Internet article marketing is a marketing activity, whereby you promote products and services by writing articles, and sharing them on article submission Web sites. When you submit articles on the Web at article submission sites, they are indexed by the search engines and found by people searching for what you are writing about. This brings clicks to your Web site, and also positions you as a leader. It also helps your own Web site’s popularity by providing a back link to your Web site. Here are a few tips on how to get started with internet article marketing.

1. Choose a topic and focus on a keyword.

   You might be asking yourself, “What on earth will I write about?” Don’t worry; nearly everybody starts out by asking that question! But really, you or somebody at your company has a whole wealth of information, just waiting to be shared with those who need it and search for it out on the Web. Think about what your customers or prospects would truly want to know or learn about. If you own a catering business, you could write about ten ways to plan the perfect gathering. If you have a heating and air conditioning business, you could write about how to drastically reduce your heating bill in the winter. You know what your customers would find useful, so write about that! Don’t try to write a novel; people lose interest quickly on the Web! So choose a fairly narrow topic: perhaps a keyword you know is popular and that you already focus on for a page on your Web site. (Note: “keyword” in this case can mean a set of 2-3 words, such as “accounting software”, etc.)

2. Make it about 500 words.

   You definitely want the search engines to index and ‘like’ your articles. And these days, search engines (and particularly Google), don’t want to see a puny, short blurb, but instead an article with some real meat to it. Making the article 500 words, and surely no less than 400 words, gives your article a better chance at ranking with the search engines. (Tip: many article submission sites do actually have a minimum word count for this reason, and won’t allow shorter articles than their minimum.)

3. No sales pitches.

   While it might be tempting to write articles all about why your product is so great, just don’t go there! People would much rather read about something useful than a sales pitch. So instead of writing about yourself (or your company’s product features), choose a topic that could actually be helpful to your reader.

4. Try ezinearticles.com

   There is a wide variety of article submission sites on the internet, and you can submit your articles to most of them for free. I suggest starting out by signing up for an account with ezinearticles.com, and submitting a few articles at their Web site. Their tools make it easy to submit your articles, and ensure your keyword density and word count are optimum for the search engines. Plus you can easily access great statistics once your articles are live, and you also get a monthly report showing views, click through rates, and more for your articles.

Internet article marketing can bring traffic to your site and can also help in the search engine optimization for your Web site. Use these tips and start cranking out that first article today!

Have you been hearing about the benefits of content marketing, but don’t know where to begin? Though content marketing has been around for ages, it has only recently gained fame and attention! According to content marketing pioneer and expert Joe Pulizzi, “Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience - with the objective of driving profitable customer action.” (Click here to visit his content marketing blog.) There is a wide variety of methods that can be used and combined together to create a content marketing program. One piece of the content marketing puzzle is article writing. When done correctly, article writing can have an impressive impact on your marketing efforts. Here are some of the ways it can impact you. (Stay tuned for our next blog post, which will be about how to begin article writing.)

SEO Benefits

The main SEO benefit to article writing is that you can write about subjects pertaining to your Web site, and then have back links within the article that go back to your Web site. By doing this, you gain links back to your site that are relevant, and Google loves relevance! Also, a link is like a vote of popularity to Google. So writing relevant articles with links to your site provide Google with another reason to like you, and your site’s rank in the search results will be improved over time.

Additional content distribution

When you submit your articles to free article submission sites like www.ezinearticles.com, the articles become highly indexable with the search engines. Therefore when people are out searching the Web, and they search for the words that are included in your article, your article might come up as a result for them to click on. Once they read your article, they can click on the link you provide and will be taken wherever your link brings them (most likely to a page on your Web site). In addition, people can take your article content and publish it (with a special citation listing you as the author and also the publisher). If you have a popular article, it can be published on many Web sites, giving you exponential traffic to your site.

Article writing can be beneficial to your Web site traffic and can also be an integral part of your content marketing efforts! Stay tunes for our next post, which will be about how to get started in article marketing.

April just so happens to be “Records and Information Management Month,” a holiday created in 1995 by the ARMA International, which is a professional association that emphasizes the significance of document and information management, and its impact on business worldwide. In honor of Records and Information Management Month, here are two ways to keep your accounting and/or payroll software records safe.

Menu level security

Menu level security allows you to password protect databases, set up additional users, and track transactions entered by each user. You can also limit access to menu selections, so that an employee can only access the screens you allow. Using menu level security helps keep your data safe, while allowing employees access to the screens they need to perform their job.

Create and test backups often

Everyone keeps bugging you about making sure you get backups often. Don’t you wish they would just quit bugging you? Well, they are right. We are a software company providing support to our customers nationwide, and we see the unthinkable happen far too often: customers losing their data, partially or totally. The reasons for the loss of data are varied, but the inability to recover that data is due to the lack of a backup, or a backup that was never tested and doesn’t work. Just like so many other things, most businesses think it won’t happen to them. But it can. So take your backup and test it often.

Oh, and happy Records and Information Management Month!

Managing payroll for multiple companies is a big task. And the more locations you manage the bigger task it becomes. Whether it’s paying employees, managing employee information, running reports by location, or the multitude of other payroll functions you must handle for multiple locations, you need a way to stay organized, accurate, and timely. Here are some ways your payroll software can help.

Unlimited Companies

If you manage the payroll for multiple companies, it’s crucial for you to have the ability to keep track of them separately. Many payroll systems allow for just one company, some have a limit for the number you can manage within the system and others allow for unlimited companies. Due to the variations in payroll systems, be sure you choose a system that can grow with your company and handle all of the different companies for which it manages payroll.

Track Data by Location, Department, Project, etc.

Tracking the payroll data for different companies can be a helpful tool. For instance, maybe you want to compare the labor costs by department or by location. Setting up and tracking that information in your payroll system makes it easy to pull reports at any time to do the comparisons you require.

Direct Deposit with Publish Pay Advice

Managing the payroll for multiple companies means you may not be near enough to some of the companies to deliver physical pay checks to employees. This issue can be solved by paying employees via direct deposit, and delivering their pay advice or ‘stub’ electronically via e-mail and that is accessed securely on the internet. This eliminates the need to print anything at all, which also saves money on paper, ink, time stuffing envelopes, and more.

Multiple State Tax Filing

Having multiple companies typically involves employees in multiple states, and therefore you must be certain your payroll software can handle that, since not all systems do. The best way to be sure your system processes multiple state tax filing, is to implement a system that can handle the tax forms for all 50 states! Even if you don’t require it now, chances are you will down the line.

Import Time Electronically

To streamline the entry of pay for multiple companies, importing time directly from an electronic source can be helpful. A digital time clock, for example, allows you to import the time and populate the hours directly into your payroll software program, reducing errors by eliminating the double entry of information. Other ways to capture time include hand-held time capture devices and online time entry.

Customized Reports

No two businesses are alike, and that’s why each business has its own way of running reports. With different companies, the ability to run reports the way each company desires can be extremely helpful. Customize payroll reports to the exact specifications each company chooses, and then save and name them for easy access whenever you want to run them.

Check Designer

Each company’s payroll likely requires different check designs or styles. One way to handle this is to use your payroll system’s check designer to create and save appropriate check designs for each company. Many designers will allow you to add, delete or edit fields of information and even add a logo. You can go step further and print checks on blank check stock using MICR encoding. The MICR function also allows you to print a custom signature from a file on pay checks, especially helpful in the case where the person signing is not always nearby or available to sign pay checks.

Accounting Software is a tool that can help you manage your financial information and keep track of a variety of business data. Of course its main purpose is to give you a clear view of your financial and profitability status. In addition, the right accounting software can make a drastic difference in the efficiency of your office! That’s why it’s important to be sure your software is keeping up with your business needs. If you outgrow your accounting software, your financial data may become questionable, and your efficiency may go downhill. So how do you know if you are outgrowing your software? Here are three clues you are headed in that direction!

You can’t get the information you need.

The main purpose of accounting software is to provide you with the data you need for your company. Perhaps you want to see how profitable you have been for a period of time or whether you can afford a high dollar purchase. You should be able to gather that type of important information out of your accounting system, without any problem or hassle. If you find that the information you need is difficult to obtain, or takes a lot of manual calculations, it might just be time to look for a new system that can give you the information you need.

Processes take forever.

If data entry seems to take a long time, functions such as entering invoices or other information into your accounting system, you should check into why that is happening. Perhaps your needs have grown and you are no longer able to enter information in a way that fits your business. Your business may have grown to need purchase order management or order entry. These, along with many other accounting software features, are things that companies start without, but find useful as they grow. Look at the processes that have become time consuming, and see if your current system can be set up to handle them. And if not, you may be ready to move on to something new.

Your system seems frustrating rather than helpful.

Let’s be real here; all accounting software is frustrating when it’s brand new. But, shortly after you begin using it, you should start to feel it become a big help to you. If you have been using an accounting system for a long time, you may start to find yourself ‘tricking’ the system or creating your own workarounds to get it to do what you want it to do. This becomes a huge waste of time, and can also be very frustrating. It’s also a sign that you may want to start searching for a new accounting software system.

No matter where you are in your business lifecycle, your business can outgrow the accounting software you are using. Knowing when to move on and search for something new that fits better can keep your business running smoothly and also provide the tools you need to understand your business finances. For free accounting software guides, check lists and articles to help you find the right accounting software for your business, visit https://www.redwingsoftware.com/home/find-accounting-software.