Abhijit Athavale's Blog

As I was researching keywords for the ' State of SEO for AI Chip Companies ' blog, I found that SambaNova mentioned GPT on their homepage 5 times. Normally speaking, you cannot optimize for such a generic keyword even though it has really very large search volumes (90,500 per month till November 22). We removed it from our list as it's extremely difficult to optimize for, given this.  A funny thing then happened on Nov 30th - OpenAI launched ChatGPT and look what it did to worldwide search volumes for GPT: While we will only see the final monthly numbers for December early next year, it goes to show that there's a tremendous appetite for anything AI these days, and anytime a decent tool is available for free, the internet goes berserk. 

In a previous blog , we explored whether lack of SEO may have contributed to the demise of Mythic, an AI chip company. As an academic outbound marketing exercise, let's look at how other hot AI chip startups are fairing in their SEO efforts. First thing to do is identify the top AI chip companies that we are going to look at. That's simple enough - just a Google search for top AI chip startups yields us multiple results. The first link lists companies by the amount of funding raised, although the data appears to be slightly dated, which is fine for the purposes of this blog.  SambaNova Cerebras GraphCore Nuvia [Now Qualcomm hence ignoring] Hailo Wave Computing [Filed for bankruptcy protection hence ignoring] Cambricon [This is Chinese company and we will ignore as the data may not be accurate] Kneron Sima.ai Esperanto Luminous LightMatter Next, we will do a keyword density analysis of the home pages of these websites using our favorite Keywords Everywhere tool. The idea is that...

To all the tech startups out there, can we please avoid cringe in your company descriptions? Here are a few examples that actually say nothing while taking up valuable real estate on your digital properties: Technology innovation team Data driven solutions Shared understanding of Leading provider of AI driven solutions Actionable insights/intelligence Derive business value Simple yet powerful Lean software Better experience for your customers Where tradition meets innovation Digital solutions for mission makers Harnessing technology More efficient and productive New and exciting Building lasting engagement I am sure there are many more, but it's important to resist the allure of verbiage that sounds great but is actually meaningless. Instead, perform proper keyword research using a myriad of free tools and build content that customers are looking for. It will be worth your while.

I have been watching the nascent AI Processor market with interest - it's a brand new opportunity for semiconductors to address applications that didn't exist before. Here's a good primer  from McKinsey. Mythic, a hot AI processor startup that raised $160+ Mn has unfortunately run out of money before reaching revenue. Mythic chips and eval boards have been available for over a year now, so one wonders if they were not able to generate enough demand. It will be impossible to know exactly what went wrong from the outside looking in, but it still is an interesting exercise to take a look at their demand creation activities, specifically SEO, which by its very nature is public. SEO is a great sidekick to the traditional strategic marketing/business development activities and exhibits tremendous long tail effects. First thing to do is to start looking for possible keywords/key phrases that prospects (customers, partners, job seekers) are using to frame their Google searches. In ...

Previously, we established the fact that customers are searching for high-tech products using Google,  here . Today, I will show you how to tie that keyword search to qualified leads and real revenue for your company. If you demonstrate to your management that the investments in SEO are translating into more qualified leads and revenue, you will be considered as a legend in your company. How do we do that? It's not hard, but you have to put in some effort and give it time. Before we begin, let's look at the concept of search intent. Search intent is the goal that a user has when searching for something/anything online, and Google very much cares about search intent. You should care too because identifying search intent gives you direct access to prospects at different stages of the sales funnel.  Search intent is broadly classified into four types: informational, commercial, transactional, navigational.  Informational intent is where the user is looking for information Co...

As a marketer in charge of your tech (Semiconductor, EDA, IP and Software) company's digital marketing initiative, you are often wondering if your investments into the SEO program are really worthwhile. You think that there's no way to know till you start seeing the results on a consistent basis after about 6 months plus of effort - till then, you must continue on blind faith for that period. There's a better way to short circuit this process and gain confidence in a shorter period. You can do this by looking at what your SEO agency is offering to do for you. No, I am not going to ask you to go through abundantly available "Questions to ask your SEO agency" or "Checklists for selecting a SEO agency" posts on the internet, nor am I going to ask you to meticulously compare the services of one agency against the other bullet by bullet, because you will find that even under close microscopic examinations, the differences are very minor.  Instead, you should ...

How much should a technology company pay for SEO? In other words, what should be my SEO budget as a technology company? This perhaps is the wrong question to ask because it really depends. If you Google this and peruse through the top links, you are going to get various articles that reach the conclusions I have outlined below: $1000 per month offers are generally not a good idea. These agencies do all sorts of tactics to raise your rankings, but there is a good chance that your domain may land in trouble with Google. Most reputable agencies with above board SEO practices will charge you between $3K to $5K per month. And this seems to be a price point that most online articles are converging on. I also agree that this is pretty much the sweet spot. Obviously, this figure is going to change if you are a colossal business with a zillion products and web properties. You may also see something called thought leadership SEO that runs upwards of $7K per month. Frankly, this offer makes no se...