SEO

Yes, It Exists & Here’s How to Do It

Published

2 years ago

April 20, 2022

Let’s get something straight—homepage SEO exists.

A homepage can rank for relevant non-branded keywords and help other pages on your site to rank too. You can find proof of that all over the web. Here’s one from Squarespace’s homepage:

List of keywords with corresponding data; notably, Traffic and Position

But SEO is not the only or primary aspect of a homepage. So in this article, you’ll learn how to optimize your homepage for search engines in four steps without undermining your homepage’s primary purpose.

How to optimize a homepage for search engines – four steps

Homepage SEO resembles the general flow of optimizing a page for search engines. We have keyword research, creating SEO content, and building links. However, there are some caveats and special considerations. Let’s dig in.

1. Choose the target keyword

Your homepage should clearly “tell” Google and your readers what your product/service is about. Both parties need to understand the context.

In SEO, this is done mainly by focusing the content of a page on a target keyword. This keyword defines what the page is about. This doesn’t mean that your page will only rank for this keyword alone. It will most certainly rank for tens and even hundreds of related keywords. But first, you need to choose that one.

Start by making a list of keywords that best define your product or service. For the sake of our example, let’s assume you’re competing with Intercom in the space of communication tools. Here’s how you can populate your list:

Brainstorm – You can do this on your own or in a group. Just create a list of words or phrases that come to your mind. Since you probably already know a great deal about your niche, these words should come quite naturally.
Analyze competitors – Make a list of your competitors and read through their websites to find words that they use to describe their offerings.

So let’s say we came up with the following keywords: CRM, communications platform, customer communications platform, customer communications tool, conversational marketing platform, conversational marketing tool, customer messaging tool, conversational relationship platform, and customer service software.

Next, we’ll plug those keywords into an SEO tool. We will need to get the traffic potential of each keyword and understand the search intent behind all of them. You can use any SEO tool you like, but it’s best if you use a tool that doesn’t group keywords.

If we use Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer, here’s what we will see:

List of keywords with corresponding data like KD, Volume, GV, TP, etc

To get a clearer picture of our Traffic Potential here, I’ve ordered our keywords based on this metric (TP).

Ahrefs shows data for 6 out of 9 keywords. The remaining three are most likely very low search volume keywords. Because of their low popularity, we won’t bother with them in this article.

Next, we need to analyze the search intent for these keywords.

Search intent stands for the reason behind the search query. Basically, we want to see in the search engine results pages (SERPs) for these keywords the same kind of pages that you want to optimize: homepages.

Additionally, since we can assume our homepage will be describing a product, we can expand our search for landing pages with the same intent. If you want to dive deeper and understand the reasoning behind that, see our guide on search intent.

Moving on. Look at the top 10 pages ranking for those keywords and see if you can spot a homepage or a product page (if your competitors are offering a suite of various tools). In Ahrefs, you can just click on the SERP icon.

Below are two instances where we can see such pages for the keywords “CRM” and “customer communications platform.”

Here, we can see two product pages dedicated to CRMs—both by companies delivering entire product suites.

SERP overview for "customer communications platform"

For the keyword “customer communications platform,” we can see Intercom’s homepage and product pages from Freshdesk and MHC.

At this stage, you may find yourself in one of these scenarios:

You’ve found just one matching keyword – You can use that keyword as a target keyword.
You’ve found multiple matching keywords – You still need to choose one primary keyword. You can look at the GV column (Global Volume) to gauge the popularity of the keyword (i.e., the language your target audience uses the most).
You’ve found none – In this case, you should stick to the keyword that best describes your offering. There are two reasons for that: First, your homepage likely serves more purposes than SEO; second, search intent for that keyword may change direction and start showing particular businesses (like yours).

What to do with other relevant keywords from this stage? Keep them. You may still need to use them in the copy of your homepage to show its context. Other than that, you may want to use them for other content formats (blog posts, landing pages, free tools, etc.).

2. Create content for your homepage

In this section, we’ll cover crafting the title tag, meta description, main content of your homepage, and addition of schema markup.

Title

The title is one of the things Google will take into account when understanding and ranking your homepage. (Yes, it is a tiny ranking factor.)

That said, the title is not only meant for Google. You still need to make the title attractive enough to make people click.

Here are some good practices for crafting your homepage’s title:

Make it eye-catching and accurate – Write a line that piques users’ interest and accurately describes what’s unique about your offer.
Insert the target keyword in your title – But remember to make it sound natural.
Insert your brand name – How and where you put it won’t impact rankings (but may impact the user’s choice).
Fit within 60 characters – Otherwise, your description may get truncated, and you’ll increase the chances of Google rewriting your title.

Once you rank in the top 10 for that keyword, it’s the perfect time to start optimizing your title for the click-through rate.

Recommended reading: How to Craft the Perfect SEO Title Tag (Our 4‑Step Process)

Meta description

Unlike the title tag, the meta description is not a ranking factor.

Interestingly enough, Google is known for rewriting meta description tags. (According to our study, this happens 62.78% of the time.)

At any rate, a good meta description can interest the searcher enough to enter your homepage. So:

Make it compelling enough to make the user click.
Refrain from any “clickbaity” practices. If your page doesn’t pass the “sniff test,” the user will simply return to the SERPs and will avoid your page in the future. Or simply, they won’t click in the first place.
Don’t make your description longer than 920 px. Use a tool like SERPSim to make sure your description will fit.
It’s a good idea to treat the title and description as two parts of the same message. The description can be an extension of or support what you claim in the title.

Recommended reading: How to Write the Perfect Meta Description

Main content

First and foremost, think about your brand and your business when creating the main content of the homepage. What do your visitors need to know about your business right off the bat? What makes you unique? What path should the user take on your website? SEO should come second in those considerations.

When it comes to SEO, you need to remember two things when designing your main content:

Matching search intent
Inserting (naturally) your target keyword into the H1 tag

For the first point (matching search intent), you need to look at the top pages on the SERP for a given keyword and analyze what these pages are talking about and what they offer.

For example, for the keyword “CRM,” a lot of pages offer basic information on CRMs: what is a CRM, benefits, how does a CRM work, features of a CRM, etc.

This is an indication that Google “promotes” pages that offer some kind of education on the topic of CRMs. So it’s probably a good idea to include similar points inside your main content so that Google can “see” your page as something that helps searchers understand the product and learn how they can benefit from it.

You can go a level deeper in picking related terms with the help of Ahrefs’ Also rank for and Also talk about reports. Just plug in a keyword into Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer and use the said reports to find out:

Which keywords the top 10 ranking pages for your target keyword also rank for.
Which other keywords and phrases the top-ranking pages for your target keyword frequently mention.

List of keywords with corresponding data like KD, Volume, etc

Some of the results of the Also talk about report for the keyword “CRM.”

Lastly, however obvious this may sound, you don’t want to forget to mention your brand in the copy. This is still part of search intent, as a lot of searchers will likely land on your homepage through branded keywords.

As for the second point (inserting your target keyword into the H1 tag), it’s another situation when SEO comes last. Inserting the primary keyword into this tag will help Google understand the context. But the H1 tag is also about improving the user experience and accessibility of a page.

On top of that, there’s nothing wrong with making your H1 copy more persuasive than the competition.

H1 on Hubspot's webpage about its CRM software

Recommended reading: On-Page SEO: The Beginner’s Guide

Add schema markup

Schema markup is code that helps search engines to understand your content and better represent it in the search results.

Adding schema markup can help you gain more visibility on the SERPs by displaying rich snippets which, in turn, can lead to more traffic.

In practice, adding schema markup to a homepage is comparable to filling out meta tags. You’re filling out some predefined categories with information about your organization, your product, etc.

You can write schema “by hand,” but it’s probably best to generate it using tools like Schema Builder extension.

Here’s an example schema markup from Intercom’s homepage. Here, it’s using the “organization” type with two properties (URL and logo):

Example schema markup on Intercom's page

And below, we have an interesting case of multiple schema markup types found on ZOHO’s CRM product page:

And thanks to having this information inside the schema…

"aggregateRating": {

"@type": "AggregateRating",

"ratingValue": "4.3",

"reviewCount": "5148"

}

… Google can display the review snippet:

Another interesting example is how HubSpot uses schema markup to show FAQs fitting the informational character of the search intent for the keyword “CRM”:

The type of schema property that you may want to include on your homepage is the organization. It will help Google understand that your page is about an organization (and not, for example, a type of fruit). This markup can also help you earn a knowledge panel.

Another often-used feature is the sitelinks search box. Google can display this feature whether you like it or not (based on the utility for the user), but you can have some control of it using schema.

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SEO

4 Ways To Try The New Model From Mistral AI

Published

1 hour ago

December 11, 2023

Max

4 Ways To Try The New Model From Mistral AI

In a significant leap in large language model (LLM) development, Mistral AI announced the release of its newest model, Mixtral-8x7B.

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:5546272da9065eddeb6fcd7ffddeef5b75be79a7&dn=mixtral-8x7b-32kseqlen&tr=udp%3A%2F%https://t.co/uV4WVdtpwZ%3A6969%2Fannounce&tr=http%3A%2F%https://t.co/g0m9cEUz0T%3A80%2Fannounce

RELEASE a6bbd9affe0c2725c1b7410d66833e24

— Mistral AI (@MistralAI) December 8, 2023

What Is Mixtral-8x7B?

Mixtral-8x7B from Mistral AI is a Mixture of Experts (MoE) model designed to enhance how machines understand and generate text.

Imagine it as a team of specialized experts, each skilled in a different area, working together to handle various types of information and tasks.

A report published in June reportedly shed light on the intricacies of OpenAI’s GPT-4, highlighting that it employs a similar approach to MoE, utilizing 16 experts, each with around 111 billion parameters, and routes two experts per forward pass to optimize costs.

This approach allows the model to manage diverse and complex data efficiently, making it helpful in creating content, engaging in conversations, or translating languages.

Mixtral-8x7B Performance Metrics

Mistral AI’s new model, Mixtral-8x7B, represents a significant step forward from its previous model, Mistral-7B-v0.1.

It’s designed to understand better and create text, a key feature for anyone looking to use AI for writing or communication tasks.

New open weights LLM from @MistralAI

params.json:
– hidden_dim / dim = 14336/4096 => 3.5X MLP expand
– n_heads / n_kv_heads = 32/8 => 4X multiquery
– “moe” => mixture of experts 8X top 2 👀

Likely related code: https://t.co/yrqRtYhxKR

Oddly absent: an over-rehearsed… https://t.co/8PvqdHz1bR pic.twitter.com/xMDRj3WAVh

— Andrej Karpathy (@karpathy) December 8, 2023

This latest addition to the Mistral family promises to revolutionize the AI landscape with its enhanced performance metrics, as shared by OpenCompass.

Mixtral-8x7B: 4 Ways To Try The New Model From Mistral AI

What makes Mixtral-8x7B stand out is not just its improvement over Mistral AI’s previous version, but the way it measures up to models like Llama2-70B and Qwen-72B.

mixtral-8x7b performance metrics compared to llama 2 open source ai models

It’s like having an assistant who can understand complex ideas and express them clearly.

One of the key strengths of the Mixtral-8x7B is its ability to handle specialized tasks.

For example, it performed exceptionally well in specific tests designed to evaluate AI models, indicating that it’s good at general text understanding and generation and excels in more niche areas.

This makes it a valuable tool for marketing professionals and SEO experts who need AI that can adapt to different content and technical requirements.

The Mixtral-8x7B’s ability to deal with complex math and coding problems also suggests it can be a helpful ally for those working in more technical aspects of SEO, where understanding and solving algorithmic challenges are crucial.

This new model could become a versatile and intelligent partner for a wide range of digital content and strategy needs.

How To Try Mixtral-8x7B: 4 Demos

You can experiment with Mistral AI’s new model, Mixtral-8x7B, to see how it responds to queries and how it performs compared to other open-source models and OpenAI’s GPT-4.

Please note that, like all generative AI content, platforms running this new model may produce inaccurate information or otherwise unintended results.

User feedback for new models like this one will help companies like Mistral AI improve future versions and models.

1. Perplexity Labs Playground

In Perplexity Labs, you can try Mixtral-8x7B along with Meta AI’s Llama 2, Mistral-7b, and Perplexity’s new online LLMs.

In this example, I ask about the model itself and notice that new instructions are added after the initial response to extend the generated content about my query.

Screenshot from Perplexity, December 2023 mixtral-8x7b perplexity labs playground

While the answer looks correct, it begins to repeat itself.

Screenshot from Perplexity Labs, December 2023 mixtral-8x7b errors

The model did provide an over 600-word answer to the question, “What is SEO?”

Again, additional instructions appear as “headers” to seemingly ensure a comprehensive answer.

Screenshot from Perplexity Labs, December 2023 what is seo by mixtral-8x7b

2. Poe

Poe hosts bots for popular LLMs, including OpenAI’s GPT-4 and DALL·E 3, Meta AI’s Llama 2 and Code Llama, Google’s PaLM 2, Anthropic’s Claude-instant and Claude 2, and StableDiffusionXL.

These bots cover a wide spectrum of capabilities, including text, image, and code generation.

The Mixtral-8x7B-Chat bot is operated by Fireworks AI.

Screenshot from Poe, December 2023 poe bot for mixtral-8x7b firebase

It’s worth noting that the Fireworks page specifies it is an “unofficial implementation” that was fine-tuned for chat.

When asked what the best backlinks for SEO are, it provided a valid answer.

Screenshot from Poe, December 2023 mixtral-8x7b poe best backlinks response

Compare this to the response offered by Google Bard.

Mixtral-8x7B: 4 Ways To Try The New Model From Mistral AI

Screenshot from Google Bard, December 2023 Mixtral-8x7B: 4 Ways To Try The New Model From Mistral AI

3. Vercel

Vercel offers a demo of Mixtral-8x7B that allows users to compare responses from popular Anthropic, Cohere, Meta AI, and OpenAI models.

Screenshot from Vercel, December 2023 vercel mixtral-8x7b demo compare gpt-4

It offers an interesting perspective on how each model interprets and responds to user questions.

Screenshot from Vercel, December 2023 mixtral-8x7b vs cohere on best resources for learning seo

Like many LLMs, it does occasionally hallucinate.

Screenshot from Vercel, December 2023 mixtral-8x7b hallucinations

4. Replicate

The mixtral-8x7b-32 demo on Replicate is based on this source code. It is also noted in the README that “Inference is quite inefficient.”

Screenshot from Replicate, December 2023 Mixtral-8x7B: 4 Ways To Try The New Model From Mistral AI

In the example above, Mixtral-8x7B describes itself as a game.

Conclusion

Mistral AI’s latest release sets a new benchmark in the AI field, offering enhanced performance and versatility. But like many LLMs, it can provide inaccurate and unexpected answers.

As AI continues to evolve, models like the Mixtral-8x7B could become integral in shaping advanced AI tools for marketing and business.

Featured image: T. Schneider/Shutterstock

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SEO

OpenAI Investigates ‘Lazy’ GPT-4 Complaints On Google Reviews, X

Published

21 hours ago

December 10, 2023

Max

OpenAI, the company that launched ChatGPT a little over a year ago, has recently taken to social media to address concerns regarding the “lazy” performance of GPT-4 on social media and Google Reviews.

Screenshot from X, December 2023 OpenAI Investigates ‘Lazy’ GPT-4 Complaints On Google Reviews, X

This move comes after growing user feedback online, which even includes a one-star review on the company’s Google Reviews.

OpenAI Gives Insight Into Training Chat Models, Performance Evaluations, And A/B Testing

OpenAI, through its @ChatGPTapp Twitter account, detailed the complexities involved in training chat models.

Screenshot from X, December 2023 chatgpt openai a/b testing

The organization highlighted that the process is not a “clean industrial process” and that variations in training runs can lead to noticeable differences in the AI’s personality, creative style, and political bias.

Thorough AI model testing includes offline evaluation metrics and online A/B tests. The final decision to release a new model is based on a data-driven approach to improve the “real” user experience.

OpenAI’s Google Review Score Affected By GPT-4 Performance, Billing Issues

This explanation comes after weeks of user feedback about GPT-4 becoming worse on social media networks like X.

Idk if anyone else has noticed this, but GPT-4 Turbo performance is significantly worse than GPT-4 standard.

I know it’s in preview right now but it’s significantly worse.

— Max Weinbach (@MaxWinebach) November 8, 2023

There has been discussion if GPT-4 has become “lazy” recently. My anecdotal testing suggests it may be true.

I repeated a sequence of old analyses I did with Code Interpreter. GPT-4 still knows what to do, but keeps telling me to do the work. One step is now many & some are odd. pic.twitter.com/OhGAMtd3Zq

— Ethan Mollick (@emollick) November 28, 2023

Complaints also appeared in OpenAI’s community forums.

Screenshot from OpenAI, December 2023 openai community forums gpt-4 user feedback

The experience led one user to leave a one-star rating for OpenAI via Google Reviews. Other complaints regarded accounts, billing, and the artificial nature of AI.

Screenshot from Google Reviews, December 2023 openai google reviews star rating

A recent user on Product Hunt gave OpenAI a rating that also appears to be related to GPT-4 worsening.

Screenshot from Product Hunt, December 2023 openai reviews

GPT-4 isn’t the only issue that local reviewers complain about. On Yelp, OpenAI has a one-star rating for ChatGPT 3.5 performance.

OpenAI is now only 3.8 stars on Google Maps and a dismal 1 star on Yelp!

GPT-4’s degradation has really hurt their rating. Hope the business survives.https://t.co/RF8uJH1WQ5 pic.twitter.com/OghAZLCiVu

— Nate Chan (@nathanwchan) December 9, 2023

The complaint:

Screenshot from Yelp, December 2023 yelp openai chatgpt review

In related OpenAI news, the review with the most likes aligns with recent rumors about a volatile workplace, alleging that OpenAI is a “Cutthroat environment. Not friendly. Toxic workers.”

Screenshot from Google Reviews, December 2023 google review for openai toxic workers

The reviews voted the most helpful on Glassdoor about OpenAI suggested that employee frustration and product development issues stem from the company’s shift in focus on profits.

openai employee review on glassdoor

Screenshots from Glassdoor, December 2023 openai employee reviews

This incident provides a unique outlook on how customer and employee experiences can impact any business through local reviews and business ratings platforms.

Screenshot from Google, December 2023 openai inc google business profile local serps google reviews

Google SGE Highlights Positive Google Reviews

In addition to occasional complaints, Google reviewers acknowledged the revolutionary impact of OpenAI’s technology on various fields.

The most positive review mentions about the company appear in Google SGE (Search Generative Experience).

Screenshot from Google SGE, December 2023 Google SGE response on OpenAI

Conclusion

OpenAI’s recent insights into training chat models and response to public feedback about GPT-4 performance illustrate AI technology’s dynamic and evolving nature and its impact on those who depend on the AI platform.

Especially the people who just received an invitation to join ChatGPT Plus after being waitlisted while OpenAI paused new subscriptions and upgrades. Or those developing GPTs for the upcoming GPT Store launch.

As AI advances, professionals in these fields must remain agile, informed, and responsive to technological developments and the public’s reception of these advancements.

Featured image: Tada Images/Shutterstock

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SEO

ChatGPT Plus Upgrades Paused; Waitlisted Users Receive Invites

Published

2 days ago

December 9, 2023

Max

ChatGPT Plus Upgrades Paused; Waitlisted Users Receive Invites

ChatGPT Plus subscriptions and upgrades remain paused after a surge in demand for new features created outages.

Some users who signed up for the waitlist have received invites to join ChatGPT Plus.

Screenshot from Gmail, December 2023 ChatGPT Plus Upgrades Paused; Waitlisted Users Receive Invites

This has resulted in a few shares of the link that is accessible for everyone. For now.

Found a hack to skip chatGPT plus wait list.

Follow the steps
– login to ChatGPT
– now if you click on upgrade
– Signup for waitlist(may not be necessary)
– now change the URL to https://t.co/4izOdNzarG
– Wallah you are in for payment #ChatGPT4 #hack #GPT4 #GPTPlus pic.twitter.com/J1GizlrOAx

— Ashish Mohite is building Notionpack Capture (@_ashishmohite) December 8, 2023

In addition to the invites, signs that more people are getting access to GPTs include an introductory screen popping up on free ChatGPT accounts.

Screenshot from ChatGPT, December 2023 ChatGPT Plus Upgrades Paused; Waitlisted Users Receive Invites

Unfortunately, they still aren’t accessible without a Plus subscription.

Screenshot from ChatGPT, December 2023 chatgpt plus subscriptions upgrades paused waitlist

You can sign up for the waitlist by clicking on the option to upgrade in the left sidebar of ChatGPT on a desktop browser.

Screenshot from ChatGPT, December 2023 ChatGPT Plus Upgrades Paused; Waitlisted Users Receive Invites

OpenAI also suggests ChatGPT Enterprise for those who need more capabilities, as outlined in the pricing plans below.

Screenshot from OpenAI, December 2023 ChatGPT Plus Upgrades Paused; Waitlisted Users Receive Invites

Why Are ChatGPT Plus Subscriptions Paused?

According to a post on X by OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman, the recent surge in usage following the DevDay developers conference has led to capacity challenges, resulting in the decision to pause ChatGPT Plus signups.

we are pausing new ChatGPT Plus sign-ups for a bit 🙁

the surge in usage post devday has exceeded our capacity and we want to make sure everyone has a great experience.

you can still sign-up to be notified within the app when subs reopen.

— Sam Altman (@sama) November 15, 2023

The decision to pause new ChatGPT signups follows a week where OpenAI services – including ChatGPT and the API – experienced a series of outages related to high-demand and DDoS attacks.

Demand for ChatGPT Plus resulted in eBay listings supposedly offering one or more months of the premium subscription.

chatgpt plus accounts selling ebay for a premium 🫡🇺🇸 https://t.co/VdN8tuexKM pic.twitter.com/W522NGHsRV

— surya (@sdand) November 15, 2023

When Will ChatGPT Plus Subscriptions Resume?

So far, we don’t have any official word on when ChatGPT Plus subscriptions will resume. We know the GPT Store is set to open early next year after recent boardroom drama led to “unexpected delays.”

Therefore, we hope that OpenAI will onboard waitlisted users in time to try out all of the GPTs created by OpenAI and community builders.

What Are GPTs?

GPTs allow users to create one or more personalized ChatGPT experiences based on a specific set of instructions, knowledge files, and actions.

Search marketers with ChatGPT Plus can try GPTs for helpful content assessment and learning SEO.

Two SEO GPTs I’ve created for assessment + learning 👀👇

1. Content Helpfulness and Quality SEO Analyzer: Assess a page content helpfulness, relevance, and quality for your targeted query based on Google’s guidelines vs your competitors and get tips: https://t.co/LsoP2UhF4N pic.twitter.com/O77MHiqwOq

— Aleyda Solis 🕊️ (@aleyda) November 12, 2023

2. The https://t.co/IFmKxxVDpW SEO Teacher: A friendly SEO expert teacher who will help you to learn SEO using reliable https://t.co/sCZ03C7fzq resources: https://t.co/UrMPUYwblH

I hope they’re helpful 🙌🤩

PS: Love how GPT opens up to SO much opportunity 🤯 pic.twitter.com/yqKozcZTDc

— Aleyda Solis 🕊️ (@aleyda) November 12, 2023

There are also GPTs for analyzing Google Search Console data.

oh wow. I think this GPT works.

Export data from GSC comparing keyword rankings before and after an update and upload it to ChatGPT and it will spit out this scatter plot for you.

It’s an easy way to see if most of your keyword declined or improved.

This site was impacted by… pic.twitter.com/wFGSnonqoZ

— Marie Haynes (@Marie_Haynes) November 9, 2023

And GPTs that will let you chat with analytics data from 20 platforms, including Google Ads, GA4, and Facebook.

Google search has indexed hundreds of public GPTs. According to an alleged list of GPT statistics in a GitHub repository, DALL-E, the top GPT from OpenAI, has received 5,620,981 visits since its launch last month. Included in the top 20 GPTs is Canva, with 291,349 views.

Weighing The Benefits Of The Pause

Ideally, this means that developers working on building GPTs and using the API should encounter fewer issues (like being unable to save GPT drafts).

But it could also mean a temporary decrease in new users of GPTs since they are only available to Plus subscribers – including the ones I tested for learning about ranking factors and gaining insights on E-E-A-T from Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines.