If your SEO reporting is still chasing “more traffic,” this episode will change how you think about winning. Bianca “Binks” Anderson breaks down her Heavy Hitter Framework - a conversion-first way to protect the pages that actually drive revenue, stay steady through core updates, and build EEAT/AEO signals that hold up in regulated industries.
https://page2pod.com - Episode 106 of the Page 2 Podcast features Bianca “Binks” Anderson—former SEO leader across agencies, HubSpot’s flagship blog, and Hims & Hers—breaking down why “traffic” is often the wrong north star for modern SEO.
Bianca walks Jon Clark and Joe DeVita through her Heavy Hitter Framework, a conversion-weighted approach to identifying the small set of URLs driving outsized business impact (think Pareto Principle in action). Instead of panicking when organic traffic drops, this framework helps teams monitor and protect the URLs that actually move revenue—and respond faster when volatility hits.
You’ll also hear Bianca’s real-world playbook for healthcare and other regulated industries, where legal review can stall (or kill) content programs. Her approach: center legal’s fears early, bake them directly into the brief, ship a defensible MVP, and scale what proves performance—without compromising user value.
On the future-facing side, Bianca connects EEAT and experience-driven content to LLM visibility and AEO, including how structure (answer-first summaries, chunking, standalone sections, tables) and off-site credibility signals increasingly matter.
Connect with Bianca:
• Twitter/X: @BinksdoesSEO
• LinkedIn page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/stellar-search-signals/
• Linkedin Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bianca-anderson/
• Why “traffic” can be a misleading KPI—and what to measure instead
• The Heavy Hitter Framework: finding the top converting URLs that matter most
• Using tiering (including “brown dwarfs”) to spot hidden conversion opportunities
• How to stay calm during volatility (including major core update swings)
• A practical method for working with legal teams in high-stakes healthcare content
• EEAT in 2026: experience-driven content, “taste,” and credibility signals that scale
• Reddit + Ahrefs content gap research to uncover first-person angles users trust
• AEO tactics: answer-first structure, tighter chunking, and LLM-friendly formatting
• Newer visibility KPIs: brand citations, sentiment, assisted conversions, on-page behavior
• Career and speaking advice: community, curiosity, and learning through failure
If you’re trying to future-proof organic growth, this episode will help you rebuild reporting and strategy around business impact—not vanity metrics.
✅ Subscribe CTA: Subscribe to the Page 2 Podcast for more conversations on SEO strategy, AEO, and growth frameworks that actually drive revenue.
💬 Comment CTA: What’s one metric you’d replace “traffic” with in your SEO reporting—and why?
Jon Clark (00:00)
What happens when one of the sharpest minds in SEO decides traffic doesn't matter? At least not the way we've been measuring it. Bianca Anderson started her career talking to planetarium goers about black holes. Now she's designing SEO frameworks that challenge how we think about impact in digital content. After leading strategy at HubSpot, Hims and Hers, and Beyond, she's become a voice for a more mature, conversion-first approach to organic growth. This episode is a masterclass in what it means to measure what actually matters.
Bianca breaks down her heavy hitter framework, a way to identify and protect high converting URLs when everything else is burning. We talk about auditing with surgical precision, working with legal teams and high stakes healthcare content, and why focusing on experience driven content isn't just good for users, it's critical for LLM visibility. The real story here is how to navigate volatility with strategy, not just react to it. Bianca's challenge isn't technical, it's political. She's often the one asking hard questions about what to measure,
how to advocate for it, and when to stand her ground in the face of brand, legal, or stakeholder pressure. This one got me thinking differently about our own metrics and how often we use traffic as a proxy for business impact and how we can apply this mind shift to our own client reporting. If you've learned something new today, take a second to subscribe to the Page 2 Podcast. Leave us a rating or review and let us know what resonated. We'd love to hear your thoughts. Okay, let's get into it.
Jon Clark (01:27)
Welcome to episode 106 of the Page 2 Podcast. I'm Jon Clark, joined by my co-founder at Moving Traffic Media, Joe DeVita. Today's guests started her career explaining brown dwarfs and black holes at the Adler planetarium, played division one volleyball as a six one middle hitter and ended up becoming one of the most provocative voices in SEO, literally titling a conference talk F$%@ Traffic. Some of you might know her as Binks, Bianca Anderson, welcome to the show.
Joe (01:35)
Hi
Bianca (01:53)
Thank you so much. I love that introduction.
Jon Clark (01:56)
Yes.
Joe (01:56)
I gotta, I gotta ask, I gotta ask about Jon took our SEO team to Toronto and everyone heard you talk at SEO IRL last year. And, but like we had a Monday morning stand up like we always do before everyone had joined. I was like, well, who impressed you the most? Who do you remember? And, the one name that two women on our SEO team said was, well, her name was Binks. She had all these space themed slides.
Bianca (02:04)
Yeah.
Joe (02:21)
I wanted to just, before we get into more serious questions, how long have you had that nickname and who gave it to you?
Bianca (02:27)
Oh yes, the tale of Binks. That came during my time at was self-appointed, but how that arose was there was another Bianca department. And so when I joined, that was one of the first things we sorted But unfortunately, she shared all the same nicknames as me. So like B was already taken as well. So I kind of just pulled Binks out of like the deep
Jon Clark (02:44)
If.
Bianca (02:51)
of my mind.
I think subconsciously I thought to myself like Binks just seems like a really unassuming kind name. Like I feel like it's hard to be an asshole if your name is Binks. So maybe that gives me a nice little, you know, edge or something. So like, yeah, and that name stuck because when I got my next role after that, Bianca also...
Jon Clark (02:58)
Yeah.
Bianca (03:11)
joined me there, we ended up working in the same department again at a different company. And so I was like, you know what, let me just keep the nickname because I started to grow fond of it, started to grow a bit attached to it. And so I think it's become my corporate street name and I don't think it's gonna go away. So.
Jon Clark (03:26)
I love that. I love that. I thought it might be sports related. I feel like when you play sports, I played baseball and basketball in high school and college. I feel like there's always some sort of nicknames getting thrown around. So I love that. love that.
Bianca (03:38)
I'm
still bummed I wasn't Binks in college. That would have been fun.
Joe (03:42)
I'm telling you,
Jon Clark (03:42)
would have been a lot easier to come up with.
Joe (03:43)
my thinking on people.
Jon Clark (03:44)
Exactly. Would have been a lot easier to come up with usernames. The nicknames are rarely taken. I put a poll on LinkedIn around how people got into SEO, because I feel like there's so many, especially for folks who've been doing it for a reasonable amount of time, where it wasn't something that they sort of went to college for. You played sports, you were in aerospace, and sort of
Bianca (03:45)
Yeah.
Jon Clark (04:04)
ended up in SEO, when was the moment that you were like, this is really what I'm supposed to be doing?
Bianca (04:09)
First off, I am so honored that you thought I was aerospace. I was actually... Okay, so I'm like, I've always said like, I am a STEM person, hearts wise. Like I've always had the heart of a STEM major, chemistry kicked my butt. So I ended up being an English major in college. But yeah, I have a huge love for space.
Jon Clark (04:14)
Well, planetarium. I was stretching it a little bit.
Yeah
Bianca (04:31)
But, what got me into SEO was, working at the planetarium. honestly, I wanted to work at the planetarium by all means, any means. And my end was a digital marketing specialist role, and it was more of a general generalist role it started off as, and a large portion of that role was like email marketing and even saying those words. I always tell people that gives me heart palpitations because
Jon Clark (04:50)
Exactly.
Bianca (04:51)
I just find email marketing to be an incredibly anxiety inducing field because like once you send something out into the ether, there it goes. You know, the dreaded correction email. Oh my God, the nightmares I've had about those things. But
like, six months into that role, there was like a relatively new at the time called The Adler ’Scope, and I just naturally started writing content for it. And then naturally came, you know, my boss with like, Hey, there's this like, you know, we should probably be doing SEO for this. I'm like,
Oh, yeah, I guess we should be. What is that? And then that's how I stumbled into it. And did that. That started to become more bulk of what I was doing at the Adler towards the end of my time there. And then there was like a huge And I sat down with my manager. We knew the layoff was coming. It was COVID related. And she was like, I don't think you like email marketing. I was like, yeah, I think you're right. And she was like, I think you like SEO though. And I was like, yeah.
She was like, I'd recommend once this happens, you start pursuing that. And I did. And so my next role was an SCR role at an agency. then so.
Jon Clark (05:54)
cool, very cool.
Definitely good to have a manager who can sort of see you for what your strengths and maybe uninterests are and help to guide you that way. Yeah, that's really important. Even in your career, I guess you've had sort of this evolution. You started at the planetarium, worked in-house at an agency, went to sort of B2B SaaS, then healthcare. Now you're sort of even exploring an entrepreneurial type of
Bianca (06:04)
And she was great.
Jon Clark (06:18)
opportunity and sort of exploring that as well. Can you talk to us a little bit about the mind shifts that you had to go through for sort of each one of those stages? Did you find some commonalities across those or was it a big sort of change going from one to the other?
Bianca (06:32)
Yeah, it's so interesting because these shifts also coincide with me naturally maturing. In my career I was so green during my time at the Adler. So I guess moving into Adler, I learned so much about just simply owning strategy,
like there was like a learning curve in the sense that I was so used to that day to day school homework dynamic where you're given the tasks and you're not coming up with them yourself. And so there was like a bit of a lag there where I didn't understand quite the working environment and that like, ⁓ you're supposed to like come up with these things on your own. And so there was a learning curve there that was learned at my first role. But yeah, once I got into the agency world,
into the B2B space, yeah, I think what I learned was I really liked those longer termed projects and the fruits of those, just HubSpot as opposed to like when I was in the agency, I just saw so many instances where a problem would arise and from that problem, all of these like things would sprout out like these solutions.
And some of solutions would be playbooks or they would be like a new process and that would be so rewarding. And each of these things would be like these longer term things that I could see come to fruition because it's like, you you're in-house and so you have that one, your client is just that one in-house thing. And so that was a bit of a mind shift because with agencies, like my one singular anecdotal agency experience, it was like, you know, you're onboarding, you're offboarding.
is a shorter timeline with a lot of these strategies. So that was a bit of a different change for me going from, I guess, in-house to from agency.
Jon Clark (08:07)
Yeah,
Career evolution, in-house, you moved to HubSpot, right? Much larger organization and you really have the opportunity to identify something around a process and implement that in a large organization. Maybe start with, what is the heavy hitter framework?
Bianca (08:21)
Yes. So the heavy header framework is a way to identify the top converting URLs in a library, a given library. It's a way to weight conversions significantly more than metrics. So it follows Pareto's principle. So you look at a list of something or a group of something, the top 20 % is generating 80 % of the outcome.
And so in my time as an SEO, that has generally been par for course is that there's a small subset of URLs within a given site that drive an outsized impact. And so the heavy hitter process sets out to isolate those URLs. And then from there, you create a specific report that is then shared with leadership on a very regular cadence.
And then there's like a set of safety, measures that are set into place in the event that one of these heavy hitters has a specific dip in conversions or traffic. and the main goal around something like this is to try and it's, a lot of it's like stakeholder education
because at HubSpot, there were like lots of instances where we were dealing with a lot of volatility. There was like the March core update of 2023, which I've talked to lot of SEOs about. And it's like, you know, it's really, if you ever want to trauma bond with an SEO, just, I, you know, I recommend, I recommend bringing up that specific algorithm for some reason, like that, that not for some reason, but I found that to be a really good one to trauma bond But yeah, that one in particular was
Jon Clark (09:39)
Talk about algorithm hits, right?
Bianca (09:50)
you know, a big one. But it showed that there was like, there was an opportunity to even in the worst of the worst where traffic is down, there were still instances where another metric, maybe signups, were still holding on. So that kind of like sparked, that was like my first time really sparked like in my mind where I started to think differently about
how these metrics kind of work together. I think before that I had a very blocky visual in my head of like how all of this work together and that like traffic goes up, everything else goes up, like seeing how even in the rubble of like a post algo carnage, other metrics could still be okay in that showed me that maybe there was a way to focus more so on like business impact in the midst of these
volatile times. So the whole goal with the heavy hitter is by focusing on that top 20 % in your library, you're truly being more laser focused on business impact because if your top 20 % is remaining pretty unscathed during times of volatility, you can quickly reassure leadership to what's going on. I mean, and like in...
And then on the flip side, it is being harmed, then you know to take action more swiftly during times of volatility. So it's almost like a pulse, like a way to keep your finger on the pulse during times of volatility, because it can get really overwhelming to see huge traffic dips. ⁓ But a lot of times, that's not the whole story. It's not really telling you how that's affecting your bottom line. And so the heavy hitter framework is supposed to try and ease
Jon Clark (11:04)
Right. you
Bianca (11:19)
you and like try to give you more power, empower you as like a strategic thinker when things are kind of messy.
Jon Clark (11:25)
love that. We started to do over the past couple of years and we've evolved on it a number of times, but sort of big sort of like content audits. And I think we approached it with maybe less of a conversion focus, more of like, you just have this block of content that's probably dragging the site down. Either it's really old or
Bianca (11:42)
Yeah.
Jon Clark (11:44)
you know, just not driving traffic or we're wasting crawl budget there, and we pull in a whole bunch of different metrics, Google Analytics metrics, Google Search Console, certainly conversion, you know, number of ranking keywords per URL. Aside from conversions, are those similar metrics that you look at? I'll back up. I think one of the things that we've been trying to do is sort of take all these metrics and figure out like, what's the right weighting
across
these and then come up with some sort of like generic score that says, okay, here's the threshold, anything below this we need to make a decision against, either it's, you know, refresh or update, deprecate it, right? Is that how you guys were sort of thinking about that? Or was it primarily the conversion number that was the driver of the decision? Does that make sense?
Bianca (12:25)
Yeah, it was primarily the conversion number that was the driver of the decision, the initial decision. With the heavy hitter, there's like a set of, so like it helps with audits, as it brings back the tiering system that pre-existed with HubSpot that already existed when I was there.
So you have your heavy hitters, your you have, you know, the, next, tier, the tier one, tier two, tier three, tier three is your bottom performing. and then there's like another tier of, of URLs that I've, I call brown dwarfs. And these are URLs that have high conversion rates. but, for whatever reason, they don't have, they don't have high leads. So they're not, they don't have a high number of leads.
So they're not really impacting the business. And that could be because they're not ranking well or they're not getting enough visibility. And there could be an opportunity to give them some more visibility to try and get more people in the funnel to take advantage of that high CVR. So for that tier, the brown dwarfs, that's like an opportunity to try and see that that's when like other factors go into play. You like want to
take a closer look at those right away and see if there's other things outside of just like those initial markers that went into tiering to see if it makes sense to go in and make deeper optimizations or revamps with those URLs. And then the tier three URLs, those are like the bottom performing. That's when I tend to be a little bit more
Jon Clark (13:43)
Mm-hmm.
Bianca (13:46)
strict with like the pruning of then the middle performers, that's when again, like those other metrics that you're talking about, I start to use more judgment to start to figure out what to do with yeah, I think, for me, I have not yet found a way to take out all of the manual work when it comes to like auditing, you a site at scale. But I think that this approach does help some of the initial
batches of what to do with these URLs. But yeah, those other markers that you just mentioned, I think, are so helpful when you're looking at these other groups
Jon Clark (14:18)
you
Bianca (14:19)
once they've been segmented into them.
Jon Clark (14:20)
That makes Have you found
differences in applying the framework to like B2B SaaS versus healthcare versus I don't know, maybe another industry? Does this framework tend to work across those or just because of the nuances in those verticals, do you have to make some tweaks?
Bianca (14:36)
Truth be told, my sample size is two. from the two sample size, I will say it's worked well.
of bottom of the funnel content or, I don't know. I feel like it's pretty, I can't think of any like differences right off the bat of the two.
Jon Clark (14:53)
I could see them working relatively similarly those verticals because there's this educational component on the healthcare side where someone's just researching their ailment or issue. And on the B2B side, they're exploring what's the solution for this software or this problem. So I could see the content funnel working relatively similar. So I think the...
the approach and the applying of the analytics definitely makes sense there.
Joe (15:19)
We have some, we work with some healthcare clients and I think what I've noticed, the hardest part about a content program for a healthcare company is like the power, the legal team or whoever the mysterious review team is. Like if there's some claim from a
Bianca (15:31)
No. ⁓
Yeah.
Joe (15:38)
posts from like three years ago that all of a sudden it's out of date. just removed the whole URL from the website, and like sometimes if it's linked to from different places and they can't figure it out, it's just like, we had one client just like removed the blog cause they couldn't figure it out. It was like years of work.
Bianca (15:54)
my god. Wow!
Joe (15:59)
Yeah, so I
Jon Clark (16:00)
We
Joe (16:00)
don't know.
Jon Clark (16:00)
were shouting to each other on Slack, no.
Bianca (16:02)
That is
crazy.
Joe (16:05)
Well, I guess like, I don't know, can you talk a little bit about like, you know, it's your money, your health, like, you got to be really careful about developing content for a healthcare company. But like, are some of the ways you kind of keep it authentic and interesting?
Bianca (16:11)
Yeah.
Yeah, no, that's an excellent question. You know, I'm, doing a couple of talks in the coming, in this year, and that is definitely something I'm centering the talks on is how to navigate that. So this is fresh top of mind. And that was something that was definitely a learning curve for me in my last role. I like a good example
without giving too much away of like, there was a project that I had where I knew that it was going to be really lucrative. It was because it was like a super bottom of the funnel content. There was no way it was branded. So there's just no way if like we got the shipped that it wouldn't perform well.
So this was something that I found within the first initial few weeks of me doing research while in the role. I flagged this to my team. And they're like, yeah, this is something that we had flagged before, but it had been blocked by the legal team.
And so there was
a lot of like understandable hesitancy to rehab, like reopen this type of initiative. But I was like, wow, this is good at this, but this is like, so like, this would make so much money, I did and what I'm trying to like figure out how, how this is like template, not templatizable. That's not even, I don't think I'm using that word right.
I went to legal and I just really just, I centered their fears. Like what was every single qualm that they had about this particular content type. And I just heard them out and wrote down in extensive detail all of those fears. And then I made a content brief that was really centered around those fears.
So, and then I had a a lead writer, take a stab at the content based off of that brief. The end result was not what it wasn't like, you know, the perfect piece of content. I thought it was. But okay. It wasn't like perfect in the sense that it was good. It was good in the sense that it, from the user perspective, it gave the information
that they were looking for. It was judicious. I had a hunch that that would be enough for it to, again, this was like a branded terms technically. So I, you know, I thought, okay, this might be enough for like an MVP. Let's see if legal will approve. And so we, we, we this version to legal and they did approve. And so we shipped it
Jon Clark (18:14)
Hmm.
Bianca (18:23)
as a proof of concept, it went live, it performed well. And so then we were able to scale it. I guess the lesson that maybe from that I can say is with legal, a lot of it is you gotta like, I think you have to center their fears and you have to almost view it as like a box that you have to shape your strategy within. And you have to kind of
be okay with the fact that the end result might not be exactly what you wanted it to look like. But as long as you can.
As long as the end result is something that you still think is valuable to the user, it's okay. But yeah, that, that, all that, I feel like that sounds so, that doesn't sound very concrete. That sounds very nebulous, but I'm still working on this concept for a talk. But I agree that like, that is a very real issue. I will say working with legal,
I have learned to lean into a lot of it because I have found that a lot of their recommendations, sometimes it leans naturally into some of the EEAT aspects of SEO, like them flagging if a claim is unsubstantiated. I'm like, great. I would hate to have an upsustantiated claim in this piece of content. That's horrible for the user. That's horrible for our brand. But yeah, I think the best way to work with legal is to center them, in a way and try to
make your strategy happen in that, that box in a way.
Joe (19:40)
I love the idea of putting their fears right into the brief. If you have an opportunity to like quiz the legal team or the review team first, like why not take advantage of that? I feel like maybe some of the mistakes we've made is just developing a great piece of content and then tossing it over. And then we just ended up waiting.
Jon Clark (19:40)
.
Well, it's, mean, it's interesting, right? Cause the, default reaction from legal perspective is no, right? Cause that that's, that's the cleanest way to avoid risk. so it makes a ton of sense to start with, Hey, we're thinking about writing about X. What would be the concerns if we went down this route and then you're right, like putting that into a brief that makes total sense. And then you sort of
you know, to your point, may not be exactly what you want, but if you can at least get something out there and be part of the conversation, you know, I think that's probably more important than not being part of the conversation at all, where you're just totally blocked. So yeah, it's a great approach. You mentioned EEAT, and I know that you had a lot of experience building that into sort of the content playbook at HubSpot.
assuming at your last role as well, is there, I guess in the age of AI and AEO or whatever acronym you want to use, how are you thinking about EEAT today versus maybe two or three years ago?
Bianca (20:54)
I think it's still a huge differentiator. I think it's even more important. I think with any opportunities for social proof, and like
there's this thing that people keep talking about, but like taste, I've had, had so many conversations with, my editorial writers. I mean, like during this time of AI, I have grown to like, just love, love, love writers so much. Like I just have such respect for them. And like, I've leaned on them so much to make differentiating content that's good. And, and, and I've leaned so much on their judgment. And I think it's so to have
these experience driven experiences on the web in the midst of all the AI. the way that LLMs are citing and how YouTube is one of the most cited sources on LLMs. How can you fake experience on a video on YouTube? I guess I'm saying as
Jon Clark (21:39)
Right.
Bianca (21:46)
all of these things become more multimedia, everywhere optimization, trying to get these citations outside of your own site. These experiences, this experience-driven content that's gonna live outside of your site even, so important. Yeah, so I think it's incredibly important, maybe more
Joe (22:02)
I was just gonna say, I think I read something you wrote or posted a couple years ago about the importance of like writing in the first person. Yeah, you How do you manage that for a company when companies are so used to saying we? Like, how do you coach for that? You say,
Bianca (22:10)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Joe (22:20)
you know what, actually with this EEAT principle, we've gotta find our experts and say I once in a while.
Bianca (22:26)
Yeah, actually, yeah, that's a delicate dance within, I learned that that's a delicate dance within your money, your life verticals, because it's like, it is a balance. You wanna, you know, there's a certain clinical voice that certain topics call for, and maybe that clinical voice doesn't really mesh well with like the first person all the time, like in that way. I've learned that
in order to get buy-in, what I did was I kind of in my mind, like internally I would say, okay, this type of content is the kind of content that would warrant first-person experience. But this is the type of content that would probably warrant a more traditional point of view, or a more traditional type of writing style in a way.
Jon Clark (22:54)
you
Bianca (23:02)
And the way that I would, like one of the ways that I would suss out the topics for that is I would do,
competitive research on Reddit. So I would find like respective
Jon Clark (23:08)
Hmm
Bianca (23:10)
threads that pertained to like, that like laddered up to product lines that we had and that like users who shopped, you know, potential ideal customers or whatever would be on and would do like content gap, keyword content gap or whatever on Ahrefs and seeing the keywords that forum sites were ranking for.
That gave me an idea of what type of topics users were seeing first-person content on. And so that would give me a nice edge to say, hey, for this term, users are seeing first-person forum-driven content. It makes sense for us to try and also provide a more first-person-driven experience for this type of content. So that was how I was able to get more leverage,
Jon Clark (23:49)
you
Bianca (23:51)
try to get by in getting that type of content. But I
in healthcare, like what I've learned in my stint with healthcare is that it was a balance. Like not every piece of content called for that type of language necessarily needed but some did, some did. And yeah, it was just about figuring out the strategy or like how to split that in or assign that.
Jon Clark (24:16)
love the layer of using Reddit to help inform like when to use I versus we that's like, I love We had Melissa pop on a couple of weeks Talia was on last week. Yeah, she's great.
Bianca (24:28)
I love Talia
Jon Clark (24:31)
And they both talked about using social signals to inform content. Were you using any tools to help sort of like mine that or was it literally just sort of doing some searches for, I don't know, an ailment or product and then sort of just evaluating the conversations? Have you any tools or maybe even LLMs helping make that process a little bit easier?
Bianca (24:51)
I use most LLMs to help me find the subreddits, if I ran out, and then Ahrefs, would, I would literally plug in the, the subreddit, you know, sub folder, URL and, ⁓ well, plug them in multiple batches at a time and plug them in against, my site, the site that I was working on and see what keywords popped up, like a traditional
Jon Clark (25:02)
Yeah.
Bianca (25:11)
content gap analysis.
Jon Clark (25:13)
Love it. Love it. Are
you doing anything with query fan out as it relates to that?
Bianca (25:16)
I'm still no, I, I, quite yet. Not quite yet. I am, a student. I am a student still of query fan out. Not to say that it's not on my radar. it is, I have a couple of query fan out webinars in my to-do list of watching, but have I done anything with query fan out quite yet? No, no, not quite yet.
Jon Clark (25:18)
Hahaha.
Mm-hmm.
There's a great one with Mike King and Rand Fishkin from like, yeah, yeah, that's a really good one. As Mike does, he always gets quite technical, but I think he really breaks down some useful insights Definitely move that one to the top of your list if it's not there.
Bianca (25:37)
Yes, that's the one that's on my list.
IPullRanks, that big monstrous guide that they released this past summer on like LLM visibility, that helped me a lot with the AEO playbook I made in my last role for sure.
Jon Clark (25:59)
For sure,
absolutely. On the social side, have you used like psychological signals or anything like that from those threads to also inform, I don't know, either keyword research or the way the content is structured?
Trying to understand if someone is looking for health issue and they're trying to find a solution for that. It could be fear-based, it could be a caregiver looking for someone. So you're trying to understand like what's the...
Bianca (26:21)
Yeah.
I honestly had not been looking at it that way. That sounds like a fabulous way to be looking at it. so I'm taking no. ⁓ I have her book. ⁓
Jon Clark (26:28)
the motivation, like the driver for the search, or what is it that would evoke a positive emotion if they found a solution? Like, are you thinking about that at all as it relates to the content production or the content creation?
I stole that from Talia, so just...
Bianca (26:53)
⁓ right, right over there. ⁓ So I'm sure I can, yeah, that's, that's pretty cool. But no, I haven't that, that, that's an excellent point of actually.
Jon Clark (26:58)
sure that's in there, yeah.
You talked a little bit about getting beyond traffic as the primary KPI. Aside from conversions, are there any other signals that you're paying attention to as it relates to performance?
Bianca (27:16)
Yes, not to get too drilled into conversions, but assisted conversions, perhaps. I also think, like, on-page behaviors that maybe have kind of lost their sexiness over time, maybe, or maybe there's
Jon Clark (27:22)
Yeah, sure. Sure, sure.
Mm-hmm.
Bianca (27:31)
There's some merit in revisiting them. Like time on page even, like just to get an assessment of user behavior on your site. I know like as leadership and whatnot becomes even more and more interested, understandably so in AEO and LLM visibility, there's a lot of different metrics that are arising out of that, like brand citations,
and brand sentiment, which I think is really important trying to understand because that's like something that's so, it's like you want to have control over the narrative. So that's really important as well. But yeah, still to me, think any KPI that in some way or another influences the business, so like that could
Jon Clark (28:01)
Right. you
Bianca (28:11)
be sign up, submissions,
anything like that is still top of mind for me. But I'm also keeping top of mind those newer, more directional KPIs that are coming from LLM Visibility as well.
Jon Clark (28:24)
Got it, got it. I wanted to quickly, on the AEO side, are you thinking a little bit differently around the content structure? So you mentioned, you know, creating a brief that takes into you know, legal considerations, things like that. I'm sure you're also saying, you know, we want FAQs or I don't know, the hero image this way. From an AEO perspective, are you thinking about the structure of the page differently at all?
Bianca (28:40)
Yes.
Jon Clark (28:48)
I don't know, schema, FAQs, like the way they're embedded into the page. about the approach to content in light of AEO that maybe you weren't doing, I don't know, a year ago, two years ago?
Bianca (28:59)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Again, like that, that long, long guide that Mike King put out, that really helped me with shaping the playbook for my last role. And like one of the things was a pilot for like 30 or so net new briefs, net new content, article, net new articles. And they were all structured based off of this new brief that I And it was
Jon Clark (29:15)
Mm-hmm.
Bianca (29:23)
very centered on those things, you know, answer first,
Jon Clark (29:24)
you
Bianca (29:26)
summary at the top, chunking, little standalone paragraphs that can live on their own without any context outside of it. like those things as well. But also like, you know, that emphasis on more structure within the page, like tables and whatnot.
But like all of these are, a lot of these are just, of course, things that have existed within SEO for a long time. But I think it's just more so a buttoning up. I don't know. It's almost like just trying to make sure that your T's are crossed and your eyes are dotted in a way with some of this. But yeah, no, ⁓ definitely top of mind, making sure that like the structure is
there and is at its best. That's more top of mind than, yeah, it was a year ago for sure.
Jon Clark (30:07)
I mean, it's so interesting.
A lot of this stuff has been preached as just good UX and good best practices forever. And content was, I don't want to call it lazy before, but you didn't have sort of AEO sort of lens to like layer on top of the recommendation. And now you can say, well, it's good for LLMs. And they're like, oh, great. Yeah, let's make a table. So it's, it's kind of nice to that evolution.
Bianca (30:14)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Jon Clark (30:33)
I know we're bumping up against time, so why don't we jump to some rapid fire work for you? All right. So you sit down at your desk. What's the first metric that you check every morning?
Bianca (30:43)
It rhymes with I don't want to sound like a dead horse, but what is it called? Not a dead horse. What is this? Whatever. don't know. Yeah.
Jon Clark (30:46)
I love that.
Yeah, yeah, beating a dead horse.
OK, what's the second one?
Bianca (30:58)
Okay, I guess traffic. Yeah, I guess traffic.
Joe (31:00)
I just want to talk a little bit more. I have a rapid fire, but I need a little setup because of all the time you spent with HubSpot. It seemed like that SEO team was massive. Like one of the biggest teams I've ever like at one point the SEO content team alone was like over 20 people. I I read. So like, like you must've learned so much in that huge group. I guess like what, what kind of
Bianca (31:16)
Mm. Mm-hmm.
Joe (31:23)
Career advice would you give someone like a young person just graduating who's trying to get into SEO right now?
Bianca (31:29)
I'm trying not to make it like super, cause like the first thing that comes to my mind is be curious, but that's so generic, right? But like.
I think trying to get into the agency space is really helpful.
Be okay with failing because it's gonna happen. Most of the lessons I've learned have been hard learned and they were learned very early on in my career and a lot of them were learned in an agency setting. Do not be afraid of like the worst case scenario because sometimes the worst case scenario happens and you're like, dang, the worst case scenario just happened and that was bad, but hey, I'm still here. And yeah, be curious like
constantly asking questions within your org. Maybe you don't have to physically ask them, but in your head asking them like, why is this happening or why are we doing this or what would happen if we did this? And just like constantly questioning things, not in like a disruptive way, like, you know, like a hmm, curious way, you know? And I've grown to love so much about
Jon Clark (32:15)
Thank
Bianca (32:20)
SEO is just the community aspect of it. Get into the community. And I think if you're genuinely curious, that will open the doors for you to become a member of the community. Maybe start off with LinkedIn or Twitter, not Reddit, Reddit's a bit of lawless land sometimes. But yeah, those would be
Jon Clark (32:38)
What about speaking? You've been speaking a ton for someone who wants to get started in presenting or anything like that. Any tips for someone who's looking to get on stage for the first time?
Bianca (32:46)
Thank
Yeah. Yeah. So I started off just like commenting on things, and then like tentatively making posts. And then, someone asked me to be on their podcast and it kind of just started to snowball from there. So I guess don't be afraid to make LinkedIn content, even if it feels cringy.
Don't be afraid to comment on
Jon Clark (33:08)
you
Bianca (33:09)
LinkedIn posts, even if it feels cringy, but don't like use And don't be scared to ask for a chance to be on a podcast. Cause I feel like if you shoot your shot and you have like a case or what, it won't be too hard. Or there's an opportunity there to do it.
Joe (33:27)
You've been involved in the improv community in Chicago for five or six years now. I imagine that experience has just made you a more confident public speaker. This might be a yes or no question, but I'm curious if you think a beginner's improv class would be a good group for a company. No, Jon said no.
Bianca (33:32)
Yes.
Yes.
I mean, as an improviser. Okay. No, I don't think, listen, I don't think that. I think, I think. An improv class and a class like going to an improv class as opposed to in a corporate setting. like in a corporate setting, you're all forced to do it. And you're like, my God, what is lunch? Like, what the heck? What are we doing? So like, no, it's good. Like you're already set up for failure. Like if you go on your own accord to an improv class, I think you're more likely to enjoy it.
Jon Clark (33:50)
Yeah.
Joe (33:52)
I'm asking for a friend, not just for me.
So watch a show, bring the company to watch a show. Maybe you're inspired after watching it.
Bianca (34:20)
Something like
Jon Clark (34:21)
had a roommate a couple of years ago when I was living in the city who
did that and we went to like his end show, right? You sort of like go through the class and then you have like one big show that's open to the public and that looked terrifying. So I have a lot of respect for people who can just get up and, riff like that. think it's, that's not for me. What's the question you wish people would ask that no one ever does? Like you go on a podcast, what do you?
Bianca (34:39)
Thank
Jon Clark (34:45)
What are you sort of hoping that someone's gonna ask, but they just never do?
Bianca (34:48)
I feel like.
when I'm listening to podcasts, I think it's really humanizing to hear people talk about failure. So maybe like a big failure that you've done or that you've experienced. I think that's a very yeah, yeah. Yes. Yes, I can.
Jon Clark (35:04)
Can you think of one?
Hahaha
Can you hear it? Yeah, exactly.
Bianca (35:12)
Hahaha!
Joe (35:13)
That's the hard part, you gotta be ready to share it.
Bianca (35:16)
Yeah, I share this. I had an interview the other day and I shared this in the interview. of my first projects I pitched when I was at HubSpot website glossary. I was like, oh, OK, it's going to be like, it'll give passive back links. was one of those things where I just didn't properly scope the project.
I saw that other websites had created a glossary and I saw that their backlink profiles were incredible for it. But I just didn't do my due diligence. And before I knew it, this thing just had a mind of its own. They're in the studio making a video for it. Oh God. This page is still live and the video is on there, you, like, Google website, I don't even know if it's ranking up. Website glossary terms or whatever.
Jon Clark (35:47)
Thank
Bianca (36:00)
But yeah, the goal was to have the link building team push it out to get some initial links going. And I had spoken with them, but I hadn't, again, done my due diligence in over-communicating the expectations of the project or whatever. so by the time the page was live and stuff, I went to them and was like, hey, ready to promote this page? they're like, but this page doesn't like this content, like has no search volume. There's no real merit in us
building some backlinks to this and very, very strong, you know, very strong rationale on their end. And I was like, well, shit, that's a great point. So there's this page that last time I checked does still live on the HubSpot blog that has a great video that was made. It's on the YouTube channel. I think maybe it's unlisted, but it never really did anything for the company.
I just learned right there how important it is to, even if an idea seems like a good one, how important it is to scope it out, ⁓ how important it is if you have people that you're going to be working with who are going to be a large part of that project, how important it is to make sure that you're on the same page with them.
Jon Clark (37:00)
I mean, the page is still live, so it never fell below that 20 % threshold, all right? All right, last question. What's one habit that sort of separates a good content strategist from, I don't know, just someone
Bianca (37:02)
Hahaha
No.
Jon Clark (37:16)
who's maybe starting out?
Bianca (37:17)
I think you got to have some degree of like an ability to do like data I'm not like, I still have so much to learn when it comes to data analysis and stuff, and like, I think since my time at HubSpot, that skillset has, I got to strengthen it again. But I think it empowers you so much to be able to see raw data and to find like,
legitimate correlations or like legitimate tie-ins and to create a story around that and to tell your stakeholders, to tell your teammates. I think there's so much power in that, and like to prove the worth of your work or to prove what didn't work. Like I think data storytelling is really important in some capacity for content strategists.
Jon Clark (37:52)
I love that we talk with our team broadly about, you know, telling stories through data and presentations and good and bad, right? it's a incredibly valuable skill. Bianca, this has been amazing. Please let our listeners know where they can find you. Are you speaking anywhere coming up or podcasts or anything that people can tune in for?
Bianca (38:10)
I am speaking places coming up. I don't know if I met Liberty to say yet. So it's a, I have a Twitter that I don't really post on, but follow me anyway. @BinksdoesSEO and, I have a new LinkedIn page for my non licensed LLC, called Stellar Search Signals so follow that too. And yeah.
Jon Clark (38:14)
Okay.
Amazing, we'll put all that in the show notes. You haven't migrated over to Blue Sky yet?
Bianca (38:35)
No, I have not. I'm sorry.
Jon Clark (38:36)
You and a lot of other people, I'm sure. Thanks so
much again for joining us on the Page 2 Podcast. And if you enjoyed the show, please remember to subscribe, rate and review. We'll see you next time. Bye bye.