Author: Free Web Shop

5 SEO Tactics to Boost Your Website’s Visibility in 2024

Web Marketing
5 SEO Tactics to Boost Your Website's Visibility in 2024

Hey there, fellow digital marketers and website owners! Let’s chat about something that’s always on our minds: getting our websites to shine brighter in search results. It’s 2024, and the SEO game is as lively as ever. I’ve been in the trenches, testing out strategies, and boy, do I have some insights to share with you today!

Before we dive in, let me tell you a quick story. Last month, I was working with a client – let’s call her Sarah – who runs a small online bookstore. She was frustrated because her beautifully curated site was buried on page 5 of Google. Can you imagine? All those lovely books, hidden away like a secret library! We rolled up our sleeves and got to work. The results? Well, let’s just say Sarah’s now dealing with a much nicer problem – keeping up with all the new orders!

So, without further ado, let’s explore SLINKY digital agency’s five SEO tactics that can help boost your website’s visibility this year. Trust me, these aren’t just theory – they’re battle-tested strategies that really work.

  1. Embrace the Power of AI-Generated Content (But with a Human Touch!)

Now, I know what you’re thinking. “AI content? Isn’t that what Google’s trying to crack down on?” Well, yes and no. Here’s the deal: AI tools can be incredibly helpful for generating ideas, outlining content, and even drafting initial versions. But – and this is a big but – you can’t just let the robots take over completely.

Read more

Why A Great Design Will Keep Visitors On Your Dental Clinic’s Website For Longer

Business & Legal Advice, Web Design
Why A Great Design Will Keep Visitors On Your Dental Clinic’s Website For Longer

As a dentist, we are sure that your life exists beyond the four walls of your treatment room and the confines of your dental practice. As such, you no doubt enjoy spending time with friends and family. When doing so, have you ever walked into a restaurant, cafe, or bar, looked around, and walked right back out again?

This might have been for many reasons, such as a lack of cleanliness, horrible decor, or a less-than-friendly receptionist. Alternatively, you might have stayed for a short period of time but left soon thereafter for some of those same reasons.

The scenario we have just discussed is one that is experienced in the offline world, but it plays out exactly the same online, specifically with regard to websites. All the issues we listed within those offline establishments can occur when someone visits a website, and the biggest concern is that if it happens to your dental practice’s website, it can cause your search engine ranking to diminish.

It can diminish because search engines can measure how long each person visiting your website remains there, and whether or not they arrived, and then left immediately. They see this as a signal that your website design is not one that visitors like or enjoy, and that serves as a huge red flag to them.

They want a positive experience for those who search and click through to websites from their search engine, and thus they reward websites where visitors seem to remain for some time and penalise those which appear to do the opposite. This then begs the question as to what you can do to ensure those who visit your dental practice website stay for longer.

Read more

5 Questions You Must Ask a SEO Firm

Web Marketing

Very few people go beyond the first page of their search engine results. This is bad news for anyone whose website does not appear on that page because that means that your potential clients, customers, consumers, etc., will not have even a clue about your existence. This is why business owners stress their site’s visibility so much. However, doing this on your own can be difficult because there are certain strategies and approaches that are to be followed to help increase your site’s visibility.

Your best bet in this situation is to hire an SEO agency to do your work for you and help boost your site’s visibility on search engines. With so many SEO agencies out there, it can be not very clear to select one. Of course, knowing what you want always helps narrow down the options. Besides this, you should always ask an SEO firm a few questions before selecting one.

1.     Ask for a list of clients that the agency has previously served

This is the number one question you should ask any SEO agency. Once you contact the people who have already availed the services from that particular SEO company, you will know exactly what this SEO firm is about and what they claim to be.

2.     Ask them specifics about their SEO services

This should be the second question: ask them what SEO-related tasks they would assist you with. Are they only going to be limiting themselves to of page and on-page tasks or do they also include technical services? Answers to such questions will help you understand just exactly how much work would be covered by the firm and how much you would have to look for from somewhere else. Ideally, always go for a firm that does all three tasks for you.

Read more

4 Reasons Why a Good Web Design Is So Important For Your Business

Web Design

In this digital age, one of the best ways to substantially promote your business is by launching a website. However, it is very important to be aware of what kind of website you need before you make a decision.

A site with a good web design is the best way to increase marketing for your business. But the problem here is that although it is easy to launch a general website, it is very hard to come up with an idea that exactly satisfies the buyer’s needs.

A well-defined set of skills is required to come up with a website that serves the client’s needs and although, it can be costly and time-consuming to develop in the beginning, an effective web design will surely benefit you in the long run. Some of the advantages a good web design can provide to your business include:

1.     Help in Achieving Sales Target

This is especially true for business websites. If the basic objective of your website is to generate leads or increase sales for your business, a good web design will make it much easier to achieve the targets. It will also become more convenient to reach the right audience. Without any distractions or obstacles, the user will be able to reach exactly what they are looking for on your site. You can also add your call to action at the right spot to suggest the next step you want your user to take.

But along with all this, it is very important to have a website which is not only visually appealing but also easy to navigate.

2.     The Benefits of a Responsive Web Design

Having a responsive and effective web design can also significantly help your business. Considering the variety of devices people use the internet on, such as tablets, PCs, and mobile phones, it is important for all business websites to have a responsive web design. You can also target an entirely new set of customers in this way. With a responsive web design, it will be easier for users to place orders, even from their mobile phones and immediately engage in a business transaction with you.

Read more

Team Building Ideas You Can Use When Dining With Your Team

Business & Legal Advice
Team Building Ideas You Can Use When Dining With Your Team

There are many teams and groups that occasionally, or even regularly, get to dine together, and it is on these occasions that some excellent team-building ideas can be used to help your team bond and become a stronger team.

Now, before we go any further, we appreciate that not every team leader is in a position where they dine with their team, with the obvious example being a sales manager with a team of salespeople spread out across the nation. Another could be a manager within a business that operates solely online and thus has employees who operate remotely.

What we suggest for these people is to look for virtual team-building activities and rest assured there are loads of excellent team-building ideas that can take place online via the likes of Zoom and Skype.


Coming back to those team leaders who do have a local team, and specifically those who may not have ever dined with their team, what we would say is, if you arrange an evening where your team dine together and with a view to making that team stronger, then they should all be looking forward to it positively.

First, they are getting a free meal (we all love that), secondly, most people love feeling that they are part of a team, and finally, the activity will be happening away from their normal surroundings so there should really be too much resistance from those that you ask to attend.

Read more

Three Factors To Check When Selecting An SEO Rank Tracker

Web Marketing
SEO Rank Tracker

Whether you are an SEO agency, or are personally responsible for your website’s SEO, an SEO rank tracker can be a very useful tool to use. The best ones can monitor multiple search engines, check local rankings and monitor mobile results too. Before choosing an SEO rank tracker there are three important factors you must consider.

Accuracy

As with any tool, an SEO rank tracker is only of any use to you if the results it provides are accurate. After all, the decisions you are going to make about improving your website’s ranking, or those of your clients, will be based on the information it gives you. If it is inaccurate then you could be making changes that will harm, rather than improve a website’s ranking.

Obviously, each tracker company will make claims about how accurate their software is, but don’t rely solely on this to make your decision. Check out online reviews of the trackers, seek testimonials for current users, and best of all ask other website owners or SEO agencies, how accurate the SEO rankings have been from the tracker they use.

Speed

Just as you would take action to optimise the load speed of a website for users, then as a user yourself of an SEO rank tracker, you will be looking for one that works quickly. The frustration of having to wait lengthy periods of time whilst the software carries out its functions is not something you want to experience.

The best SEO rank trackers produce their results quickly, and this will be especially important if you work in an SEO agency and have to run ranking reports on numerous websites. Imagine the time wasted if every report took several minutes to produce and multiply that by potentially hundreds of websites which you may be analysing. This can mean hours of wasted time, so ensure the speed of any SEO rank tracker you use is optimal.

Read more

5 Benefits Of Using PPC Ads To Promote Your Landscaping Business

Web Marketing
5 Benefits Of Using PPC Ads To Promote Your Landscaping Business

For landscaping business owners there is a multitude of ways to promote and advertise the landscaping services you offer. Assuming you are working within a defined location, doubtless, those marketing activities will be targeting local residents and businesses within that area.

Despite having so many options being a positive situation, many landscapers become exasperated as they struggle to decide which of them would most suit their landscaping business. This is not unusual and is a problem, not just for those in the landscaping industry, but for businesses across almost all sectors. A shrewd step if you are in this situation is to seek the advice of a digital marketing agency.

Beyond that, we recommend that you look for a marketing strategy that has two main traits. The first is that it is capable of fast results so that you see a return on your investment quickly. Second, you want something that is proven to work time and again. Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising is one such marketing channel that fits those descriptions perfectly, so here are five benefits your landscaping business can enjoy with a successful PPC campaign.

Read more

Why The Internet Is Responsible For Many Cases Of Drug Addiction

Business & Legal Advice
Why The Internet Is Responsible For Many Cases Of Drug Addiction

The internet has had many positive effects on the way everyone lives their life, however, there are also many darker aspects inherent on the internet and one of them is its impact on the number of individuals who suffer from drug addiction and subsequently have to enter a drug rehab facility or program.

Now, you might read that and question why the internet with its amazing ability to entertain, educate, and connect people on opposite sides of the world could have any link to drug addiction. It is a fair question, and in this post, we are going to explain exactly why it is the case that the internet and digital access to it affect drug addiction.

For clarity, we are not suggesting that the internet is responsible for all drug-taking and the drug trade per se. Both of these existed long before electricity was even in widespread use, and most certainly long established by the time the internet came along. However, what the internet has contributed is easier access to drugs, has allowed black market pharmacists to trade online, and be the means for drug addicts to secretly communicate with drug dealers. For example:

Read more

5 Ways Your Landscaping Business Is Enhanced By Effective Branding

Branding
5 Ways Your Landscaping Business Is Enhanced By Effective Branding

For landscape designers, especially those who have their own landscaping business, it might at first seem that branding is something that large, national, and global companies focus on rather than smaller businesses like theirs. We would counter that by saying that, whilst you would not be trying to compete with huge companies, effective branding would provide you with a greatly increased chance of competing with other landscaping businesses in your local area.

Landscaping is a highly competitive business sector, especially within specific locations such as a town or a city district. It is the landscaping businesses that have the foresight to brand themselves effectively that have a greater chance of gaining a larger market share than those landscaping businesses that have not.

The key point is that branding a local landscaping business does not require a huge budget, and whatever level of investment you do make in your branding will be more than returned when it starts to have the desired effect. Here are some other crucial benefits landscapers can receive when branding their businesses effectively.

Read more

5 Benefits Of Branding Your Dental Practice Effectively

Business & Legal Advice
5 Benefits Of Branding Your Dental Practice Effectively

In the commercial world, branding plays a huge role in how a business develops and is perceived, and that concept applies as much to dentists as it would any other type of business. It might not at first seem that the world of tooth extractions, dental implants and fillings is one in which marketing, and especially branding, would have much focus; however, if any dental practice is to remain successful, its owners must consider it.

The reason we say that is in any industry or market sector, the norm is that those businesses that emphasise marketing are the ones that are the most stable, the most profitable, and have the best opportunities to expand. Those that pay scant attention to their marketing and branding are the ones who struggle and, in the worst cases, go out of business altogether.

That scenario applies to dental practices and dental businesses, and what makes it all the more remarkable that many dentists do not focus on effective branding is that branding can generate so many benefits for it. Below are five of the most important benefits, and they are essential as they can directly and positively impact its revenue and, thus, its long-term profitability.

Read more

5 Key Digital Marketing Strategies That Help Dentistry Businesses To Expand

Web Marketing
5 Key Digital Marketing Strategies That Help Dentistry Businesses To Expand

Whenever Joondalup dentists are marketing online, one of the problems that occur is that the budget available has been used for too many marketing channels. The budget is spread too thin, and consequently, the impact of that marketing is diminished. There is also a scattergun approach where dentists will try dozens of different marketing tactics, hoping that one will work.

This is usually a false hope, because the resources to make each digital marketing tactic work, are less than if they were focussed properly. Instead, limiting marketing channels to just a few until one works is best, plus limiting them to proven channels for dentists is also preferable. Here are the five digital marketing channels for dentists we recommend.

SEO

For most website owners, including dentists, the thought of that website appearing at the top of searches on Google is highly appealing. The difference between being #1 versus on page two is massive, and that manifests itself in the vastly greater amount of traffic that comes to the top-ranked website.

Read more

Ensure Your Landscaping Website Does Not Have These 5 Design Mistakes

Web Design

You might expect that landscapers would have only tasks relating to planning, designing, and constructing landscaped gardens to think about. Whilst those tasks will certainly account for the vast majority of their efforts, other matters within their business do require some of their time.

If you are a landscaper and wondering what we are referring to, the title of this post should alert you to the fact that if you want your website to be an asset that helps your business flourish, then it needs to have been designed correctly. Unfortunately, too many landscapers are unaware of not only how important their website’s design is to their business but worse, that there can be serious design flaws that can make their website barely fit for purpose.

We do not plan to make this post a website design tuitional but instead, we will highlight the most common website design errors which landscapers should be aware of, and if they discover their website has any of them, they should take steps to correct them.

Read more

7 Mistakes For Employment Lawyers To Avoid When Your Business Website Is Being Designed

Business & Legal Advice, Web Design
7 Mistakes For Employment Lawyers To Avoid When Your Business Website Is Being Designed

One of the assets that can play a significant role in generating new clients for your employment lawyers business is your website. A well-designed website that is easy to navigate, offers excellent information, looks great, and converts well will see a high proportion of prospects who visit it becoming paying clients.

Conversely, if your website offers none of these and is more likely to see prospectors click away within a few seconds of them landing on it, it is going to produce nothing other than frustration. Worse than that, with people leaving your website so quickly it will damage any search engine rankings you have on Google.

Many of the problems that divorce lawyers experience with their website stem from its creation. Unfortunately, they allow several mistakes to be made within its design, and if the people employed to create that website are inexperienced, or more distressingly, have little care for how the website will perform, it is a recipe for disaster.

To help any divorce lawyers who are thinking about having a new website created or their current website redesigned, here are seven of the most common website design mistakes which must be avoided.

Read more

5 Key Metrics Which Tell Family Lawyers If Their Online Marketing Is Working

Business & Legal Advice

Whilst your role within your family lawyers business will primarily be legal matters, no doubt some of your time also requires you to look at the financial performance of your business. Part of that will be how you seek new clients and if any of that relates to online marketing campaigns then we are sure that you will want them to be successful.

When we say ‘successful’ it raises the point that there will be many specific measures that inform you of the success of your family lawyers business. Here, we are not talking about your success in the Family Court in getting the best outcomes for your clients, of which we are sure there are many, but rather the measure of the success of your online marketing activities in finding and generating new clients.

Some family lawyers businesses overcomplicate these measures and in doing so find themselves mired in tons of unnecessary data, but few answers. Instead, when assessing your online marketing activities the correct approach is to assess those measures which have the most significant influence upon the financial performance of your family lawyers business. These can be pared down to just five, and here they are in the order that they apply.

Read more

Top 3 Things You Need to Know about SEO in 2016

Web Marketing

SEO experts and digital marketing companies come up with new strategies, tips, and techniques to help people level up their online marketing and SEO game regularly. One of the main reasons why some people complain that despite following some of the advice of these SEO experts, their websites are still not doing well is that they are following outdated advice.  Re-evaluating and revising your pre-loved SEO strategies is one tip that everybody should keep in their back pocket at all times.

So, what are the current SEO trends of this year? There are many and while some of these current trending SEO techniques are completely new, some of them are still in place and effective from previous years. Let us have a look at them.

1: Go Mobile:

If your website still has not boarded the Mobile Plane, it is high time you should. One Google study reports that consumers from around the world end up spending as much as much 15 hours looking up for things on the internet using their smartphones. The importance of going mobile is again reflected in the algorithm updates that we see Google immersed in. “Mobilegeddon” is an algorithm update that specifically just boosts the rankings of mobile-friendly pages.

Read more

Why Employee Involvement Is Essential For A Successful Office Relocation

Business & Legal Advice

Many business owners believe that their removalists are the most important people concerning their office relocation, and whilst they might be, there is another group of people who are equally essential to a successful office relocation, and they are employees.

Without the help and support of the staff who work for the business, an office relocation will have to overcome more hurdles than it would otherwise. That is not to say that staff are going to try to sabotage the office relocation deliberately, but involving them and seeking their assistance is going to make the whole process easier and less stressful for everyone, including the owner of the business.

The first step is to be completely open with your employees that you are considering an office relocation. It might serve you better if you imply that you have not made your final decision, and that you would appreciate their thoughts and suggestions. Bear in mind, the majority of staff might actually hate their current surroundings, so the idea that they have an opportunity to move to new ones will generate an atmosphere of positivity. If the office relocation is interstate, you must inform your employees of this and be open to the fact that some employees may have a problem with this as their current lives will be uprooted, and interstate removalists will also need to be involved with this decision.

In these early discussions, you might survey the staff or at least seek some of their ideas as to where and as to the type of new office they would be happy to move to. You obviously want to make it clear the final decision will be yours, after all, it is your business that will be funding any move, but the more they feel they are influencing the ultimate decision, the more they are going to be willing to help make sure it goes smoothly.

Read more

How Do I Know If My Drug Rehab Blog Posts Are SEO Optimised?

Web Marketing
Blog Posts

Creating blog posts for drug rehabs and their websites is an essential part of a complete SEO strategy. Blog posts will help boost your position in the search engine rankings for relevant keywords, potentially driving more traffic to your website and improving your online presence.

However, Oxygen Marketing advises that it can be hard to optimise simple drug rehab blog posts for search engine performance. There are a lot of factors that you have to take into account to make sure that your content is SEO optimised, and it can be hard to keep track of them all unless you have a strong SEO background.

With this in mind, I’ve put together a short list of the most important things you need to consider when making sure that your drug rehab blog posts are SEO optimised.

High Quality Content Is A Key

Google has recently changed its search engine algorithms to focus more on the user experience than solely on keywords and technical metrics. This means that it has the ability to recognise high-quality content and reward it with a higher search engine ranking.

Once you realise this, it becomes obvious that you need to put time and effort into producing the best blog posts you can. It’s better to post one well-written post that’s free of errors than a number of posts that are poorly written and that don’t bring any value to your readers.

Read more

4 Key Elements To Promoting Fire Safety Within Your Business Premises

Web Design
4 Key Elements To Promoting Fire Safety Within Your Business Premises

Whether you are an employer or a senior person in an organisation, you have a high level of responsibility in ensuring that fire safety is given priority within your building, and one of the best ways to discharge that responsibility is by employing a fire services company, to design, install, inspect, service and maintain your fire safety equipment. By doing so you can be satisfied that fire protection and safety within your building, and for those who work or visit there, is maximised.

However, although we mentioned that you may have a high level of responsibility, that does not mean to say that no one else in your company or organization has none. In fact, it is the case that every individual has a degree of responsibility, not only for their own safety but also for the well-being of others. In the context of fire safety, there is much you can do to promote this, and it is not that difficult to do.

Here are 4 ways in which you can promote fire safety to individuals that work for you, or with whom you work, so that they have a greater awareness of it, with the hope that they can contribute to helping to prevent fires, and to taking safe and appropriate action should one occur.

Have Documented Fire Prevention/Emergency Plans

Whilst fire safety regulations differ from state to state and from country to country, one constant throughout is that businesses and organisations should have some form of written fire safety plan. This does not have to run to hundreds of pages, and the simpler it is the better so that any employee reading it can understand it. It should include such details as fire hazards, control of flammable materials, evacuation plans, and those who are designated specific fire safety responsibilities.

Read more

7 Tips If It Rains On Your Office Relocation Day

Business & Legal Advice

On the day of your office relocations, the chances of anything going wrong are extremely slim, especially if you have had the sense to hire professional removalists to facilitate your move. However, even the very best removalist company cannot legislate for things occurring which they cannot control, one of which is the weather, and that means on the day of your move you might have to deal with torrential rain.

Now, before we go any further, we appreciate that some people reading this might be fortunate (or unfortunate, depending on how you view it) to live in an area where rainfall is minimal. However, even in the driest of climates, it does rain sometimes and that could just be the day of your office relocation, so this advice should apply to almost everyone.

So, if it does happen to rain on the day of your office relocation, and worse, there are downpours, how can you mitigate the problem of items getting wet and, ideally, eliminate the risk of anything being damaged? Well, read on, and our seven tips will answer those questions.

Tip #1: Check The Weather Forecast In Advance: The boy scout’s motto of ‘Be Prepared’ is very apt with regards to office relocations and one way you can ensure you are prepared if it rains on your moving day is to know so in advance by regularly checking the weather forecast on the days leading up to it.

Read more

Different Ways to Encourage Eco-Friendly Commuting

Web Marketing
Different Ways to Encourage Eco-Friendly Commuting

People across the world, including digital marketing agencies, financial institutions, council offices, and a wide range of other businesses, are becoming more and more aware of their carbon footprint and environmental impact. Eco-friendly commuting is becoming increasingly popular and represents a great way for people to reduce their environmental impact.

Unfortunately, a lot of offices just don’t have the infrastructure or know-how to support eco-friendly commuting. For example, things like cycling or running to work can be quite difficult if you don’t have a space to shower at the end.

In the rest of this article, I’ve outlined a few things that you, the office manager or owner, can do to encourage eco-friendly commuting.

Provide Access to Showers and Change Rooms

There’s nothing worse than running or cycling to the office and having to sit in your sweaty clothes for the rest of the day. Even a short jog or cycle can leave you smelly in summer, and your colleagues certainly won’t appreciate the stink.

Solve this problem and encourage more “people-powered” commuting by ensuring all employees have access to showers and change rooms where they can freshen up when they arrive at work.

Read more

Which Legal Business Structure Should You Choose For Your New Business?

Business & Legal Advice
Legal Business Structure

Whenever someone is starting a new business, one of the most common questions that they will ask their commercial lawyer is what legal business structure they should use.

According to commercial lawyers, the choice is extremely important as it has implications for many aspects of the business, such as tax liabilities, the costs of running the business, and legal protection of the business’s assets.

In Australia, four main legal business structures can be used, and they are sole trader, a partnership, a company, and a trust. Read on, and we will explain in more detail what each of them is, and the ease, or otherwise, of setting them up.

A sole trader is the simplest structure and they are extremely easy to set up. If you operate as a sole trader you are in full legal control of the business and whilst that has some advantages, there are also some not so advantageous aspects.

The main one is that you are liable as an individual for all the business’s debts and tax payments. If necessary, your own personal assets can be used to funds and pay these.

Read more

Top 5 Web Design Code Libraries & Frameworks

Web Design

In the past, most websites were coded from scratch. This was a very time-consuming process, and it led to the development of things like code libraries and frameworks. Web designers throughout the world make use of various libraries every day to streamline the design process and make their lives easier.

With this in mind, I’ve done some research into the best code libraries and frameworks available for web design experts in 2019. My top five choices include:

  1. Bootstrap

Bootstrap is a popular front-end development framework that comes with a great feature library. It allows you to develop both websites and apps, and has become one of the most commonly used frameworks in the world.

One of my favourite things about Bootstrap is that it’s open-source and fully documented. This means that you can add your own code to improve the framework if you want, and there are plenty of help resources out there that you can draw on if you have problems at any point.

  1. Material Components Web Library

Google’s Material Components Web library is a great resource for front-end web developers and web designers alike. It comes with a great range of components and design elements that you can add directly to your next website project.

Although it is still growing, this library has already become one of the most popular in the world. Its components are compatible with numerous different frameworks and development environments.

  1. Effeckt.css

Here we have something a little different. To put it simply, effect.css is a CSS code library that includes thousands of animation elements. You can use it to add animation effects to things like buttons, lists, tabs, and images.

Read more

How Can I Get The Most Out Of My WordPress SEO Efforts?

Web Design
WordPress SEO Efforts

Search engine optimisation, or SEO, is one of the most important things to consider when building a new WordPress website. If you do things right from the start then ongoing SEO and following SEO trends will be easy. However, it will still take a bit of time and money, which means that you should think carefully about where to best direct your efforts.

Once you find out the common SEO terms and their meanings, it’s time to look further into SEO. With this in mind, I’ve come up with a few things that you can do to make sure that you get the most out of your ongoing WordPress SEO efforts. These include:

Using an SEO optimized theme:

Using a search engine-optimised theme is one of the best ways to make sure that your ongoing SEO efforts are going to be effective. Having a decent theme – with well-written code and a decent layout – is crucial when it comes to ranking well.

It’s worth spending a bit of time and money to make sure that you get the right theme to start with. Ask others in the industry, try and get theme recommendations from reputable sources, and above all, don’t be afraid to pay for a premium theme.

Maintain your image library:

It’s very important to make sure that you don’t get lazy when it comes to uploading images to your WordPress website. If you do, your SEO efforts will be impacted.

Read more

Why Should I Focus On SEO For My Law Firm Instead Of AdWords?

Business & Legal Advice, Web Marketing
SEO vs AdWords

Although Google AdWords marketing is a very successful tool that is essential for most online and many offline businesses, it isn’t as good for lawyers and law firms; a lot of people go as far as saying that as a law firm, you shouldn’t waste a cent of your money on AdWords.

Now, this may be true if you have a small marketing budget, but it isn’t always the case. Using AdWords for law firm-related keywords can be extremely expensive, with some keywords costing hundreds of dollars per click. As you can imagine, this sort of cost can quickly drain the budget of a small law firm, which is one of the reasons why law firms should focus on professional SEO (search engine optimisation) instead.

SEO Offers A Much Greater Return On Investment

Although it will take longer to get results when you spend money on SEO instead of AdWords, you will thank yourself in the long term. Working to get your website to the top of the search engine rankings for your chosen keywords might cost you a bit, but you will be able to remain near the top with minimal work once you’re there.

This means that you will continually be getting new clients from your investment in SEO, while an investment in AdWords will only get you a predetermined number of clicks on your ad.

Read more

Your Financial Planner Can Be Beneficial To Your Health

Business & Legal Advice
Financial Planner

Ever heard of the phrase ‘Prevention Is Better Than The Cure’? It can apply to many things in business issues but none more so than your health. If you have money worries they can negatively affect your health, so you’ll most likely visit your doctor for treatment. Whilst they can prescribe all sorts of pills and potions to treat the symptoms, they can’t take away your financial woes. This is where a financial planner such as andep.com.au comes to the rescue, as they not only ‘cure’ many of your financial woes, they can prevent any further deterioration.

The negative impact on health caused by money worries is well documented. There are several physical, and psychological ailments that worrying about your finances can produce. Here are four of the most common.

Chronic Stress: Stress can be the catalyst to a whole catalogue of illnesses, and in recent years its impact on health has become more and more obvious. Stress can lead to eating disorders, heart conditions, respiratory conditions, upset digestive system and low immunity. Nothing will reduce your stress more than allowing a financial planner to assess your finances and create a sensible workable plan to get everything manageable for you.

Depression: Not being able to see any way out of the financial hole you are in can lead to serious depression. This can be magnified when you have children, for whom you feel unable to provide for properly. At its extreme, depression can bring suicidal thoughts so seeking help is essential. Instead of being depressed about money worries, a financial planner can give you hope that there is a way out the situation you are in.

Fatigue: Trying to cope with money worries can be draining, both physically and mentally. In addition, one of the ways you might have tried to improve matters could have been to take on a second job or work more hours. There is nothing wrong in this as such, but if they mean a significant lack of rest or sleep, added to worrying about money, your health can deteriorate. With the help of a financial planner to look at ways of reducing your outgoings so that the need to work so many hours is removed.

Read more

Workplace Harassment – Fundamentals and Beyond

Business & Legal Advice
Workplace Harassment

The past year has seen an explosion of harassment claims in the employment marketplace.  No business sector has been left untouched:  Hollywood, Las Vegas, Professional Sports, the Education Sector as well as well-established businesses have all seen high-profile, highly toxic revelations about misconduct in the workplace.  Commercial lawyers will tell you this is dangerous territory for a company, and building friendly connections between your employees and other staff through activities like those provided by Team Building Perth, can help build staff morale and stop the sexualisation of staff members by building healthy workplace relationships.

A few examples in popular culture stand out:

Hollywood: Hollywood, particularly the revelations about Harvey Weinstein has been the focal point for many of the claims.  Celebrity newscaster, journalists, movie makers, musicians and even chefs have all seen their share of upsetting revelations.  To name just a few: Matt Lauer, Ben Affleck, Dustin Hoffman, Geraldo Rivera, and Steven Segal, among many others.

Las Vegas:  The gaming industry has not been immune to its share of harassment claims, Steve Wynn, the CEO of Wynn Resorts and perhaps the most high profile figure in Las Vegas suddenly stepped down as Chairman and CEO after allegations surfaced chronicling a years-long pattern of abuse.

Sports:  The University of Arizona fired coach Rich Rodriguez after sexual misconduct allegations.

Automotive: Raj Nair – Ford’s president was ousted for unspecified inappropriate behavior.

Politics:  The number of offenders in this category are almost too numerous to mention, but a few names of those accused of misconduct are: Bill Clinton, Senator Al Franken and Judge Roy Moore.

Unfortunately, the phrase sexual harassment has been so co-opted into our modern vocabulary that it sometimes leads to erroneous idea of what “sexual harassment” actually is.  To clear things up, let’s go straight to the law, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964:

Read more

What Is A Farm Management Deposit And Should I Use One?

Business & Legal Advice
Farm Management Deposit

Regarding accounting and bookkeeping for small businesses, one of the hardest things to control is your profits and losses for the year. This is especially true for business owners like farmers or fishermen who can earn highly variable incomes.

Luckily, the Australian government has made a number of allowances for people who own businesses like this to make it easier for them to keep their business taxes in order. One of the more popular things that they have done is introduce something called a farm management deposit.

What is a farm management deposit?

According to the Australian Taxation Office (ATO), farm management deposits are designed to help primary producers deal with the effects of having a highly variable income. For example, in drought years, a farmer may make a complete loss, meaning that they don’t have any taxes to pay. However, in a good year, a farmer may make more than enough money, pushing themselves into the top tax bracket. In this case they would pay a lot more tax than would necessarily be fair.

Farm management deposits provide something of a compromise, and help primary producers pay something of a fairer amount of tax. Basically, on very good years, you can make a tax deductible farm management deposit, which will reduce your taxable income. You can then withdraw this deposit on a poorer year and pay tax on it then. Although the benefit of doing this may not seem obvious immediately, you will obviously pay less tax by keeping more of your income in the lower tax brackets.

What are the benefits of using a farm management deposit?

There are a lot of benefits associated with using farm management deposits. Some of these include:

  • Farm management deposits can help you minimise the amount of tax that you pay. This is obviously a good thing (unless you like paying tax!), especially if you are a primary producer who struggles to make a decent income.
  • They can help you spread your income evenly across every year. As a primary producer, it can be hard to get through drought years if you don’t have a decent financial buffer to fall back on. Farm management deposits can help you get through these tougher years.

Read more

3 Web Design Trends for 2018

Web Design
Web Design

Whether you’re experienced or a complete beginner in web design, a good-looking website is a crucial element of the online presence of many businesses. It is the one digital medium which is constantly seeing changes from one year to the next. With trends in web design shifting from one thing to another in almost a blink of an eye, it is important for businesses to keep their company’s web design up to date with the latest trends or they risk being left behind.

2017 saw many technological advancements impacting the digital realm, and with more and more traffic moving to mobile devices, it is only logical to point out that web design is now going to be more focused on making websites mobile-friendly. Here are some of the most notable changes in the trends for web design that will be important in 2018.

  1. Vibrant Colour Themes

One thing that is for sure going to be important 18 years into the new millennium is the excessive use of vibrant colours in the online realm. In the past, technology had not advanced enough or was not very accessible to everybody, so web design was limited to making use of colour schemes that would be easier to handle for devices across the board. That will no longer be the case in 2018.

Read more

5 Ways To Get The Best Results From Google Adwords

Web Marketing

Google has such a dominant position within the search engine arena that anyone who wants to use the internet to promote their business needs to know how to rank highly within its search results. The problem is that doing it the freeway via SEO can take months, with no guarantee that your website will ever get close to the first page. The second way is to use Google Adwords, which is quicker and sometimes instant but also costs money.

To make the most effective use of Google Adwords and to also get the monetary returns you want for your investment there are some basic criteria you need to follow. By following these 5 tips your ads will perform better, get more clicks and thereafter get more sales.

#1 Competition Research

There are businesses large and small who have lost thousands of dollars by setting up Adwords campaigns without proper research. The research should definitely cover your competition to see what sorts of ads they are posting. Never copy them but at least ’emulate’ what the top ads are doing.

Read more