Business Marketing

Onsite and Off Site SEO Factors for Your Website

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SEO-Factors

on-site-and-off-site-seo

There are many different elements to digital marketing and especially search engine optimisation (SEO) and each of them is important. Many people concentrate on on-page SEO without realising that it is not as crucial as many off-site elements. This could be because it is easier to ensure keywords are in the right places and that there are internal links. A clear call to action, relevant graphics, a nice header, and so on are all excellent and necessary, but if you ignore off-page SEO, don’t expect the website to perform as well as it should.

Most people know what on-page SEO is, so what is off-page SEO, and how can it benefit your website if it is not on the pages? On-page SEO refers to such things as –

  • The quantity and quality of the links you have to and from your website
  • Traffic and user signals
  • Social media metrics
  • The mention of your brand name and domain name on other sites

Some of these link back to having something on your website, e.g., social media sharing buttons, but most activity is done offsite. For instance, while you have social media buttons on your website and someone clicks one of them to share your information to say, Facebook, the benefits to your website then come from the resulting Facebook activity.

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Business Advice

Why Is WordPress The Best Choice For Online Store Owners?

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There are many different eCommerce platforms that let you build your own online store. Each of these comes with its own pros and cons, but some platforms seem to stand out above the rest. For example, Shopify has grown to become an industry giant by focusing on ease of use and beginner friendly solutions.

However, what you probably don’t know is that at least as many online stores are built with WordPress. Because of it open source nature and the huge number of plugins available, WordPress is actually an online entrepreneurs dream. Here’s why:

WordPress lets you build personalized online stores

One of the best things about the WordPress content management system (CMS) is that it’s super customizable. If you want to build an online store that really stands out from the crowd, WordPress is your best choice.

If you have web development skills or access to a developer then WordPress becomes even more versatile. Simply modifying a few lines of code can help you make small design changes so that you can build the best store possible.

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Business Marketing

The Basics of Search Engine Optimisation

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SEO-basics

Search Engine Optimisation or SEO as it is mostly referred to, plays a big part in the success of any business website. It is basically a way of ensuring your website pops up on the search page results for a certain keyword – one that is relevant to your products or services. The very first thing to do is choose which relevant keywords attract a lot of searches but are not too costly for your marketing budget.

Techniques for using the chosen keywords should only those that are approved by the search engines. They can now pick up keyword stuffing –improper use of keywords – and will ignore the page it is used on. Most genuine business websites avoid doing anything that gets them a black mark on Google, since that’s the main search engine.

If you write quality content that makes proper use of keywords and provides valuable information to visitors about your product or services, the search engines will look on your website with favour. That doesn’t mean you can’t use certain aspects of SEO to increase the visibility of each page. For instance, the keyword should be used in the page title, the URL, the headline and where an image is used – and it should be – in the file name, image title and alt attribute. Keywords should also be in the meta descriptions.

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Business Advice

5 Steps For Employers To Support Employees With Drug Addictions

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5 Steps For Employers To Support Employees With Drug Addictions

When it comes to considering an employee who has a drug addiction, such as an ice addiction, and may require drug rehab, what kind of employer are you? Are you the kind who would dismiss them immediately without a second thought, or do you take the approach that an employee with a drug addiction deserves your support?

With the caveat that we are aware that there are some employment situations where drug addiction creates huge safety risks for others (e.g. airline pilot, surgeon) we hope that most employers would take the latter of those two approaches. Yes, discovering one of your employees has a drug problem can be a shock, but hopefully, that shock will soon be superseded by concern for the individual.

Anyone reading this who believes they would be supportive, but who may be in a new business, or run a business with no documented drug policy, then we appreciate there may be questions as to how you can facilitate that support. For that reason, we are going to outline five highly effective steps that employers can take to support employees with drug problems and addictions.

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Business Marketing

How To Boost The Online Branding Of Your Removalists Business Using Storytelling

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How To Boost The Online Branding Of Your Removalists Business Using Storytelling

For as long as the human race has been able to communicate with each other, storytelling has played a huge role in your lives, in all sorts of ways. That includes within the world of business, and as such, it can be the case that your removalists business can benefit if you introduce storytelling to your marketing and as a means to enhance your brand whether you’re a plumber, removalist or kitchen renovator.

When we use the term storytelling, we are not suggesting you sit down and write a novel., nor are we expecting you to become removalists’ answer to James Patterson. Instead, we want you to consider how you can weave, short and simple stories into all of the places online where you publish content. This includes your website, your blog, any social media you use, and your marketing and advertising.

One of the first reasons why storytelling is such an effective team of promoting anything, including your brand, is that it can be used to spark emotions within those who read them. Bear in mind, people make decisions based on the emotions they are feeling, and it is only later that they use logic to justify their decision. So, if your stories generate the desired emotion in visitors to your website and prospective clients, you have a better chance of them becoming actual clients.

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Business Advice

4 Tips For Choosing The Right Office Removals Company

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If you are a business owner or manager and have the task of organising an office relocation, then one of the most important decisions you will have to make in order to ensure the move is a success, is which removalist company you are going to use. No matter how well you plan everything, and how much support you have from your staff, if you choose sub-standard, unprofessional removalists, you are in danger of the whole moving day being a disaster.

Whilst that might sound scary, let us reassure you that on the flip side of the coin if you choose a professional and experienced removalist company like www.brillianceremovalistsperth.com.au, not only will the move day be a complete success, but you and your staff might actually enjoy it and in the future, look back on the day with fondness.

Now, in order to get to that happy scenario, you must first choose the correct removalists for the job, and so we are going to lay out some simple tips as to how you get the decision right. Here are those 4 top tips:

Tip #1: Be Planning Before You Start Looking

This might seem a strange tip as what we are suggesting here is that you do not start looking for removalists right away. We say that because, in order to select the most effective removalists, you should first know as much about your office relocation as possible.

By planning, you will know what type of building you are moving to, the distance between locations, what equipment you are moving, and what is being scrapped, and so on. Knowing all this will help you shortlist those removalists companies most suited to the specific needs of your office relocation.

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Business Marketing

How Social Media Can Play A Key Role In Marketing A Dental Practice

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How Social Media Can Play A Key Role In Marketing A Dental Practice

It is a fact of the world we live in, that social media is here to stay, and whether you are a fan of it or not, you could be using social media to enhance the revenue of your dental practice. If you choose not to, you are putting yourself at a huge disadvantage to other dentists who have had the foresight to embrace social media.

One reason you may be reluctant to use social media is that it can seem pretty confusing to those who have never used it before, especially for business purposes. For a start, there seems like an endless number of different social media platforms, and the thought of joining up to every single one of them might not be something that appeals to you.

Let us put that one to bed and tell you that there is no need for you to join them all, for the simple reason that not all social media platforms are going to be the type that a dental practice is going to benefit from. Second, if you are operating locally, rather than nationally, then the numbers of potential clients you have is going to limited, and therefore, there is little to be gained by joining them all.

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Branding

Why Top 10 on Google Matters

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Why Top 10 on Google Matters

Good quality search engine optimisation is hard, and digital agency will tell you that. Harder than, for example, just throwing dollars at the problem and paying for a bunch of Facebook or Google ads. But for those who get it right and follow SEO trends, there are big rewards. On the flip side, for those who get it wrong, there are big penalties.

Consider these statistics.

Stats That Matter

According to research conducted by one of the largest web services companies, a staggering 8 out of 10 web browsers never go past ‘page 1’ of the search results they see on Google. That means only 2 out of 10 make it past that point.

All of a sudden, it becomes fairly obvious why being ranked highly on that first page is not just a ‘nice to have’ but a ‘must have’ if you want to be competitive in your niche or local area.

So what are the best ways to do this?

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Web Design

Web Design – Latest Trends

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Web-Design-Latest-Trends

There are always latest trends in website design to consider; the only thing to take care with is that you don’t get caught up in unimportant changes to your website that cost a lot and don’t return much.  While you don’t want your website design to be old-fashioned, sometimes it does give a website business a look of stability that can be good for business.

For instance, if your website was to advertise your presence as a lawyer, you would not want it to have a trendy, insouciant look, but rather something that appeared really solid and trustworthy, as your clientele would be looking for that kind of thing. So it’s important to only choose the latest trends that are appropriate.

Since 84% of people use their mobile phones to go on the Internet, you’d want to be sure your website was responsive – suitable for viewing on such a small screen. This can be a good thing, because it makes you think seriously about how to get your message across in the fewest words – always a good thing. If you waffle on about unimportant matters your visitors will soon click off your website.

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Business Advice

What Team Building Strategies Can We Use?

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Although there are numerous things that you can do to improve your business’s success, one of the best is to encourage a cohesive workplace. And luckily, there are numerous team building strategies that you can use to achieve this.

Some strategies are simple where a venue will do all the organising and arrange a fun event like Axe Throwing Sydney for example or sporting days out of the office. These can require very little effort on your part. However, others are significantly more difficult, especially if you run a small company without a lot of resources.

With this in mind, we’ve put together a short list of our favourite team building strategies. These include:

Encourage Diversity

First up, we’d recommend encouraging diversity within your team. No successful team is composed of people with the same personality or skills, and confining people to a certain stereotype will almost certainly harm your business.

There are a few ways to encourage diversity. For starters, make sure that you have a zero tolerance policy to racism, sexism and religious discrimination. Everyone should feel welcome and comfortable within the workplace, regardless of their personal beliefs.

Build Effective Communication Channels

Additionally, you need to make sure that your team is communicating effectively. As the team leader, it’s up to you to build effective communication channels and ensure their use.

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Business Marketing

Why Is Good Quality Content Key To Your SEO Efforts?

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Quality Content

Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO, is one of the best online marketing streams for lawyers and law firms. It is very effective, relatively inexpensive when compared to things like Google AdWords, and relatively straightforward. In fact, anyone with a little bit of internet knowledge and access to a website’s content management system can work on the site’s SEO.

One of the major SEO considerations for website owners is content. High-quality content generally translates to high search engine rankings for multiple keywords. But why is good quality content so important for SEO, and why should you think carefully about what things you post on your law firm website?

Content Should Be A Key Aspect Of Every SEO Strategy

And, as everyone knows, high-quality content is much more readable, much more likely to engage an audience, and really, just generally better than poorer-quality content. Before we continue, it’s important to realise that content is more than just text – in fact, pretty much anything you include on your website can be thought of as content. This extends to images, videos, interactive displays, and more.

Every SEO strategy should include content, as content tells search engine crawler bots what your website is about. When a page includes keywords, it can be ranked for those keywords. I would argue that this is one of the, if not the most important, factors when it comes to your website’s SEO ranking.

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Business Marketing

Using Facebook To Boost Your eCommerce Store

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Facebook Ads

eCommerce is becoming more and more popular in the modern world. Less and less people are buying things from traditional stores, and are instead turning to online shopping when they need new things. This is extremely true for things like gifts and personalised items, which means that heavily targeted advertising – using something like social media marketing (SMM) – is essential for any up and coming eCommerce stores.

SMM is generally quite simple and cost effective when done right, which means that it has the potential for a large return on investment. There are a lot of ways that you can use Facebook marketing to boost your eCommerce store, including:

Using Highly Targeted Ads:

If you sell niche products which are usually only attractive to a certain subgroup of people, then Facebook advertising could be perfect for you. Facebook allows you to deliver highly targeted ads to people who have the most chance of purchasing your products. Some of the things that you can target your Facebook ads by include:

  • Age
  • Gender
  • Physical location, all the way down to the city or town level.
  • Interests, which are determined by a person’s Facebook activity and actions.

If you target your ads right, your conversion rate has the potential to be extremely high, which means that you will be generating more income and your business will be more profitable.

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Web Design

Using Good Copywriting To Transform Your Ecommerce Business

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Ecommerce Business

If you have an eCommerce business the success of any and indeed all your products depends on many factors. The demand for your product, its quality, your competition and even the overall economic landscape at the time. So why is it that some eCommerce businesses succeed even when the cards seem stacked against them?

The answer in a lot of cases is the quality of their copywriting and in particular, that used to sell their products on their eCommerce site. Great copywriting can transform the sales performance of a product and in a wider context that of an entire company.

There have been millions of words written and spoken about what good copywriting looks like and still most business people fail to understand it. In reality, the definition of copywriting is very simple…it is the use of words to cause an action to be taken by another person. That’s it.

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Business Marketing

The Importance of Software for a Transport Company

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Transport Company

When you have a transport company, it is important to have to right software. While not everyone has computer skills, the correct software can help you keep track of the freight you move around from day to day, know where all your vehicles are at any given time, help you work out payroll details such as hours worked and holiday pay due and many other things that are essential to running a business.

Without such software it will take far longer to work out all the various details you need to know about and there is also the risk of making mistakes that can take hours of backtracking to find. With software, mistakes are rarely made because once the correct details are put in, everything else is done automatically.

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Business Marketing

Why a Business Plan is an Essential Part of Your Business Expansion

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Business-Plan

As any financial planner would tell you, a business plan is an essential part of any business. Good  financial planning shows investors that you are serious about your business plans, ensures investors can actually understand your plans and goals for your business and show them – and you – what the predicted profits will be. A financial advisor such as andep.com.au can create the business plan you need in order to generate interest from lenders or angel investors so you can start up your business.

But that is not the only thing they do. Many business owners have future plans and goals to expand their business. They may intend to use the profits from the business to do this, but they may not realise that is not always possible. It is not wise to use up all your profits on expansion, because it might run you short of emergency funds, or worse still, the funds you need to pay suppliers, rent, insurance and all the many other costs of running the business.

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Legal Advice

Bodies that Regulate Planning and Development

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Development-Assessment-Panel

If you are planning on any kind of property development in WA or any other Australian state, you will need to consult with property lawyers to ensure you are allowed to do what you want to achieve your end goals. In WA, there are four main bodies that regulate and control planning and development. This ensures that land use is properly regulated and no one is able to for example, build a factory in a residential area, or for that matter develop a residential area in land zoned for industrial purposes.

Who are these bodies?

  1. The Western Australian Planning Commission (WAPC): this body is responsible for controlling the planning and development of land regulated by regional planning schemes. In some cases it can delegate this responsibility to the local authority.
  2. The Minister for Planning and Infrastructure: the Minister can direct or authorise any changes, repeals or consolidations in state planning policies, or local planning schemes by the WAPC.
  3. Development Assessment Panels (DAP): These bodies for the approvals of certain developments that meet specific requirements and criteria such as type and value thresholds. There are local DAPs for individual local authority areas that determine what application developments are allowed. In addition, there can be joint DAPs where the local authorities overlap.
  4. Local authorities: these are responsible for local planning and development approvals that fall within the local planning scheme area of local authorities. In some cases, local authorities may need to send a development plan to other bodies such as the Department of Parks and Wildlife, the Department of Environment Regulation, The Department of Water or The WAPC, depending on what the development is and what area it is in.

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Business Advice

Dress Sense and Your Dream Job

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Dress-Sense

What does dress sense have to do with your dream job? When you are just starting out on the corporate climb it is essential to dress in an appropriate manner. Even before your toe is in the door it’s important that you establish the dress code for your particular industry and ensure you stay up to scratch with it at all times. Some women go to the extreme of having botox treatment – otherwise known as wrinkle relaxers, to ensure they don’t get wrinkles; others make sure they have the right kind of dress sense.

You can’t always help having a wrinkle or two, but you can help not dressing for the job, so of the two, the latter might be the most important, especially when you are young. When you’ve studied and trained for years to get into the business or career of your dreams, it seems a shame to spoil your chances simply because you turned up for that first interview looking like something the cat dragged in.

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Business Marketing

How to Get Your New Business Online ASAP

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Get-Your-New-Business-Online

Business is not conducted in the same way today as it was even just a few years ago. If your business doesn’t have an online presence, potential clients will want to know why and may even consider that you are not a true professional if you don’t have a website. That is one important reason why it’s essential to seek help from a digital agency such as Slinky and get your new business online as soon as possible; there are many others.

  • With a website you can establish communication with clients who are not in your local area, so you have the potential to establish a far more comprehensive customer base.
  • People use a website as a telephone or business directory to find you, and they prefer it because they can get more information about your services without having to speak to a possibly pushy salesperson. Then when and if they do decide to contact you, it is easy to do so.

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News

Live More & Work Less

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Four-Hour-Work-Week

When I think about things that would help me to build our business the first thing that comes to mind is not working less! However, that’s the premise behind the book, The Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris. I must admit when I first heard about this book I was a bit skeptical. First of all, why would anyone want to work just four hours a week? And if they did, how on earth could it be done without making life even more stressful? Bill are bills. No matter how many hours are worked we still need to make the money to pay our bills!

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Branding

4 Basics of Great Logo Design

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Great-Logo-Design

Having a logo for your business is something that is essential to help you with branding and marketing. Every large business has a great logo that people recognise wherever it is seen; small and medium businesses should do no less. Not only does it make your business distinctive, it can often tell people at a glance what it is all about.

Great logo design has four essential basics –

  • Simplicity: The most widely known logos are simple ones that have bold lines, flat shapes and clear type.  Having lots of elements is a mistake many enthusiasts make as they want to cram as much as possible into the logo. However, all they do is confuse people because there is too much information – and that also makes it difficult to see. Apart from that, when the logo must be reduced in size, none of it will stand out clearly.

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Business Advice

Why Shareholder Disputes Should be Settled Quickly

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Shareholder-Disputes

Running a business brings with it a lot of responsibilities and hard work and sometimes things go wrong.  Often disputes arise between the directors and shareholders or between the shareholders themselves that can only be settled by consulting commercial lawyers. Commercial Lawyers Perth advise that it is important to try and settle the dispute outside of court because the judge has the power to wind up the business completely if they think this is the only way to settle the dispute.

Consider the case of two or more friends who started a business together and didn’t even think about drafting up an agreement about what would happen if one partner wanted out, or what would happen if one stopped pulling their weight. Often the problem may have been allowed to go on for months or years until bad feeling becomes set like cement and the two cannot work together any more.

The best way to settle disputes is to tackle them when they first arise, rather than letting them get out of hand. Dispute negotiation and good communication between those involved can often resolve the matter. If it does not, mediation with neutral third party to calm tempers and see that justice is done can sometimes bring agreement. When this, too, fails it is time for judicial arbitration. Unfortunately, at this stage the parties have to comply with the judgement passed down, even if it is to wind up the business.

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Web Design

Why Good Web Design is Essential for Your Business

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Good-Web-Design

When you decide to get that business website up and running, there are many things to consider and one of them is whether you should try and do it yourself, or hire a professional web designer. If you don’t know too much about business web design, it’s far better to have your website designed and built by someone who knows what they are doing. It’s a bit like having a house built; you wouldn’t choose to DIY if you had no training or experience in building.

For a start, many studies have shown that website visitors only spend a few seconds on a web page so if your message is not able to tell them what you have to offer in that time, they will leave and you will have lost a potential customer. So the first two sentences on the page are the most important to grab your visitor, but it’s not only the text that is important, graphics play a big part in creating interest for the website visitor.

Visuals have to be both top quality and relevant to your business, but they shouldn’t cause your page to load slowly. No one wants to wait around while in cyber space. Besides, a slow loading page is immediately taking away from those precious seconds you have to engage your reader.

Website designers have access to many good graphics that most people don’t see even if they hunt specifically for the right image – and do you know what the ‘right’ image would be for your website? It’s important to get something that is aesthetically pleasing, catches the eye and complements the text. It is also important for the header image to do the same, not only those that are inserted further down the page. (more…)

Business Marketing

7 Email Marketing Tips for Small Business

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Email-Marketing-Tips

Marketing for an online business differs somewhat than for a business that has a street presence. Your web store cannot be seen when people go shopping in the CDB, but it may well show up when they shop online. Part of the marketing is in harvesting their email addresses so that you can establish a relationship with them.

Many businesses get email addresses simply by giving their customers the option of creating an account. In return, the consumer finds it easier to purchase what they want, especially the next time they shop there. The business can then send out marketing emails over the next few years or until/if they unsubscribe.

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Business Marketing

10 Reasons to Use Adwords

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Online Business

Adwords marketing is a good way to ensure your goods are placed right in front of eyes that are likely to be looking for them, which is why so many people favour using them. If you have an online business, you will need some kind of marketing to ensure you actually sell what you have to offer.

Remember, you can’t depend on foot traffic going past your shop to sell your goods. Rather, you have to think of web surfers as your foot traffic and adwords as the arrow pointing to your landing page.

Here are 10 good reasons to use adwords:

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Legal Advice

10 Steps to Avoid Litigation in Your Business

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Avoid-Litigation

The last thing anyone expects when they start up a business is that one day they will have to deal with litigation. But commercial lawyers will all tell you that such a problem is more likely than you may think and should be prepared for well in advance. Taking out insurance to pay for it will at least help to save the business if it does happen. However, no amount of money will prevent the stress and trauma, or restore the reputation of the company.

So how can you prevent it from happening in the first place? Here are 10 steps to take that will help you avoid your business being sued.

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