Category: Legal Advice

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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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

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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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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Business Advice

9 Tips for Leasing a Corporate Property

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Leasing-a-Corporate-Property

If you want to lease a corporate property for your business it is wise to have property lawyers look it over to ensure it has no unfair clauses that will make life hard for you. Most such leases are in favour of the landlord and are written up by his or her lawyer. So it is imperative that when searching a lawyers list for a lawyer that the law firm that you choose studies the lease too. Meanwhile here are 9 tips for leasing corporate property.

  • Budget is a major concern with leases because it can be your biggest expense. While you have a budget for the lease, your landlord may be allowed to increase it, so watch for this; it should be written into the lease. The landlord may also want to charge you for part of the maintenance, repairs, upkeep and insurance. A gross lease may include these things, while with a net lease there will be a separate charge.

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Legal Advice

4 Essentials of Legal Business Contracts

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Business-contract

A contract is a legal agreement between two parties that can be enforced by a court of law. If you have a business you will need many different kinds of contracts. Even though many people just have verbal agreements with nothing written down these are difficult to prove in a court of law should some unforeseen problem require it. Commercial lawyers will tell you that a contract should be written by a lawyer and signed by each party.

Contracts can be simple and easy or more complex and difficult to understand, but all should have these 4 important points to be legally binding.

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Business Advice

The Importance of Having a Lawyer in Your Business

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Lawyer-in-Business

When you start a business you’ll find there are many legal parts that have to be complied with before the business can start operating. You will need to consult with lawyers to ensure everything is setup correctly. But you may not have realised that as the business goes forward you will be highly likely to still need the services of a Perth Lawyer from time to time.

For instance, you may decide to expand the business into another direction, take over another business and add it to your current one, or do any of the many options there are for making sure your business grows well. Even just drawing up contracts with new suppliers or clients is likely to need a lawyer to ensure everything goes according to plan.

Just like it is important with divorce proceedings to have highly experienced family lawyers that know you and your situation intimately, having lawyers that know you and your business and have been with you from the start will certainly facilitate matters.  You won’t have to explain any of the basic details to them because they will already be familiar with your business and what it does. So there will be a good saving in time and you can be sure your lawyers will get everything right without too much discussion.

By keeping your lawyers, you’ll be able to consult with them at short notice if any problems should arise in the business. In fact, having a lawyer on hand will be more likely to prevent any problems in the first place, which is even better.

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Business Advice

Conveyancing and Time Frame for Sale of Business

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Conveyancing

Just as when buying a house, if you buy a business there is conveyancing to be done if you are also buying the property the business is situated on. However, this is not always the case; in fact it is more likely that you will be purchasing a business – the rights, responsibilities and assets – and taking over the lease for the premises rather than buying an actual building or real estate. In either case it is essential to have a commercial lawyer look over all the contracts and ensure they are all in order.

When there is real estate such as land and buildings involved in buying the business it becomes a more complicated process because all the assets, rights and responsibilities are purchased along with the property. This means conveyancing is needed to transfer the land title into your name as well as the other components.

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