Garrett Sussman: Inside SEO Week. She’s back. Binks is back. Bianca Anderson is the growth strategist, stellar search signals, and she is coming in for round two of SEO Week. Thank you for joining me today. Binks, how are you doing?

Bianca Anderson: I’m doing great. It feels so good to be back. I loved SEO Week last year. It was so fun. 

Garrett: Oh my God. Your presentation was like the most called out presentation in our exit interview survey. Everyone was like, I love Bianca’s presentation. It was so good. And so no pressure at all. Like, no, but I know you’ve got some cool ideas. I’m not blowing up your spot, but tell me, let’s dive into it. A lot’s happened since SEO Week last year. Tell me, what is top of mind for you in AI search?

Bianca: Yeah. Top of mind for me is what’s going on internally in orgs and the soft skills. Soft skills are what’s top of mind and how teams can work together to make the ecosystem nature of AEO a reality. So that’s not to get right into my talk, but maybe to get right into my talk. 

Garrett: Yeah, give us a peek! Give us a peek of what you’re thinking. 

Bianca: So for context, like Eli Schwartz released, he has this awesome weekly newsletter called Future of SEO. It’s so good. If you’re not subscribed, you should be subscribed to the folks listening. But a few weeks ago, he sent out this email that talked about where should budget be allocated or who should be responsible for budget in a world where so much of the success of an LLM campaign or AEO campaign is reliant on ecosystem. Llike how your site, your company is showing off, showing up, outside of its own site. And so there were like, there’s this like really nice table that he released in this email. And it had seven functions and then like the main team responsible and then like the supporting team. And these functions included things like, of course, like semantic relevance and PR and social, like appearances in forums like Reddit. But out of all of these functions that aid in AEO, only two were predominantly, as it stands, considered under the direct purview of SEO. Everything else was considered to be technically a supporting role with SEO. 

And I think in a world like that, there’s so many implications because I think in spite of that, I think we all can agree as SEOs and digital marketers, maybe we’re biased. But SEO, AEO, we’re very well placed to have, like, a leading voice when it comes to AEO in terms of owning performance, owning metrics, owning strategy for it. But it’s very obvious that so many of the levers that are needed to have a successful strategy are not in our direct control. And so I think that that means that there’s so much importance in creating very strong working relationships with the people who do have direct control over these functions. And so that’s really what I’m thinking about because I think cross-functional relationships or like the human nature of business can sometimes be the more complicated aspect of it. Because humans are humans and there’s a lot of nuance there. 

And so that’s something that’s top of mind for me. I think it’s a skill set that is something you always need to fine tune. It’s so dependent on context and whatnot. And so my talk really talks about some tactics or what I’ve found in the past to be really helpful in creating those stronger relationships and getting work shipped when you don’t necessarily own the workflows directly. 

Garrett: It is so relevant because marketing is so holistic. AI search has tapped into all of it and it makes a lot of sense. And it’s really hard. Like, you will start to be able to see the structures of large businesses and the way that they put their marketing team and also connected to product and everything else, who does work together and how that, like, lifts up the entire business. Because there are a lot of silos, the bigger you get, the more bureaucratic it is, it’s hard as hell. 

What do you think the, the implications are for SEO over the next like six to 12 months? Like what, how do you think that’s going to impact the way we look at that channel over the next year? 

Bianca: Um, in terms of how it’s going to impact that channel. Um, sorry, that, sorry, sorry, Garrett. Uh, the question is how…

Garrett: The direction of SEO over the next year with it being so holistic, what do you think it looks like in six months?  

Bianca: Yes, in an ideal world uh, I think that in six months there’s, there would be, like, genuine progress towards breaking silos. There would be a genuine effort to identify those teams that are closely related to the functions that are really necessary for LLM visibility. I think that a lot of that, some of that, might have to come from top up, top down to get that restructuring, but I think that long term, having less of a siloed view of how digital marketing works in general, would help with the overall outcome of these AEO initiatives. 

Garrett: Very good. Okay. So completely independent of the relationships and how you’re building an internal SEO program, what do you think Google is going to look like? What do you think SEO is going to look like in the next six months? Are we sticking with a slow transition to AI mode? Are we going all into AI mode? Do you think SEO will look fundamentally different? What’s like, crystal ball it for us? What are your predictions? 

Bianca: Yeah, I mean, I’m at the camp and I think the camp’s continuously getting bigger that Google’s monopoly over search is just so large that it’s just not going to lose it. And so with that said, my eyes are more trained or more focused on AI Mode. I think it’s so clear that Google is slowly but surely pushing AI Mode as the default mode of search. So for me, I’m just kind of expecting, I wouldn’t be surprised any day now for that to be the case for it to truly become that. So yeah, I see that being the case where AI Mode is some form of it, I think, you know, we’ve had so many iterations, we continue to have so many iterations of it shown to us – but some iteration of it becoming the default mode of search, I could definitely see within the next six months, for sure. But still seeing other LLMs like ChatGPT continuing to gain popularity. But I think that Google’s monopoly on search is incredibly just so large and deeply embedded in the culture of things that that’s going to persist. And as such, AI Mode is definitely, when it comes to AEO and stuff, that’s the biggest disruptor in my mind, like something to watch out for in the next six months. 

Garrett: I love that. And so we talked about the soft skills. We talked about the kind of prediction of SEO. I’m going to throw you a little bit of a curve ball, but right now I feel like people in our industry need to continually, like, upskill and educate themselves. What are some of the skills that you’re either focusing on for yourself or you recommend other SEOs really, like, focus on to be prepared for what’s coming?

Bianca: Yeah. Well, I think that when it, so outside of the soft skills, I think that there’s still a lot of merit in the traditional technical SEO skills. So I myself am upskilling in that. I am taking a course by, gosh, Christina. Thank you. I am taking a course for her. She has a tech SEO Pro course. I don’t know. I just feel like the way that LLMs parse and scan content, I think it’s just becoming more and more of a leverage to have more technical insight, and I’ve just never been a technical SEO. I’ve always been more content focused and whatnot. And so that’s a soft spot for me personally. And so I think that, I think a more holistic approach to SEO would be helpful in terms of upskilling. So knowing what gaps you have as an SEO when it comes to the whole function and then going from there. So for me, that’s technical SEO. 

But I think there’s also merit if for you, you’re a technical SEO, but you don’t have much experience with off-page because citation building, there’s so much overlap between that and backlinks, I think there could be merit and upskilling within that. So I think that being more of a holistic SEO, there’s merit in that in this landscape with all that’s going on. with LLMs. But yeah, for me personally, I am upscaling currently with technical SEO, but also just continuously using ChatGPT or other LLMs to familiarize yourself with them. That’s something else that I’m upscaling with. I’m still in the very early, kind of rudimentary phases with that, but eventually want to start building more workflows and things with that. But yeah, I think trying to find the gaps that are preventing you from being at least like a, you don’t have to be a master of all niches of SEO, but I think having a little bit of something in each niche will go a long way in understanding how to show up in both traditional search and LLMs. 

Garrett: I completely agree with that because it’s like you don’t necessarily need to be an expert. We only have a finite amount of time to learn our stuff. That said, we hear this controversy of you can’t just offload your thinking elsewhere. And so understanding SEO, so it’s not a situation where you don’t know what you don’t know – at least you kind of know, so you can ask the right questions. It makes sense to have that foundation. 

Okay. Take me back. Last year, you were at SEO Week. It felt like a seminal moment. What were some of your most valuable, enjoyable memories from the conference last year? 

Bianca: Oh, my God. I mean, I had so many. I just found SEO Week to be such a fun, it was such a fun, sleek, cool – it was simultaneously such a cool conference, but also such a down-to-earth one. Like, it had such a cool metropolitan, I mean, I love New York City, such a cool metropolitan vibe. But everyone was still, everyone, every single person I met was so down-to-earth and so willing to share their ideas. I mean, I enjoyed the talks. I loved Talia’s talk on, like, humanizing the whole idea of conversion optimization. I think that that’s something that that whole that idea of humanizing your strategy, whether that be for conversion optimization or SEO, that’s something I’m very passionate about as well. And so to see that within the context of something that I don’t do as often in my day to day was really, really cool. So that was a highlight – and meeting Talia like, we we still do monthly – ever since we met we do monthly uh catch-ups on zoom so I consider her to be a dear friend now. And so that’s incredible that a conference led to that. 

I also just enjoyed the the opportunities to network with people, and I was gonna not say it but the Busta Rhymes, I gotta say, yeah! 

Garrett: It was, oh my god, all the the parties were great, yeah. Like conversations…I’m so  glad that we got to meet at such a fun time. Talking to you, same with Talia, like, spending time with her – she she’s like has another conference the same week but she just emailed me the other day she’s like “I’m gonna miss you guys,” I was like, I’m gonna miss you too this year! 

What are you excited about? Like, what can you not wait for for SEO Week and why should someone get tickets? 

Bianca: I think, I think what was so exciting about SEO Week was so many of the talks were so timely, but like timely in a way, like timely and also ahead of their time. You know what I mean? Like, I don’t know, like, like Ross’s talk on, on Reddit forums. I feel like that’s become even more of, of a discussion point in the last year or so. So it’s just really cool to see how the talks mature over the months that followed. And so I think I’m excited to just get that next round, that next foundation of talks, of forward thinking talks that will inevitably mature and that I can see mature against the times and help with my own work. If that makes sense. 

Garrett: Yes, no, absolutely. I mean, so for those of you who haven’t gotten tickets, definitely make sure that you purchase them. It is the end of April, the 27th to the 30th in New York City. I’m not even going to blow up Binks’s theme for her talk this year, but let’s just say it’s not space. She’s going in a different direction. It’ll be totally geeky nonetheless. It’ll be geeky. It’ll be geeky. Get your tickets. Thank you so much for joining me, Bianca. This has been awesome. 

Bianca: Thank you. 

Garrett: My name’s Garrett. See you at SEO Week in April. Peace.