Search engines are modern tools for information. The huge number of people that use search engines make appearing on the first page of a search result important. It also translates to your business’ website getting more exposure to potential customers. But before moving further it is very important to know what is SEO?

To be ranked highly by search engines, you have to make specific changes to your website. This is where SEO comes in.

SEO, or search engine optimization, is the process of making behind-the-scenes changes to your website to make it accessible, indexed, and shown in a prominent position on a SERP (search engine results page). But to fully understand SEO, you must first understand how search engines work.

What is SEO & How search engines work?

Search engines perform three basic tasks: Crawling, indexing, and ranking. The following is a breakdown of what those entail.

Also See: Practical Tips for Small Business SEO

Crawling

Search engines deploy bots and spiders — robots — that scour the web for information. They go from webpage to webpage, follow web links, and gather information on and about websites. They do this by checking your website’s HTML code.

Indexing

This next stage involves gathering, arranging, and cataloguing the information received by these bots. This is where the search engine determines which content is relevant and removes duplicate and irrelevant content.

Ranking

This is where the algorithm used by search engines categorizes websites and determines which content and website is most relevant.

When a search is entered in a search engine— called a search query— the search engine compares it against its index and draws out the most relevant content that matches that query. It places the relevant web pages on a list called an organic search result from the most relevant to the least relevant on a search engine results page (think Google search result page). The text used in the search query is called a keyword and is important for optimization.

Optimizing your website

Basic SEO can be done by carrying out on-page optimization and backlinking.

On-page optimization

This involves making changes to the elements on your web page to make it more search-friendly. These changes are usually in two forms.

HTML Title tags and Meta description

Crawlers read your web page’s HTML code, so you may want to add or adjust title tags and meta description. A title tag in your HTML code is not the title of the article that shows up on the page. The title tag, which is in the head of your HTML code, is an element that isn’t seen by humans but is checked by crawlers. The meta description, like the name suggests, is a brief description of the content on that web page. Crawlers use it to figure out what the content on that web page is about. Your title tag and meta description are what appear on SERPs.

Keywords and keyword placements

Keywords are the text entered into search queries. They are an important part of any SEO plan because search engines display content that matches these keywords. Adding specific keywords to your webpage will increase its chances of showing up for specific search queries. When choosing keywords, be sure to check that they are the same words your customers use when searching for your products or services online.

You can also check the other websites that your desired keywords return on SERPs. It is often a useful practice to extract relevant search result data from a large number of websites showing in search results, so as to compare your content with your competitors’.

Backlinks

A backlink is an incoming hyperlink from one webpage to another on a different website. Usually, one website acts as a resource to the other. Crawlers that follow links between web pages and search engines place a lot of importance on links because they act as a sort of reference or citation. The more websites that link to yours, the better. However, prominence is placed on the quality of links and not quantity, so it’s not just about getting links — it’s about getting backlinks from reputable sites.

SEO isn’t something you do just once, but rather an ongoing process. That’s why it’s important to work with companies like LinkGraph that provide SEO solutions for businesses. Such experts keep up with changes to algorithms and keyword queries, ensuring your SEO efforts are maximized to their full potential.

Elon Musk’s secretive “brain-machine interface” start-up, Neuralink, revealed some of its Technology that it has been developing. On 16th of July, 2019 evening the Neuralink revealed their technology for the very first time to the public. The main aim of this startup is to develop a technology that can read a human mind.

At an event at the California Academy of Science in San Francisco, Neuralink introduced “threads” as a technology that is smaller than a human hair and can be injected and implanted into the brain directly, to detect the activity of neurons. The start-up company also emphasizes the advantage of flexible “threads” over “brain-machine interfaces”. The company claims that the “threads” are less likely to damage the brain than the materials used in the brain-machine interface.

According to the ‘Elon Musk and Neuralink’, threads are 4 to 6um in width and they are capable of transferring a higher volume of data.

Though the company plans to seek FDA approval for a human clinical trial by 2020, on a version of its device that is “only intended for patients with serious unmet medical diseases”, said Dr. Matthew McDougall, Neuralink’s head neurosurgeon. The first clinical trial will target patients with complete paralysis due to an upper spinal cord and will involve installing four of Neuralink’s implants in patients’ brains. Musk also shared the test results with people at the event. But as for now, the technology is only tested on animals. Musk revealed that the thread was implanted to the money’s brain and as a result, the monkey became capable enough to control a computer with his brain.

Matthew Nagle was the first person who received a brain implant after his spinal cord injury where he was declared paralyzed. After the brain implantation, Nagle was able to control a computer cursor and played Pong by using only his mind. Since then, there have been many paralyzed people with brain implants who have done a lot of things and have moved robotic arms in labs, as a part of scientific research. The technology that helped Nagle and others is called “BrainGates” and it was developed initially at Brown University. The drawback of this technology is that it works on Utah Array, a series of stiff needles that allow for up to 128 electrode channels to function. The human brain shifts in the skull but these needles don’t and as a result, long term usage of this technology can cause harm to the brain. But, Neuralink’s thread technology is made up of polymers that may solve this problem.

The next big advancement in technology is the machine that automatically embeds threads into the brain. Threads are difficult to implant as they are flexible. To resolve this issue, the company has developed a ‘neurosurgical robot’ . The robot is capable of inserting six threads (192 electrodes) per minute, automatically.

Musk said that he wanted to create a technology that allows merging with AI. He also said that the technology showcased by Neuralink has a very good purpose, which is to cure diseases and ultimately secure humanity’s future.

The Ministry of Housing and Urban affairs along with Google has launched the Loo Campaign with the name #LooCampaign in September 2018. The collaboration with Google was done to encourage all local guides in India to rate and review public toilets on Google Maps. Google has recently added the data of more than 45,000 community and public toilets to help the people to locate public toilets in their areas on Google maps, Google search and the Assistant.

Women and senior citizens often face difficulty while locating a clean toilet in a public place. The ‘Public toilets near Me’ feature will benefit citizens to locate clean toilets near them. A sum of a total of 500+ cities in India with more than 30,000 toilets under the name of ‘SBM Toilet’ is currently live on Google Maps.

The “Loo Review” Campaign was launched under the aegis of Swachh Bharat Mission- Urban (SBM-U). Its main objective is to provide sanitation coverage for achieving Open Defecation Free (ODF) status all over in India.

Chetan Krishnaswamy, said “Google is a committed partner in achieving the Government’s vision of a Swachh Bharat. ‘Public toilets near me’ is a feature that is supported across Google Maps, Search and the Assistant. In close partnership with the MoHUA, we have mapped toilets across 500 cities in India in the last year alone. Through the #LooReview campaign we are engaging our enthusiastic Local Guides community in India to further increase the awareness on public toilets in the country, and help citizens discover clean and well-maintained options in their vicinity.”

With the latest Windows 10 fast ring update, users get the chance to make their device passwordless. Yes! You heard it right. Nobody likes a password because they are inconvenient and insecure. Microsoft security team has worked to create a world free from passwords. There is the new toggle in Windows 10 insider preview settings that let users to completely disable password for signing into their user accounts.

To maintain the security and authentication users can sign-in via “Windows Hello Authentication” which includes facial recognition, fingerprints and PIN. Window hello is an amazing replacement for passwords on PCs and it is used worldwide by millions of users. Windows hello authentication is secure and prevents user’s credentials. It is far better than passwords because it saves a lot of time and efforts of users.

Users can follow the following steps to turn off password sign-ins for every Microsoft Accounts on that system.

1. Go to settings
2. Head over to Accounts
3. Choose sign-in option
4. Turn on the toggle next to ‘Make your device Passwordless

The latest Windows 10 fast update brings a lot of other upgrades too, some of them are:

1. Your phone app’s phone screen feature is now available on more platforms like Surface Pro 6 and the Surface laptop 2
2. The latest upgrade lets the users to add an event or reminder in a new way. They simply need to go the calendar and they can see a new text box where they can type their events, reminders on the fly.

The above upgrades may be tempting and for sure you all want to get on the fast ring and you want to install it right away, however, the best thing to do is to wait until the update arrives at the stable channel and by doing so you all will get to enjoy the goodness of the features without bugs.