Monday, August 27, 2012

Engine Rankings With Regularly Posted Articles

Every website owner knows how important it is to do well in the search engine rankings. Let's say you have a travel oriented site that appeals to a wide range of users. These people will be looking for good quality travel articles to read online, and if your site can provide them on a regular basis you can be sure of repeat visitors. This in turn can mean better rankings in the search engines, because popular sites tend to rise to the top of the rankings.
Ideally you need to publish at least one new feature every week, and if you can publish more, so much the better. The search engines will see your site is active and regularly updated and they'll reward you with a better position in the results accordingly.
How to get posted regularly
Of course you may not have time to write lots of travel articles on a regular basis. If this is the case you need to look at outsourcing them or finding suitable ones on a directory or two. This is a good technique to use, and you can get far more regular content by doing this. If you were to write all of the travel articles on your own you would soon run out of ideas or time to write them, especially if you don't work on your website full time.
Make sure you stay focused when creating or finding suitable content
When you are thinking of ideas for your next stories, or sourcing travel articles you can use from directories, make sure you keep your target audience in mind. This will make it much easier when it comes to serving them.
For example, let's say your travel based website focuses mainly on destinations in Europe; you don't want to add stories focused on other destinations, no matter how well written they might be. By all means consider expanding your website to focus on other topics, but those topics should still be relevant. A good example would be to have a website focusing on skiing holidays and adding some articles giving suggestions on which items to take and which items to hire when you get there.
As you can see there is a lot to think about when looking for suitable content for your website. But the most important thing to remember is to add a continual stream of information to your site. If people visit and see you are always developing the site and adding new and interesting items to read, they are far more likely to come back. So don't skimp on content - make sure it is your highest priority. It will help you develop the website you have always wanted - one that is a big success.

Monday, August 13, 2012

Find the Best Travel Article for Your Website

So you own a website based on some aspect of travel? It could be a blog, it could be a website selling holidays to various destinations, or it could even be a site selling travel gear of various types. Whatever type of website you have, you'll know how powerful a well written travel article can be at enticing people in to read more.
Finding the right piece
Depending on your needs and skills, you may write some of these pieces yourself. However if you need a regular stream of content for your blog or website, you may get to the stage where you run out of ideas, if only temporarily. Do you have a plan to cope with these situations?
The best thing to do is to source the right travel article for your needs. As mentioned previously, this could be because you are short on time or ideas. However it could also be because you don't have the level of knowledge required to write the pieces you need. Let's say you want to post a piece to your site on the topic of hiking in the Himalayas. If you have never done it you'd be hard pushed to write an authoritative article on the subject. So the key is to find someone who has, or who has a passion about it and has researched it fully before writing it.
Invest in content or get free ones?
Unless you write the content yourself you have to source it from somewhere. This can mean paying a professional writer to create it for you, and that means you might end up eating into what could be a particularly small budget. Even if your website has a larger budget there will be plenty of other things (such as promotion) that will require a slice of it.
Alternatively you can source free articles online from directories. This makes it easy to find the perfect travel article whenever you want it, since you can simply look for whatever you want at the appropriate time.
Plan ahead to cope with future needs
This is another key technique to use to ensure you never run out of content. Many webmasters don't take the time to plan ahead - they simply think of what they want or need for their website on a day to day basis. This does work on some occasions, but if you can't find what you need or you cannot write it in time, it can leave you with an impossible deadline. By focusing on future needs now, you can easily ensure you have all the content you need at exactly the right times.
So don't leave things until the last minute - find out what your ideal piece would be for your travel website and look for it now.

Monday, August 6, 2012

Real Time Information for Payroll

Every employee in the UK is paid through the Pay as You Earn (PAYE) scheme with both Income Tax and National Insurance Contributions (NICs) deducted at source from the employee's salary and paid over to HMRC together with the employer's NIC payments. Tax deductions are made according to a notice of coding issued by HMRC and based on information from the employer's end of year payroll returns and the taxpayer's tax return if they are required to submit one. This system has generally worked well but it has some significant flaws.
The major problem is that inaccuracies are hidden until the end of the tax year when the employer makes the annual payroll return and the correct amount of tax due is calculated and compared to that deducted through PAYE. In order to resolve this problem, PAYE reporting is about to change significantly with the introduction of Real Time Reporting (RTI). Under the new system the employer will file an electronic report every month along with their employee's tax and NIC payments so that errors are detected much more quickly. RTI will also simplify the end of year payroll reporting process.
The new system is currently being trialled and will be introduced from April 2013 at the start of the new tax and payroll year, becoming obligatory from October 2013. Any good commercial payroll software should be compliant from the start of the 2013/2014 tax year and small employers with less than nine staff can use the free but basic HMRC payroll tools. Employers will be notified of the need to use RTI 4-6 weeks before they need to operate the system but the onus is definitely on employers to be ready in time so it is very important to understand the system in advance.
In order to prepare for RTI there are a number of things to think of:
1. You should check when your payroll software will be compliant with RTI and make sure it is updated in good time to implement the new system.
2. You must make sure your payroll records are in order, with the correct name (in the stated order), date of birth and NI number for each member of staff
3. Be prepared to update BACs references which will need additional characters to identify them as RTI payments
RTI should make life easier in the long term by providing more accurate and up to date information on payroll. It will also simplify the end of year payroll reporting. Inevitably there will be some problems in setting up the new system but careful preparation and good professional advice will prevent many difficulties.