Back in the day, consumers relied on newspapers and/or the yellow pages to gain information and/or to select a contractor or business. With the birth of the Internet, it is clear that most people now rely on their favorite search engine to assist them in researching and selecting their contractors or company to do business with. Many of us have become so accustomed to using search engines, that it is really hard to believe that search engines did not even exist until about 1990.

Before getting into the nuts and bolts of what SEO is all about, it is important to understand the basic mechanics behind search engines.  What is a search engine? A web search engine is designed to search for information on the World Wide Web, in which results are generally presented in a line of results often referred to as "search engine results pages (SERP's)". Unlike web directories, which are maintained only by human editors, search engines also maintain real-time information by running an algorithm on a web crawler. One of the first "all text" crawler-based search engines was Web Crawler, which came out in 1994. Unlike its predecessors, it let users search for any word in any web-page, which has become the standard for all major search engines since.

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JOOMLA ERROR SOLVED: Joomla Admin Section Menu Manager Issue.

After performing Akeeba Back ups and jump starting the back up on to a godaddy hosting package I was unable to update or access and menu items in the Joomla Menu Manager of the administration section. This issue also surfaced after performing upgrades form past versions of Joomla to 2.5.  Being that my clients website was hosted with Godaddy, I was required to communicate with Godaddy Technical support who conveyed that this is a common issue to which no solution has been achieved. After hours of troubleshooting with no help from GoDaddy Support (whose only advise was to rebuild the site from scratch), I was able to solve this issue!

Yes, it is true that Google Places is no more! However the replacement of Google Places with Google Plus Local is a logical move for Google.  As Google aims to topple Facebook and Twitter as the web’s leading online communities, “Google Plus” is their vehicle to do so.  This article provides an in-depth look into Google and Google’s products that relate to Google Plus and Google Plus Local. If you can afford a moment to read this article, you will understand how significant the birth of Google Plus Local is, as it relates to Google’s big picture.

Why does it make sense for Google to enter the Social Networking arena? With the creation of “Google Plus” and now Google Plus Local, Google plans to merge all of their technology under one roof!  Google has been strategically building their tools to dominate the online industry. After search engines, Google has been leading the innovative mapping industry with Google Maps. With Google owning the map market, you can assume that they have all the pieces in place to bring a “local” appeal to any social community they may be involved in developing.

With the advent of Web Content Management Systems, began an era where a regular person could easily update, edit, publish and modify a web sites content using a web based control panel. This means a person without web design training or expensive software programs could update their website as easy as posting status, text and images on social networking sites such as FaceBook or LinkedIN. A much added bonus is that, those who have developed their sites in a CMS no longer suffer from paying expensive hourly maintenance fees as they manage to keep their site up to date.

Features and function abilities of the various Content Management Systems differ from system to system; many simpler systems showcase only a handful of features, while others are much more complex and powerful. The industry offers “Open Source” (Free & Community Driven) and “Proprietary” (PAID and Custom Developed) systems. Both Open Source and Proprietary Options offer pros and cons. Whereas Open Source options, such as Wordpress and Joomla have proven to be a more cost effective solution for many small business owners. While Proprietary Systems are custom developed resources that are built to achieve special function ability, security features and compatibility to offline systems. However in current times, it is a safe assumption that Proprietary software's role as the primary innovator in the global market is most certainly over. As I often say myself, “Why try to rebuild the wheel, this has been done before”. Being that Open Source solutions are community drivin, the envelope is constantly being pushed!