Why The Traits Of A Person In Addiction Recovery Can Make Them An Ideal Employee

Whenever a business owner is seeking new employees, in their mind there will several traits that they hope to find in a candidate. In most cases, it is unlikely that someone having drug rehab success on their CV is going to score them many plus points, however, that personal experience may just mean that they have a lot more to offer than many other candidates.

Let us face facts and point out that going through drug recovery is not a walk in the park by any means. Whilst each individual will face up to it and deal with their drug rehab in a different way, there are several common traits and behaviours which everyone going through drug recovery will show.

For successful drug rehabilitation, those traits will all be positive ones, and may well be exactly what a prospective employer is looking for. To give you a fuller understanding of these positive traits, here are some of the most significant ones.

Courage

For anyone with an addiction, be it an ice addiction, smoking, drinking, self-harm, or drugs, it takes a huge amount of courage, not only to admit that they have a problem, but to then commit to going through a program that will rehabilitate them. Whilst not many occupations will be one where someone’s life is at risk, having the courage to make decisions, to question erroneous instructions, and to put forward new ideas, can all make that employee a hugely valuable asset to the business.

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5 Indications That It Is Time To Look For A New Web Hosting Service

5 Indications That It Is Time To Look For A New Web Hosting Service

Loyalty to anything or anyone is a desirable trait, but in the world of business, whilst it has its place in many scenarios, it can only go so far. That is certainly the case when it comes to your web hosting provider, which might have given you and your website many years of excellent service but may  have recently dropped the ball as it were.

If there are a number of red flags being raised with regards to your website, and if the finger of blame can be pointed towards your web hosting provider, then the chances are that it might be time to consider moving to Slinky Web Hosting. If you are unsure what evidence to look for or what symptoms your website might be experiencing that indicate there are serious issues, here are the main ones and which tell you the time to move on is upon you.

Your Website’s Load Speed Becomes  Increasingly Slower

The fact that website load speed influences so many aspects of your website’s performance, and any slowing of that load speed, especially if it persists, is a serious cause for concern. Unless you can identify anything you have added to your website as being the cause of this slowing,  it is likely an issue with your hosting service. One reason could be them adding websites to the same shared server, and not expanding its capacity to allow for additional bandwidth being needed.

Your Website Is Offline More Than The Host’s Guarantee

Your website is of no use to you, your visitors, or your customers if it is not online. Apart from the frustration felt by all, the damage to your business’s reputation, its revenue, and critically, your website’s Google ranking, are all too high a price to pay for staying loyal to a web hosting provider who is letting you down. This issue can occur when a web host’s servers are unable to cope with demand, which can result from the fact they have not been updated or maintained properly.

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5 Essential Questions To Answer When Planning To Relocate Your Business

When the day comes for an office relocation to physically happen, and the removalists are loading up their vans to take a business to its new location, there will have been many prior steps that have taken place. Obviously, some of these will include packing everything safely, and advising other business associates, however, there are some elements of which require greater thought.

The one which looms largest is determining whether in fact relocating your business is the correct thing to do and whether it will help the business thrive or simply be an expensive and nonbeneficial exercise in merely changing its address. In order to make the correct choice, and to ensure an office relocation does indeed benefit your business here are 5 key questions you must answer as part of the decision-making process.

Is It Possible To Keep Disruption To Your Business To A Minimum During The Relocation?

Whilst any office or business relocation is going to cause some level of disruption, you do not want it to reach a level that causes some serious issues, not just for you, but also for your staff and your customers. Effective ways in which you can help minimise disruption are to plan everything well in advance, get your staff to contribute to that planning, and only employ professional removalists and even interstate removalists to carry out the relocation.

Will The New Office Location Be Better For Clients And Staff?

Whilst the decision to move your offices may have already been taken, when it comes to choosing the specific location, there are many things to consider. Near the top of that list should be whether any of the locations under consideration make it more or less convenient for employees, suppliers, and most importantly potential and existing clients to travel to. You should consider road networks, public transport, parking, and access, in answering this question.

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Developing A Mobile Website

Things To Keep In Mind When Developing A Mobile Website

Web development has advanced in leaps and bounds over the past few years. The rapid increase in the popularity of mobile devices and mobile browsers means that it’s important to make sure that your website is attractive and fully responsive on devices of all shapes and sizes.

Similarly you’re getting professional web designers, such as Slinky Web Design, to build a website that’s targeted primarily at those browsing via mobile devices, then you need to keep a few things in mind to make sure that you’re building the best website possible. Consider the following when developing a mobile website:

Make Sure That You’re Using A Responsive Design

Although most modern website templates and themes come with built-in mobile responsiveness, it’s extremely important to double and triple check this.

Basically, a mobile responsive design is one which includes CSS3 code that allows your website to adapt to different screen sizes. Responsive code contains ‘break points’ that tell your website to render differently according to the size of the screen that it’s being displayed on.

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Revamp Your Business Website – The Checklist

As the use of social media and eCommerce prevails, businesses have begun investing a lot of their time and energy in optimizing their online websites with features such as SEO services for maximum sales and visibility. But despite that, they couldn’t drive as much traffic as they wanted to. This is because you need to give your website a facelift and make it according to the requirements of today.

Revamping your website is an attention-oriented task. You need to pay heed to details in order to get all the things on your checklist to be included in the website. But before you proceed, let’s find out the important features that you must have on your checklist while you’re upgrading your site.

Is Your Business Name and Logo Attractive and Memorable?

Many business websites go for highly complicated business names, but it is not a good practice. The name of your business must be simple and understandable. It should make sense and relate to your business activities. Moreover, the business logo must be attractive and memorable at the same time. If you have a logo that appeals to your customers, it may force them to visit your website for once. But if it is memorable too, it will remain in their minds, insisting them to come to you again.

Is Navigation Simple?

In today’s busy lives, customers prefer sites which are simple and easy to navigate, a site where all options are easily accessible with quick browsing. People give up visiting sites which are messy, complex, and slow.

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Google Penalization: Is your Business Website Penalized?

If your business website is under penalty by Google, you will never be able to achieve good search engine rankings.

People who do not have much experience online are not familiar with Google penalization and how to avoid it. Google makes lots of changes every year to their algorithms to improve the quality of their search results. As a result of these changes some websites manage to get better rankings while others start losing traffic because their search engine ranking is negatively affected by these changes.

Google Penalties: What’s the Big Deal?

Like it or not, you must admit that you cannot achieve a lot of things without Google. It is no doubt the ruling king of the World Wide Web and is the best source of getting traffic. Getting your website on the top positions improves your odds of achieving success online. Knowing which Google update penalized you makes it a lot easier for you to take corrective action.

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Deciding How Often To Have Your Commercial Carpets Cleaned

Deciding How Often To Have Your Commercial Carpets Cleaned

If you own or manage a business, a commercial enterprise, or a service organisation, part of your role may include ensuring that the premises you are based in are maintained accordingly. That can cover many tasks and one of those is almost certainly going to be having clean carpets if there are carpeted areas within the building.

One of the decisions you will have to make is how often you want or need your carpets cleaned, especially if you use a professional office carpet cleaning company to do the work each time. The time between professional cleans will vary considerably depending on the type of business, how much foot flow walks on the carpets, the type of carpet, and the material the carpet is made from, will also influence that decision.

If determining the frequency of how often you get your carpets cleaned has been something you have been wrestling with, then we are going to try to give you some pointers as to how you can decide on the most appropriate schedule.

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SEO for Law Firm

Why Should You Be Focusing On SEO For Your Law Firm?

Marketing for lawyers and law firms can be expensive. Digital marketing is a great way to waste money if it isn’t done right, and it’s costly even if you do everything perfectly. This is due to the highly competitive nature of the modern law industry, which leads to firms that are willing to pay hundreds of dollars per click for the most in-demand keywords as pointed out in the pros & cons of using Adwords.

This means that Google Adwords simply isn’t an option for small law firms with a limited marketing budget. You won’t be able to drive enough high-converting visitors to your website using AdWords marketing to make it worth your time. Even if you can, there are better ways to spend your money.

SEO Offers Great Value

SEO Perth Experts and most law firm marketing experts will agree that search engine optimisation, or SEO, is a much better way to spend your money. Basically, SEO involves actions that can help improve your website’s organic search engine rankings for relevant keywords. For example, if you run a financial law firm in Melbourne, you might want to rank highly for a keyword like ‘Melbourne financial law’. If you can achieve the top spot on the search engine results page, you will find that you’re getting a lot of relevant visitors.

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Can A Child Choose Which Parent They Live With

Can A Child Choose Which Parent They Live With?

As part of any divorce where there are children, there will the decision, often made in court following submissions from respective family lawyers on behalf of their clients, as to which parent those children will live with.

In most cases, that is likely to be the mother, although there is never an assumption that it will be, which is not what most people believe to be the case. Most parents are somewhat shocked to discover that the courts do not automatically order that the children live with their mother.

Further to that, even if they do live with their mother, that is not to say that she has custody of the children. So, simply because the children live with her, the mother does not have the right to make all the major decisions relating to the children life and upbringing.

The reason for that is due to the Family Law Act, and the terms in it, which state that, when a couple divorce, they each have shared parental responsibility. That means that both of them must have an input into and agree to decisions relating to important matters of a child’s upbringing such their schooling and their health.

Obviously where the children live is also a major part of their lives, and for young children, the decision is one which is made for them, either by the parents agreeing, or with the court making a parental order.

However, children do not stay young forever, and there may come a time as they grow and mature that they want to live with their father, instead of their mother.

In Australian family law, there is not a stipulated age which a child can make that decision. In other words, the number of candles on a child’s birthday cake, does not determine whether or not they can choose which parent to live with.

This is another aspect of family law that many parents are unaware of, and many assume that when a child reaches a certain age, they can make that decision. Most believe it is 12 years of age, nothing in family law states that.

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Successful Office Relocation

5 Steps to a Successful Office Relocation

Most people do not like the upheaval and the planning needed for office relocations, even if the new location will be better for the business. It is a known fact that moving your office can be stressful and full of anxiety. But then again, moving to a new office can be done efficiently if certain steps are followed as you can see below.

Planning Is Everything

Once you’ve decided where you are going to relocate to, you need to have a robust plan in place. This needs to include everything from arranging internet service in your new offices, to who is going to look after and water the plants during the move.

Believe it or not it is normally the smallest of details that get forgotten about that cause the most grief during an office location. Just imagine the consternation when you arrive, start unpacking, and realise the office kettle has been left behind!

Communicate With All Relevant Parties

Office relocations are more successful if everyone it affects is aware of what is happening, and the only way that can happen is with great communication. Once you’ve assessed your needs and confirmed the relocation date, the next step is to alert anyone who should know, all the details.

More importantly, ask for their feedback and input with regards to how they can help make the disruption as minimal as possible, both for themselves, and for you and your team.

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Logo Trademarking – Some Legal Implications You Should Know

When starting a business, you need a clear digital marketing strategy and the selection of a unique name and logo for your business recognition is paramount. And then you need to take care of certain intellectual property rights for the protection of your logo. The type of intellectual property rights which are applicable to a logo is trademark.

A trademark is basically a symbol, word, design or a letter used by a company to distinguish its products and services from others. As the business progresses, trademark becomes your brand recognition and you need to secure it by getting trademark rights. A logo is a trademark with design to differentiate a company’s product among others.

Once you’ve selected a logo, the next step is to trademark it. This could become quite challenging if you do not consider the legal implications trademarking can lead to. Therefore, you must be well informed and aware of all the consequences.

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Office Needs Constant Monitoring

Five Reasons Your Office Needs Constant Monitoring

If you own or manage an office building or other commercial premises, the chances are that you’re already using a security system. This may include simple alarms, video surveillance or even higher-end monitoring systems.

However, most businesses don’t use any security alarm monitoring system. This can lead to all kinds of problems, as break-ins and vandalism are often discovered after they have occurred.

Installing an alarm monitoring system like the domestic equivalent – a home security system will protect you in real-time. Any intrusion will result in an instant notification to your phone or computer, and you will be able to deal with it fast and efficiently.

With this in mind, we’ve compiled the following list of the top five reasons why you should seriously consider installing an alarm monitoring system for your office – if you don’t already have one.

  1. Look After Your Business Assets

Installing some sort of alarm monitoring system will help secure your business assets. If your premises are monitored at all times, the chances of being broken into or vandalised drop dramatically.

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3 Strategies for Making New Team Members Feel Welcome

As a owner or manager of a business or have received professional business advice, you probably already understand how important building team work and the development of a cohesive workplace is. Unfortunately, integrating new team members into your team can be difficult, especially if your core group has been working together for some time.

Luckily, there are a few things you can do to make this integration process easier, whether it be organising a team building event at a venue such as ten-pin bowling, axe throwing, or an escape room; or providing help around the workplace during work hours. We’ve drawn on our experience and first hand knowledge to bring your three of our favourite strategies for making new team members feel welcome around the workplace. These include:

  1. Provide a Mentor

For us, the very first thing you should do is connect each new employee with a mentor who they can speak with when they have concerns and questions. Additionally, this will help your new employees integrate and become a part of your team, giving them personal and business advice.

When you’re choosing someone to become a mentor, consider the following:

  • Pick someone who is talkative and easy to get along with.
  • A good mentor is someone who has been with your business for sometime and knows common workplace processes inside out.
  • Try and pair new employees with mentors that you think they will get along with.

Ultimately, choosing a mentor for your new employees shouldn’t be too difficult, but it’s definitely worth putting some time and effort into.

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WordPress Blogger

How Can I Become A Better WordPress Blogger?

As one of the most popular content management systems in the world, WordPress is widely used by bloggers and amateur website designers & builders. It is easy to use, requires little coding or web development knowledge and its popularity means that there are thousands of online tutorials and guides available to beginners.

However, becoming a good WordPress blogger isn’t as easy as simply starting a well designed blog. Not everyone has the skills or know-how to write high quality blog articles, but the good news is that you can learn if you’re willing to put a bit of time and effort in.

Consider the following tips to help you improve your WordPress blogging skills:

  1. Put Time Into Your Headlines

The title or headline of a blog is the first thing that people read. If you can create high quality headlines that draw people in and encourage them to click on and start reading your pieces, you will find your audience increasing exponentially. Try and use catchy words, ‘clickbaity’ phrases and things that you think will appeal to your target audience.

  1. Use High Quality Images!

As the old saying goes, “an image is worth 1000 words”. If you’re serious about creating a top of the range WordPress blog or any well done web design that people actually want to read, then you need to learn how to use images effectively.

If you’re writing about a particular web topic, then consider using screenshot/screen grabs. Alternatively, take your own photos to complement your blog content or source pictures from a stock photo site online.

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Best Plugins for WordPress

What are The Best Plugins for WordPress?

As the world’s most popular content management system, WordPress comes with a huge range of additional features that web developers of all experience levels can make use of. One of the most useful features is the ability to quickly and easily install plugins on your site.

Although plugins can be extremely useful when used correctly, they can come with their own set of problems. They can slow your website down and impact the user experience, which means that it’s important to make sure that you choose your plugins carefully.

With this in mind, we’ve put together a list of our favourite WordPress plugins for the average website owner. Consider installing the following on your site:

Yoast SEO

Advice from experienced professional Perth SEO company Oxygen Marketing says that SEO, or search engine optimisation, can be a difficult and tedious task for the average web developer. A lot of amateur web developers don’t have a lot of SEO knowledge or experience, which makes a plugin like Yoast SEO extremely valuable.

Basically, Yoast SEO is installed on your WordPress dashboard, allowing you to make sure that you get the most out of every single post that you add to your site. It looks at things like keyword use, meta tags and meta descriptions. It also analyses the readability of written content to make sure that it’s well written and likely to resonate with your website visitors.

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Social Media Marketing Expert

3 Reasons Why You Should Employ A Social Media Marketing Expert

Social media is an essential component of a complete digital marketing plan. Social media for removalist businesses can drive business, increasing brand visibility and helping you remain competitive in the modern world of business.

However, maintaining a strong social media presence can be difficult. Most removalists have busy working lives, which means that they simply don’t have time to update their social profiles and engage with their followers. Employing a social media marketing expert can help reduce your workload and make sure that you’re getting the most out of your social media use.

With this in mind, our business advice friends at QWIN have put together a quick list of their top 3 reasons why you should employ a social media marketing expert for your removalist business. They include:

  1. A Professional Will Do Things Right

Social media marketing can be difficult. Paid marketing is very hard to master, and simply maintaining a strong presence on your business profiles can be difficult. If you want to see positive results from your social media marketing, you should employ an experienced expert who will do things right the first time.

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Well-Maintained Car

5 Reasons Why A Well-Maintained Car Is Essential For Your Business

Many businesses throughout the world rely on their vehicles in some way. Some businesses, like taxi companies or trucking lines, are built around vehicles, while others use them in more subtle manners. However, the truth is that almost every business relies on some sort of vehicle in some way.

If you want your business to run smoothly, your vehicles need to run smoothly. For example, a regular Mercedes Benz service is a must if you use luxury vehicles, otherwise there will be a much higher chance of them breaking down unexpectedly.

Here is a list of their top 5 reasons why a well maintained car is essential for your business. They include:

  1. Time Is Money

I’m sure you’ve heard someone say this before. It’s true, time is money. There’s nothing worse than having your car break down while you’re in the middle of a delivery or on the way to an important meeting. Keeping your company cars well maintained will help you make the most of your time.

  1. Unreliable Service Can Turn Clients Off

If you want to become known as a leader in your field – no matter what that field is – you need to be reliable. Having your car breakdown or make funny noises when you’re on the way to meet a client or drop something off is not a good indicator of reliability. Make sure that you service your company vehicles regularly, otherwise potential clients will likely take their business elsewhere.

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Law Firm Ranking Factors

Major Law Firm Ranking Factors To Consider

Search engine optimisation (SEO) best practices vary according to industry and the type of website you have. This means that as family or divorce lawyers, there are a few major SEO ranking factors that you have to consider above all else.

SEO Sydney Pro recommend spending a significant amount of time and effort improving your organic search engine rankings through SEO best practices. Sure, you might not get the same short term returns as if you spent your money on AdWords or other forms of search engine marketing, but you will find that the long term rewards are a lot higher.

Google uses over 200 different factors when ranking websites for different keywords. Some of the most important SEO ranking factors to consider for law firm websites include:

Backlinks

Backlinks have long been the key to achieving high organic search engine rankings. Although they probably aren’t as important as they have been in the past, they are still a vital indicator of how much authority your website has.

Basically, Google looks at how many and what sort of websites are linking back to your site. The idea is that if people are linking to your content, it must be correct and worth reading. If a lot of other high authority sites are linking to you, your website must be pretty good, right?

It’s worth investing time and money in link building.

Business Detail Citations

When you go to websites like Yelp, the Yellow Pages, Slinky Directory or any other online directory, businesses are listed with details like their address, their phone number and their other contact details. Google looks closely at these when ranking your website, especially when it comes to local (geographically defined) search engine results. Make sure that you’re listed in as many online directories as possible, and make sure that your details are correct throughout.

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Modern Responsive Website

Why Is It Important To Have A Modern Responsive Website For My Law Firm?

As a law firm, it is extremely important to build a strong online presence. Doing so will help you gain more exposure, and in turn should lead more clients through your doors. Unfortunately, a lot of lawyers underestimate the importance of having a modern, responsive website design for their website. Instead, they are working with sites that are old, outdated, and which were poorly designed to begin with. This is absolutely not good enough.

If you want to be successful as a law firm, you need to build the best website that you possible can. Make sure that it is responsive on all platforms (computer, mobile and tablet), and make sure that it looks great. Some of the reasons why a responsive modern website is essential to your law firm include:

A Responsive Site Will Encourage Visitor Engagement

In the modern world, a lot of people browse the internet from the comfort of their smartphones or tablets. However, these are significantly smaller than traditional computers, which means that websites behave differently on them.

In the past, people browsing on their mobile would have had to zoom in to read things, would have scrolled horizontally to discover all of content of a page, and probably would have ended up missing things anyway. However, this isn’t good enough anymore. If someone opens a webpage on their mobile which isn’t compatible with a mobile browser, they will simply leave. This will reduce the number of visitors engaging with your site, and will therefore impact the success of your online marketing.

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Sexual Harassment

Business Advice: Sexual Harassment Complaints – Take It Step By Step

Sexual harassment in the work place is a topic discussed in every board room and by the lawyers that represent them.  The last year has soon an explosion of information about workplace misbehavior and untold stories of abuse and exploitation.  It’s important to take a step back and examine some of the rules and considerations when addressing an allegation of sexual harassment in the work environment.

First, only employers of a certain size are covered by these guidelines.  It’s important to check in your jurisdiction to understand exactly what the requirements are.

Secondly, not all employees are covered under most harassment laws.  For example, unpaid interns and independent contractors do not qualify.

There are also caps on damages that can be recovered in these types of cases, both for compensatory damages (damages designed to compensate a person for harm or distress) and punitive damages (damages designed to “punish” someone who’s done something wrong).

Other remedies may also be available which need to be “exhausted” (ie; tried before moving to litigation).  And deadlines for filing a case are also an important consideration.

According to legal experts, sexual discrimination can take the form of a “hostile work environment”, created by severe or pervasive sexual harassment or it can involve a “quid pro quo” where sexual favors are required in exchange for some other work benefit (such as a promotion).  This includes both same-sex harassment and opposite-sex harassment.  LGBTQ individuals are protected under these guidelines who are discriminated against based on their sexual orientation.

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