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As web-builders, designers, hosts and marketers are aware, Search Engine Optimization is one tricky little bastard to figure out. Countless hours of keywords, campaigns, meta-tag-this, meta-tag-that, robots, algorithms and adding your site to the search engines can be taxing, both on your fingers and on your brain. The most frustrating thing is that your SEO job is never fully complete. There are sites, books and blogs dedicated strictly to SEO, and while all of them may be useful to you in some way or another, there are so many different approaches to SEO that none can truly be considered 100% correct.

A quote I saw on SEO Articles sums it up nicely: “Tools are only as effective as the expertise of the person using them.” In order to productively use SEO to your advantage, you must seek out the best ways to use SEO for your particular business or company, then pick and choose the right ways to get your information out on the web, through links, searches, blogs and more. Hours and hours of research are required to achieve this, and anyone who thinks throwing a couple of keywords onto their site will garner them a #1 ranking on Google is absolutely out of their mind.

This especially applies to businesses that may not know exactly how SEO works, or do not have someone within their staff who can show them the way. It takes months, and sometimes years, for your SEO work to pay off. If you sell jewelry online, you are not going to get top placement on a Google search by putting “Jewelry” as one of your keywords, as your company is potentially competing with thousands and thousands of jewelry shops around the globe.

“Search Engine Optimization (SEO): An Hour A Day” gives great insight to the ins-and-outs of the virtual search world, using How-To techniques, examples of what you DO NOT want to do, how the search engines actually gather information, and the amount of time and (more importantly) patience it takes to build a solid SEO campaign. Search Engine Optimization is like the web itself: constantly growing, evolving and creating anew. If you are ever truly convinced your the campaign for your site if finished, you have not followed the rules of SEO very closely.

In saying that, not all super-intense SEO applies to every website out there. You may have found a perfect niche for your business, or are selling such unique products that you have no other competition in your field. While that is all well and good, you still want to push yourself to attract more customers, and get your name and innovative thinking out there, right? That’s where all the different levels and varying degrees of SEO are so specific for your particular type of business model. Some things that work great for one company may have the exact opposite effect on another’s SEO strategy. In the end, it all comes down to what you need for what you do.

If the need for SEO for your business concerns you, High Ranking’s SEO articles are a great resource for getting you moving in the right direction, or try Webconfs.com for some great insights, as well how to promote yourself and analyze your competition. The books and links mentioned here may get you started on your way to a successful SEO campaign and strategy, but in the long run, it is up to you how much effort you want to apply to SEO, and how much you can make it work for you.

As we get closer and closer to Apple’s announcements about the new MacBook Pros they’re going to unleash on us this year, speculation is at an all-time high. Rumors are flying around rampant on the interweb, with topics ranging from “retina displays” to new, better graphics to faster processors to the death of both the optical AND hard drive. Thought these rumors all have validity, which ones will come to fruition? And which ones will Apple make us wait another year for?

The display rumors seem to be at the top of everyone’s list, as they are expected to DOUBLE the pixels, at least on the 15″ MBP. That said, the new displays would be 2880 x 1800 pixels, which would be an incredible resolution, better than the quality of Blu-Ray. There has been no confirmation as of yet that these are going to be the new displays, but that would be an unparalleled computer viewing screen, and one that would have competitors scrambling to produce something comparable.

Another rather major rumor circulating is that Apple may be getting rid of the traditional optical drive. Now, while the majority of apps and software has gone the way of the download, there are still CDs and DVDs (last time I checked) that would require an optical drive. While these have been virtually included on most computers for the past 15+ years, suddenly they are obsolete in the eyes of Apple? They already have done away with the optical drive on the Mac Mini, which I had to learn the hard way. My rather expensive Abode Creative Suite CS4 came on discs, and not knowing about the lack of optical drive, I was forced to borrow another Mac and transfer the files over Wi-Fi, which was time-consuming and unexpected. Lots of people I know actually still buy CDs, and what are they to do when they want to add their newest gem to the iTunes music library?

Solid State Drives. They’re incredible, no doubt, but how much cost will this tack onto an already expensive machine? As it is right now, as expensive as SSDs are, you would need to have at least one external hard drive (probably 2 or 3, depending on how much storage you need) just to keep your music and pictures on. At $600 for a 500GB SSD, external solutions are definitely the cost-effective way to go. And there are still users who do not trust the reliability of SSDs yet, as they are rather new, and haven’t been truly time-tested just yet. Hopefully, the consumer will have a choice as to how big the SSD that ships with their new Mac is, and maybe still have the choice to stick with a regular hard drive instead.

These rumors, as well as others, are exciting and frightening at the same time. We love when Apple releases its newest technology on us, let’s just hope the prices don’t continue to climb too high…