achieve to ensure that you are not wasting valuable time or money on strategies that won't achieve what you want. Employ the right online strategies, and you'll be able to sit back and watch your business grow. And that's what internet marketing really is.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Laurel_R._Lindsay

How Efficient Is Your Search Engine Marketing?

No matter how well you have planned your search engine marketing strategies and implemented it as rightfully as you have planned it, you will never know how well it will result after running the strategies. There is no guarantee on getting good performance when you do your SEM methods but being patient on its implementation and persevere on doing it right, may just give the better performance in the long run.

With SEM you can effectively target potential customers when they do efforts to search for products they need or look for solutions to problems they have. The key is you have to rightfully provide solutions to their concerns and doing research on your potential customers will be a key to your success.

Making your SEM efforts efficient, you will reap the benefits in the end because your targeted customers will likely make acquisitions of products you offer. Because the customers search for you, making the search process more targeted, with the right keywords or with the right ad placements will make your SEM more efficient.

But if your competition is taking more share of the business you may be less efficient in your efforts and you may need some improvements in the process. A marketing tool may be needed or a search engine web expert may be employed help you analyze on what is wrong with your strategies and make improvements after a thorough evaluation.

Making your website visible to your potential customers is also one thing to focus on in your SEM strategies. By making targeted traffic marketing efforts you will have good chances of being seen, by way of ads of good copies or by better image placements or placements made on the most relevant sites in the internet.

Your site needs a good web visibility to get a good share of the market and doing the right SEM methods will give you the visibility and web presence that can be maintained as long as effective strategies are done. You can consult marketing companies that have marketing experiences on this aspect, to help you in these search engines marketing efforts.

You may implement organic search engine marketing methods but always make sure that you only implement white hat SEO strategies. As an efficient marketer and only using SEO marketing campaigns of the highest quality you have to only implement white hat techniques.

Implementation of the strategies mentioned can surely bring efficiency to your SEM efforts and bring you the success for your online business. Since this is greatly desired, you can include social media marketing efforts because of the popularity of this medium, and its great potential to bring success to you.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jason_Nyback

5 Online Marketing Techniques to Increase Your Potential Patient Enquiries

If you have decided that you need to keep up with online marketing tactics to win more patients, then you need to know which tactics to use. While the concept of online marketing can be a little overwhelming, you need to find a place to start. These tactics work best within the world of online marketing, and therefore make up some of the most effective and easiest to start with to get the word out on your cosmetic surgery clinic.

The best tactics to start with are:

1. Blogging
2. Auto-responders, building an email list and following up
3. Free reports
4. Online video
5. Basic SEO

Blogging
This used to be viewed as a fun little thing that people did when they got bored. Nowadays blogging is the way to reach out to and communicate with potential and existing patients. This creates a substantial and lasting online presence. It also ensures that you can get a placement at the top of the search engine results when your keywords pop up, and this is how patients will pick your cosmetic practice when interested. You can use a blog to get your keywords out there on the web, and also reach out to patients who are interested and wish to share feedback. If you do good work, this could turn into real-time testimonials and that is tremendously valuable marketing by itself.

Auto-responders
You may have heard of these, but aren't really quite sure what they are or how to utilize them. These are tools that allow you to build an email list and easily communicate and repeatedly follow-up with those on it. You can utilize a set of standardized letters that you set up once and then can go back to as any other email list that you would use elsewhere. This is a great tool because it saves you time, and ultimately ensures that you can reach the people you want to quickly and effectively.

Offering Free Reports
We all love to get something for free. Though you may not think that anybody would have interest on a report on your cosmetic clinic, they will definitely read and this peaks their interest. Offer up to your readers and patients a report on something intriguing within your industry. Keep them informed and keep communicating with them, and they are sure to think of you when they have a need.

Online Video
This is one of the most important tools to use online for your business. You can refer to online videos for articles or pieces of interest to your client base. You can also create your own videos and place them online. This could be of you speaking to a procedure or something else pertinent that your patients will really care about. This video needs to get some mileage out of it and therefore you need to put it on your website and drive traffic to it to get views.

Basic SEO-- Search Engine Optimization
Though often misunderstood, this is one of the most important tools to help you promote your cosmetic clinic business online. Here you will reach out to patients by properly marketing your website using "spiders" that crawl the Internet collecting useful information for search engines. You want to be part of the useful information that they pick up!

Many within this industry spend a great deal of money to have somebody create a fancy website for them. However if the website is not search engine optimized, then nobody will ever see it. You want to use a strategic approach to ensure that the fancy website that you have gets views and traffic, and that this in turn relates to actual business and money in your pocket. That's what SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is all about!

If you figure out the best ways to use the five online marketing tactics, your business will succeed. You will stand apart from your competitors, you will win over patients, and you will ultimately be profitable by reaching patients in the best way possible.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Catherine_M_Trebble

Are You A Robot? Does Automated Internet Marketing Software Work?

Marketing a business online can be very time consuming...

Manually submitting content, bookmarking, growing social media numbers, communicating with people in Web 2.0 and creating quality links will all take plenty of your valuable time.

And this is not even taking into account writing massive amounts of content to submit to directories.

A lot of very smart software developers are continually finding ways to create shortcuts to eliminate this lengthy process (and make a pile of money at the same time!).

But does automated internet marketing software work?

We all know how it feels to be inundated with spam through our email in-boxes, our blog comments, our social media messages and anywhere else badly trained marketers can infiltrate.

These are the ones we take delight in deleting and reporting or blocking.

Spam has reached epidemic proportions online and it adds unproductive time to all of our working days!

Anyway I digress...

Software in online marketing? Yes or no?

Here are a few guidelines from my experience.

Any software that spins content to create multiple, keyword rich articles should be avoided at all costs. This produces synonym based nonsense which damages your credibility and will be punished by the search engines.

Always create content for human readers not search engines.

It is the customer you should be focused on. Top page rank is pointless if you look like a half-wit.

Software to submit to hundreds of directories?

Avoid! If it is a one button, automatic system you will have your account banned by many of the sites immediately and permanently. Watch your presence plummet!

Software to get views, friends, followers, likes, clicks etc?

There is some variation here, anything auto on YouTube is very risky. Get identified by YouTube for abusing the system and lose all your videos when your account is banned. Inconvenient if your YouTube hosted videos appear on other sites.

Try and use anything software related on Facebook? - I don't think so! Facebook is like a fortress. So tight are the systems that sometimes it is hard to add a friend you have known for twenty years.

Twitter is a bit of an exception. Free services that add followers, remove followers automatically are shut down within a short period of time. But the paid services seem to be tolerated and these can be a massive time saver. This is obviously not generally known here, in New Zealand, as the follower numbers, messaging and effectiveness of NZ Twitter accounts for business is way behind the international standard.

So you can software for limited purposes such as automating tweets or following and un-following - for now!

Any software that builds links to other sites to improve your site rank - avoid! You will be dropped down the search results like a stone.

Any software that automatically comments on blogs to build site rank? - Avoid for the same reason. Most blogs have Askimet or some other spam filter anyway. This is rife on the Internet at present and does not serve your business at all.

You will have found that most directories, Web 2.0 and other content sites have a "Captcha" form to stop software abuse.

This is a "reverse Turing test" which means it is a machine setting a simple test for a human...

(Captcha is a contrived acronym - Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart!)

"Are you human? Type in the barely readable letters in the box"

This is a great filter.

So in most cases software will damage your online marketing campaign but there are a few exceptions. Steady, manually submitted content is the best practice when combined with SEO based techniques to substantially improve and speed up the results.

Of course people are constantly trying to find ways around this and to stay one step ahead of the famous Google Algorithm.

A new wave of very smart submitter sites have found a work-around by using outsourcing on a global level.

By paying a subscription your content can be syndicated by hundreds or thousands of outworkers earning a living from their own computers - totally manually, and importantly, from many different IP addresses. The costs are low because most are from developing nations and the brilliant thing is that it appears completely natural.

The next time a site asks you "Are you a robot?" I am sure you will find it less irritating as this process is one of the key defences against the many unethical marketers destroying the essence of the Internet.

Mike Morgan is one of the founders and directors of High Profile Enterprises - a company which specialises in improving internet presence and website sales and performance for small-medium businesses.

High Profile Enterprises uses cutting-edge online marketing techniques to launch businesses into the highly desirable and lucrative front page positions of the search engines, particularly Google.

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How Payroll Software Can Aid Your Business

It doesn't matter what size your business is, if you want to expand, you're going to have to manage your affairs intelligently. This means keeping track of all your assets, including human resources, and to the employees who work for you, nothing is more important than you providing them with adequate compensation on a reliable schedule. The complexities inherent in paying workers go farther than simply remembering to write checks and balance ledgers every couple of weeks, you have to remember to take out taxes, keep records updated and pay bonuses, among other things. Payroll software provides a simple way to organize all the information you need to stay in business.

Professional businesspeople use their payroll software in many ways. These software solutions generate automatic reminders that pay dates are coming up and even help by printing out valid checks based on individual employee compensation records.

While it's obvious that a good payroll management package can help cut checks, they will also serve as ledgers that keep automatic running totals close at hand. Many payroll software packages are easily integrated with business account management programs or include some of these functions. With good payroll programs, it's fully possible to generate comprehensive finance reports so that business owners can keep track of their internal performance.

Even if you use a third party service to deliver your paychecks, payroll software is an indispensable aid. Because many software packages let you aggregate information with regular update periods, you can rely on the numbers to be ready for quick reporting to payroll services, and some programs will even send this data for you.

In addition to performing this basic advanced accounting, good payroll services help businesses by going the extra mile and computing taxes. Doing taxes before you sign checks is difficult. Tax codes change each year, so even if you aren't changing how much you pay employees, you've still got to make sure your tax calculations are updated by looking up percentage information in a convoluted guidebook. This complicated process takes a great deal of time, and prevents you from attending to the business specific tasks that only you can accomplish.

Some companies use time clock systems to record employee work hours, and payroll software can be configured to automatically account for this data and compile it on a regular basis. For small business owners without on site accounting staff, this means that the hassle of getting all the numbers together need not be a concern. Good payroll software can replace an accountant, and because it generates stubs as well as checks, your employees can benefit from getting their own payment record with every check.

Payroll software packages can handle varying payroll frequencies, user defined deductions and bonus income. If you select the right software package, it will allow your company to expand unhindered, no matter whether you decide to implement retirement plans, tips or special expenses. Your accountants and bookkeepers use payroll software services, so your business should as well.

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The Personal Accounting Software Ideas

When it comes to selecting personal accounting software, you likely want something that will help you get control of your finances. Eliminating debt and steering individual finances and bookkeeping can be much easier with the right tools.

When you begin to analyze accounting software, you may quickly see that the choices can be described as a couple of different types. For one, there are the web based solutions that include Quicken Online or what was Mint and several others. These, in most cases, are free and suitable for home use, especially if you mostly need budget help.

Much like online banking the free software works for many. The real attraction to these besides the price is the function. You get most all your online financial information all available in one spot and easy to review. Very handy for keeping up with right where you are at all times, the free versions include more...

What you also get are budget functions. That means you can, right online, set budgets and track them to see where you are all the time. It's a good deal and all for free...

Look at this though before you sign on... If you have more complications, like real estate investments or even a small business or payroll, you quickly hit the limits of the free online software. They just won't handle much accounting needs which forces you to something else.

The "something else" could be the other major group of software, the kind that resides on your computer. That can be for free to though.

If you need more than just basic personal finances and you need some real bookkeeping it most often means a higher level software with more capabilities like a system that an accountant would generally employ. Clear preferences show up in comparisons of software and reviews.

The best personal accounting software costs less than you may guess. Free works for many as well. Get more helpful tips as well as learning about the limits of software at another of our articles.

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Accounts Payable Business

Accounts payable business or APB refers to the handling of business bills that are unpaid. They may be the money which one's business owes to suppliers and creditors. Keeping track of each one of these accounts payable business payments, their payment dates along with other details pertaining to the payments can change to be quite tricky and cumbersome and a slight mistake could lead to some heavy fines or extra charges.

The price of processing an invoice is often as high as $17 but by employing modern digitization, it's possible to reduce this cost by half. Most companies outsource from accounts payable business services to firms, which could make sure that all accounts are payable within an efficient organized and accurate manner thus saving the client the hassle and lowering the price of dealing with processing the payment. This also ensures that the installments are made in good time.

There are several advantages of outsourcing an APB, some of which include greater centralized control over payables across the enterprise regardless the location. This is done through the internet and takes about 24 hours to complete the processing of the necessary paperwork for that transaction. Within the APB, there's real time tracking from the payment as soon as it is scanned to the moment it's approved using the time and date on each step shown in a safe environment accessible to all clients, vendors and employees. The accounts payable clients are involving and costly, especially when done in-house.

Outsourcing firms save their clients the headache and also the resources they'd spend to find, recruit, hire and manage clerical staff. Throughout the recruitment process employees would as well require exhaustive training to ensure they are proficient at handling the APB of clients and thereafter a lot of employee relations would be needed to comply with the progress being attained. The accounts payable business requires resilience.

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Accounts Payable Recovery

Accounts payable represents among the largest pieces of working capital within an organization. Payable accounts recovery or APR efforts allow organizations to recuperate duplicate payments and over payments, which have made to vendors. Understanding why accounts payable recovery work is important to the continuing success associated with an organization. Why is it that so many over payments and duplicate debts are paid to a company's vendors? The sheer amount of blow by blow payable transactions entered into on the day to day basis supplies a chaotic atmosphere where it's not hard to overlook small issues with accounts payable. Blow by blow payable recovery efforts help a company to recuperate from payments and improve business ways to help make sure that the problems are not as likely to keep into the future.

Challenges surrounding payable accounts recovery.

Their recovery of challenges to adequate payable blow by blow recovery efforts. Large volumes of transactions, various merchant contracts, personnel turnover, and internal communication are all potential stumbling blocks surrounding APR.

In order to execute properly the payable accounts recovery, a company must understand the risks and challenges and gain an understanding of how to overcome them for successful accounts payable recovery. Possible Findings in an accounts payable recovery audit a payable accounts recovery audit may uncover numerous issues that cost companies millions, otherwise billions, of dollars annually. Pricing errors, sales tax overpayments, trade-in allowances, incorrect freight charges, discounts dues, and unrealized credits are all problems that can be uncovered through an accounts payable recovery audit. Once these problems tend to be revealed, a business can start to recuperate from any losses they may have incurred to whoever performs a payable accounts recovery audit. Most organizations simply do not have sufficient manpower to do a payable accounts recovery audit.

Most organizations choose a CPA firm or another accounting professional to do payable accounts e recovery audits. Several providers use data mining techniques along with other specialized procedures and discover discrepancies that need to become addressed. Any organization that is interested in improving their business processes and saving money must consider accounts payable recovery audits. Payable blow by blow recovery efforts can recover tens of thousands of dollars of cash that actually is one of the organizations.

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Accounts Payable Outsourcing - The Shocking Info

Accounts payable is a short term liabilities that a business owes to other business entities. For most businesses, especially the smaller ones, this function takes the largest proportion from the overall liabilities. Hence there's a need for effective management of those accounts. Accounts payable outsourcing is exactly what most businesses have chosen so that they can have enough time focused on their core functions.

Payable accounts business process outsourcing provides extensive benefits towards the business. The first one is saving on labor costs that could happen to be suffered by the company when they had employed an individual whose jobs are solely to cope with these accounts. Thus by outsourcing the business can seek the services of an expert and also at less cost. Actually, outsourcing is believed to reduce the cost of processing accounts payable invoices by almost 50% per invoice but no capital investment is needed. Payable accounts involves a lot of paperwork, thus by outsourcing, a business has the capacity to save on time that could have been used in maintaining such accounts.

Furthermore, the BPO companies have special systems that automate and greatly simplify this function. Through digitalization the outsourcing companies are also able to offer their clients immediate access to paper invoices thus streamlining audits and making the process of resolving disputes easier. Outsourcing this job can also help a company integrate the best account payables practices into their operations. This really is so because the outsourcing companies are often certified and legally licensed by the authorities. Thus incorporating their expertise will make sure how the business is on the right side from the law so far as matters regarding to accounts payable are concerned. Most of the accounts payable outsourcing companies possess the full information on the services they offer posted on their websites.

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Payroll Tip - What's Your Responsibility for Unclaimed Paychecks?

Unclaimed or returned paychecks are a real hassle; just ask any bookkeeper, especially one in the construction industry. They mess up your bank reconciliations because they are always outstanding; and seriously, what are you supposed to do with them other than throw them in a desk drawer and hope you remember where you put them!

Can the company keep the money?

Can you just void the checks and be done with it?

As a bookkeeper or business owner do you know what your responsibilities are for handling unclaimed or returned paychecks?

The answer is pretty simple -- NO, you cannot keep an uncashed or unclaimed paycheck; believe it or not, you MUST turn them over to the state where that person last worked. Oh, it gets even better; you can be fined or penalized if you don't turn these checks over to the state -- even if the former employee can't be found.

You are probably wondering, "Why the heck do I have to turn the check over to the state?" And that's a good question too!

There is a common law doctrine called escheat (meaning surrender) on the books in each and every state; that requires unclaimed property (in this case wages) to be returned (surrendered) to the state, and not kept by the person who has it.

Escheat laws vary by state, but most states do have a requirement that the company who issues the check (your company) make a good faith effort or attempt to find the ex-employee and give him/her the paycheck. A good faith effort would include sending a certified letter (return receipt, forwarding address requested, etc.) to the employee's last know address. When that certified letter is returned with no forwarding address information - DO NOT OPEN IT, but rather keep it intact; this will help you to prove to the state that you did your due diligence in trying to locate the former employee. Usually you have a one-year limit from the time the paycheck was dated to do this.

Under escheat, the checks become state property if not claimed by the owner with 1-7 years, depending upon the state.

Business owners holding unclaimed wages are required to submit certain information to the state while they hold the uncashed checks. The report must be filed annually and contain the following information:

* Employee's name
* Employee's last known address
* Description of the abandoned property (in this case "wages")
* The date the wages became payable
* The dollar amount involved, and
* The date of the last transaction with the employee

To find out about the escheat laws for your state, begin by doing a search on "escheat" and your state name. Or go directly to the website of your state treasurer, department of revenue, or other taxing agency to find the specifics. Remember, each state has their own rules - escheat is not a Federal Law, but rather a State Law.

Ignorance of the law is no excuse, so if you have a desk drawer where you've been stashing uncashed paychecks - - now is a good time to clean it out!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Nancy_Smyth

Improve Payroll Accuracy - 4 Reasons to Use Employee Time Clock Software

The more time you spend manually processing payroll by calculating hours, trying to determine when overtime rules apply, and deciphering the cryptic notes left on punch clock cards, the more likely you are to make a mistake. Manual payroll processing is prone to human error, errors that can cost you time and money. Employee time clock software performs all the complicated calculations for you by applying your payroll rules.

Time Clock Software Instantly Totals Hours Worked
One of the biggest drain on resources when processing employee payroll is manually adding up all of the employee time cards. Even if you have a mechanical punch clock, it may not know when to apply daily or weekly overtime rules. Fixing missed punch times or adding hours for time worked off site takes a tremendous amount of time and effort. Employee time card software makes payroll processing easy and completely accurate by instantly totaling regular and overtime hours worked according to your business rules. Take the guess-work out of processing payroll and remove the stress caused by being afraid to make a mistake on someone's paycheck.

Time Clock Software Automatically Includes Paid Time Off
The scenario is a common one. An employee opens his paycheck to discover he has been shorted 16 hours. A punch clock is not designed to record time not worked, but employee time card software is. Quickly add paid vacation or sick leave to employee time card reports to be included in payroll processing. Better yet, add all paid holidays at the beginning of the year and not worry about missing them later because they will be ready when processing payroll for the payroll period in which they occur. Leave entries can be recorded as manual time card entries for a single worker, or an entire group of workers at the same time. Employee time card software makes it easy to keep track of all your paid and unpaid time and attendance needs.

Time Clock Software Consistently Applies Rounding Rules
Have you ever wondered when you are supposed to round time up and when you are supposed to round time down? Employee time clock software can take away all the guessing by automatically rounding employee hours to the nearest tenth or quarter hour. Stop trying to convert time to decimals so you can input employee hours into your payroll software. Employee time card software does that automatically for you so you can print your payroll reports in either time or decimal format. With so many payroll configuration options, employee time clock software will easily adapt to your business environment.

Time Clock Software Eliminates Duplicate Data Entry
Once you figure out all of the regular hours and overtime for each employee, being careful not to forget any hours for paid time off, it is time to enter all of those figures into your payroll system. If you did not make a mistake before, your chances have just increased significantly. Data entry errors may occur by transposing numbers or recording payroll hours for the wrong employee. Employee time card software will export employee hours automatically for quick import into your payroll system. You will save time and eliminate data entry errors with time clock to payroll integration.

Employee time clock software helps businesses of any size reduce payroll costs by providing a cost-effective solution for managing payroll processing.

Jeffery Morrow is a time clock software technical support specialist at Redcort Software. Redcort Software has been developing, publishing and supporting payroll time clock software since 1986 and on the Internet since 1997. Tens of thousands of workers at businesses in over 50 countries rely on Virtual TimeClock software every business day. Virtual TimeClock software is so easy to install and configure that it can be affordably deployed on any PC or Mac computer at your business.

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The Top Three Business Benefits Of Microsoft Accounting Software

If you haven't already, there is no better time for businesses to take advantage of Microsoft accounting software to upgrade your bookkeeping system. Long gone are the days when tired and frustrated men clad in suspenders and sun-visors sat in dark, smokey rooms licking their pencils and pounding furiously away at antique adding machines crunching numbers beneath the heat of an "interrogation lamp".

With the evolution of modern technology and the introduction of personal computers also came an uprising of advances in the way that we do our business accounting. Every successful business owner knows that while we must still scrutinize each transaction, sale, expense, profit and loss - there are much easier ways to do it. New and improved versions of Microsoft accounting software are being introduced on an almost annual basis making it easier and easier to do more and more with the financial aspects of your business management. Today's newest and most beneficial addition to the world of computerized accounting is 2010's Microsoft Dynamics GP.

Three Good Reasons To Use Microsoft Accounting Software

1. Advance Your Distribution - This type of accounting software allows you to do a number of things to enhance your product or service distribution. Create "Smart Lists" to gain faster access to inventory levels and snapshot viewing of your supply chain. You'll also reduce data-input errors and create a work flow to automate inner-office file-sharing. You can track sales in real-time using up to six customizable stages from the point of order to invoice.

2. Honoring Your Client Commitments - Microsoft accounting software has certainly saved the respective behinds of many an overzealous salesman. Though we all strive to succeed in sales and reach as many potential customers as possible, sometimes when business is booming demand exceeds supply. Dynamics GP maintains accurate data related to current and future inventory and stock. A few clicks of your mouse can prevent embarrassing -- and expensive -- over-commitments.

3. Order Management And Processing - Microsoft Dynamics GP allows your business to continue running even when you're not. With a 24 hour virtual "service center" integration, your customers and sales-persons can monitor and edit orders online from anywhere in the world at anytime of day for more accurate fulfillment. The software itself monitors the order process from beginning to end tracking the entire history including initial quotes, orders, back orders, order picking and shipping date and everything else to invoices and payments.

In this fast paced world of Internet marketing, online shopping and electronic communication, no business can operate at its full potential without these tools. Incorporating Microsoft accounting software to your business bookkeeping system can save you time, money and get that little guy in the suspenders out of that smokey office.
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Payroll Processing - Understanding Payroll Processing Outsourcing

Online payroll processing outsourcing has become well known all around the world. There are a number of this services that offer higher quality payroll services to all sorts of small and large sized business organizations. Payroll processing is well thought-out as the most important characteristic of businesses and keeps a employees record and solves issues pertaining to tax.

Payroll Processing Department

Major corporate houses have its separate department which handles payroll administration needs, though not all small businesses have its human resource department to manage accounting needs. This services outsourcing is the most appropriate option for these companies.

Individual needs

A particular need of a company is different from the other. Generally it is observed that a lot of time is consumed in managing this services as well in its administration. Availing services of online payroll outsourcing you can be rescued from managing paperwork.

Why Outsource?

In the current era of business as well as management companies find advantageous, because it saves cost and time, getting other returns on investments. Over the last few decades payroll processing outsourcing has come up as a successful management service prolific for a number of business organizations. This services has proved to be a useful measure for any company that saves money, resources as well as manpower. It helps services to run smoothly in most effective manner that fetches innumerable advantages.

Additional Benefits

You can save a lot on execution as well as administrative costs adopting. One of its benefit is, it facilitates businesses and companies in changing all its resources to key business issues, due to which will increase the production and more profits for the company. Payroll processing outsourcing provided by companies comprise with payroll data analysis, releasing employee payment plus payroll taxes reporting and payment to employees.

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Payroll Outsourcing: Ways a Company Can Outsource Business Functions

Most reason why companies choose to outsource business functions such payroll is for the company to cut its cost and focus more on business core activities. Businesses are not yet fully recovered with the last year's financial crisis, are deciding for company's sake and just let go of their employees. Yes, outsourcing had its price too.

The following are various ways a company can outsource business functions:

Manual Labor - Most of manufacturing companies now are not too dependent to physical labor of the human resource. The advancement of technology enables big companies to rely of state of the art equipment and robot that only needs minor human intervention. What makes this equipment an essential to factories is their efficiency and almost perfect quality of work. With manufacturing companies that rely heavily now with equipment are the ones that lay off human force.

Bookkeeping- Bookkeeping aside from payroll are outsourced separately, though other outsourcing company combines both as part of the outsourcing package. Most accounting offices will do the job of a bookkeeper with a minimum cost of the company. One down side with this kind of set up though is that the company owner who wants to examine the books for reference purposes must always coordinate with the outsourcing company.

Payroll- Outsourcing the company's traditional in-house payroll can save a lot of money in the company's part. Payroll taxes are usually included in the package. It only costs a fraction a company will spend in traditional in- house payroll to the expenditure the company will incur in outsourced payroll.

Salary is a much awaited period for any working individual. That is why it is a must to have payroll computations free of errors and inconsistencies. Traditional in-house payroll will be impossible to have an error-free computation and correcting errors may take a while, this is primarily the downside of in-house payroll team, which can be totally eliminated through outsourced payroll.

We perform the same services as traditional payroll management services for roughly half the cost. Unlike other online payroll services and payroll software, our service goes beyond making calculations and simple reporting. Compared to doing payroll yourself, we reduce payroll time from a couple hours per pay period to 5 minutes or less.

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Real Time Information Proposed for UK PAYE

Pay As You Earn (PAYE) was introduced in the United Kingdom in 1944 as the system that HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) uses to collect Income Tax and National Insurance contributions (NI) from employees' wages and salaries.

All UK employers must register with HMRC for purposes of administering a PAYE scheme. This registration is obligatory if employees have earnings at or above the Income Tax threshold or has earnings at or above the NI lower earnings level.

Administering PAYE includes having to calculate tax deductions using a tax code system. Every employee is allocated a tax code which signifies their personal tax allowance and special conditions for each employee are represented in the tax code with a letter.

The UK financial tax year runs from 6th April to 5th April the following year. Each tax year is then divided into 53 weeks (allowing for odd days at the end of the tax year) and also into 12 monthly periods.

The operation of the PAYE system means that almost 90% of employees do not have to complete a self assessment tax return. It also means that for most people who are taxed under PAYE, no further recalculation of their tax position is required.

In the 2008-09 tax year £225billion in tax, NI and Student Loan repayments was collected through the PAYE system. This cost almost £2billion to collect (£1.2billion for HMRC and £0.7billionn for businesses).

In July HMRC published a discussion paper called "Improving the Operation of Pay As You Earn (PAYE)". This focused on improving the time taken to transmit information to HMRC as a way of cutting costs for both the employers and HMRC. It also has the aim of improving customer service to bothe employers and their employees.

The document gives details of "Real Time Information" (RTI). This is proposed to be the means by which HMRC will obtain its data about tax and deductions automatically each time a payroll is run. It is planned that if employees are paid by Bacs then the RTI data submission will form a part of the Bacs transmission process.

At present at the end of each tax year employers have to file year end returns, but under RTI employers would be required to provide information when they do their periodic pay run for their employees, whether that is weekly, fortnightly or monthly. Employers would also have to provide details about employer NI payments at the time they pay over to HMRC the deductions.

The paper also introduced a potential future change to PAYE in the form of "Centralised Deductions" (CD). If this is introduced then the responsibility for calculating tax, National Insurance and deductions would move from employers to HMRC.

The decision following the July 2010 discussion is that RTI will proceed with a phased introduction starting in 2012. Changes the PAYE process in terms of CD is unlikely to start before 2015 though.

The proposed RTI timetable is as follows:

* April 2012 to October 2012 - Testing with a sample of employers
* October 2012 to January 2013 - System changes arising from initial testing and further testing
* From January 2013 - Large employers start to use RTI
* From April 2013 - Medium employers start to use RTI
* From August 2013 - Small employers start to use RTI
* October 2013 - Process complete

On 3 December 2010 a further discussion paper was issued called "Improving the operation of Pay As You Earn (PAYE): Collecting Real Time Information". The proposals in that document included the fact that employers, or the relevant payroll companies, would provide information to HMRC whenever they do their regular paroll run; the annual P35/P14 annual submission process would not be necessary; RTI submissions will be tied in to bank or Bacs payment software; small employers (less than 50 staff) who do not pay by Bacs will be able to submit using other software or an agent; it is not envisaged that the PAYE payment dates for employers will change from the 19th and 22nd of the month following; Benefits In Kind are not included in the proposals.

HMRC see the benefits of such a system as being more timely information enabling HMRC to get more employees tax right in the year rather than later; a reduction in queries to HMRC; a better system for transfer of information when someone changes their job; less administration; better debt management in respect of employers.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Paul_Marsden

How To Ensure Payroll Is Carried Out Effectively

Benchmarking is a proven practice and core process of strategic management. But how can this practice be applied appropriately to explore the possibility of process improvements in payroll services? To shed some light on this subject, let's address some questions payroll managers may have concerning payroll and benchmarking.

1. How and why does benchmarking apply to payroll?

When left alone, payroll managers believe their departments employ the best and latest practices. But when they actually compare themselves to others, they're able to confirm their assumptions or find areas requiring improvement. If your payroll department operates without peer-benchmarking, it doesn't know if it's performing at its peak, its nadir, or somewhere in between.

Payroll is subject to cost controls and seeks ways to improve performance to minimize costs. Best practices help to cut costs and maintain compliance. Benchmarking then takes the best practices from other payroll departments and improves yours to save time and further costs. It also helps to answer questions you may have such as:

A. Should we be reporting to Finance/Accounting or to Human Resources?

B. Have we exceeded industry standard levels of participation on our direct deposit program?

C. Are payroll services cutting too many manual checks or is there possible room for improvement?

2. How do I establish a benchmarking process for payroll services?

Phase One: Planning. The following questions are essential to any plan's development:

A. Which process will be benchmarked? Every function of payroll has a product or an output. So essentially, benchmarking is appropriate for any payroll function. However, electing the payroll processes to be benchmarked can create a hurdle at this stage of the process. One method to overcome this is to start with the most common areas of benchmarking such as annual department budget, cost per payroll distribution, error rate in payment processing as a percentage of total payroll payments, cost per manual check, and percentage of payroll time records received error free. Determining the key ratios and indicators is a critical first step.

B. How will the data be collected? That's contingent on time and budget constraints. There's no singular way to collect data.

Phase two: Analysis. After picking the function you want to benchmark, study the process in your organization, make sure you understand your current processes and practices before beginning the benchmarking process, establish your metrics and analytics, determine your current performance ''gap,'' and project future performance levels. Metrics are essential in benchmarking. They will tell us where we were, where we are, and where we are going. You can't apply a best practice unless you know these specics. The number of employees on direct deposit is a metric. Analytics, however, refers to the methodologies, metrics, processes, and systems used to monitor and manage the business performance of an enterprise.

Phase three: Integration. Once you complete the benchmarking, use the information to make improvements. You must communicate the benchmark ndings by creating the package that pulls together all of your research, gain acceptance by management to implement your changes, and finally establish functional goals that are reachable but valuable as a real cost savings.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jamie_Simpson

HR Payroll - The Essentials

One of the essential and core functions of any hr payroll departments is the processing of time records. It does not matter what they are called, time sheets or time reports or whether the records are hand written time sheets, punched on a time clock, or created by the most sophisticated computerized time and attendance system, they are vital for producing accurate payroll.

Since the payroll information is so critical, hr department must ensure that it handles the processing in the most efficient manner and that too within the time frame. So, an hr division may decide to skip the auditing of time records in order to speed up the processing of the time records and to cut down on staff.

Hr payroll must also ensure to find a payroll system that involves the proper balance between quick processing and accurate processing to achieve an efficient and effective method of handling time records. The processing of time records is the processing of time records begins and ends outside of any system that may be used. What the hr division should be concerned with is the procedures used to capture and process the data before it ever goes into the payroll system.

With the demands made upon HR section, i.e. to do more work in less time without compromising on the legalities, it is imperative for the payroll department to look for smarter and faster ways to accomplish the multitude of tasks that encompass running a payroll department.

There are many small businesses that are employing web payroll softwares for the organization to have a cost cutting operations. Not only this aspect reduces the burden on HR payroll department, it is also an ideal way to ensure that your company remains compliant to the current tax laws and regulations.

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Fair Labor Standards Act - Employee Record Keeping Requirements

Employee record keeping requirements must include proper time and payroll records for it's workers. The Fair Labor Standards Act, as well as most state wage and hour laws, are the ones who determine what is or is not "proper".

In January, the USDOL (United States Department of Labor) announced that it had recovered $1 million in unpaid overtime from federal defense contracts in California. This recovered money was based, in part, on the DOL's findings that the contractors had violated the record keeping requirements, which are part of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Specifically, the DOL found that the contractors in question had failed to maintain proper time and payroll records for it's workers.

The Fair Labor Standards Act sets minimum wage, overtime, record keeping, and youth employment standards. Unless exempt, covered employees must be paid at least the current minimum wage and not less than one and one-half times their regular rate for overtime hours worked.

Employers are also required to display an official poster outlining the provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act

Every covered employer must keep certain records for each non-exempt worker. The Act requires no particular form for the records, but does require that the records include certain identifying information about the employee and data about the hours worked and the.wages earned. The law requires this information to be accurate. The following is a listing of the basic records that an employer must maintain:

1. Employee's full name and social security number.
2. Address, including zip code.
3. Birth date, if younger than 19.
4. Sex and occupation.
5. Time and day of week when employee's workweek begins.
6. Hours worked each day.
7. Total hours worked each workweek.
8. Basis on which employee's wages are paid (e.g., "$9 per hour", "$440 a week", "piecework")
9. Regular hourly pay rate.
10. Total daily or weekly straight-time earnings.
11. Total overtime earnings for the workweek.
12. All additions to or deductions from the employee's wages.
13. Total wages paid each pay period.
14. Date of payment and the pay period covered by the payment.

The U. S. Department of Labor indicates that an employer must keep payroll records and collective bargaining agreements for a period of three (3) years. Additionally, records on which wage computations are based, time cards, wage rate tables, records of additions to or deductions from wages, and work and time schedules need to be retained for two (2) years. These records must be available for inspection by a DOL Auditor, who may the employer provide extensions, computations, or transcripts of the records.

Employers may use any timekeeping method that they choose, as long as those records are complete and accurate; acceptable methods include the use of a time clock, appoint a single employee to be a "timekeeper" and record the hours worked by all other employees, or tell their the employees that they are responsible for documenting the hours that they work.

For employees who work a fixed schedule that seldom varies, the employer may keep a record showing the exact hours worked on a daily and weekly hours and indicate that the specific worker did follow the schedule as shown. If, however, the employee works a shorter or longer period that the schedule shows, these hours must be documented as an exception.

From my own past experiences, a contractor who performs work on Federal or State funded construction project subject to prevailing wage/Davis Bacon laws should keep records for 3 years after the project is complete.

Nancy Smyth is a Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor and Intuit Gold Developer specializing in offering QuickBooks users an easy and efficient means of complying with Federal and State Prevailing Wage Laws and generate certified payroll reports from QuickBooks data. For additional information on Certified Payroll Solution
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