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The Long Game

The Long Game

Written by: David Ly Khim Allie Decker Alex Birkett
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The Long Game shares personal and business success stories where long-term thinking triumphs. Join us for discussions about the frameworks, principles, and learnings that drive success in business.2024 Omniscient Digital, The Long Game Economics Leadership Management & Leadership Marketing Marketing & Sales
Episodes
  • Three Dinosaurs Talk AEO (with Benji Hyam & Devesh Khanal)

    Three Dinosaurs Talk AEO (with Benji Hyam & Devesh Khanal)
    Sep 23 2026
    In this episode of The Long Game Podcast, Alex Birkett sits down with Benji Hyam and Devesh Khanal, co-founders of Grow and Convert, to separate what's real from what's noise in AI search optimization. Drawing on their work with 100+ brands and their own AI visibility tracking data, they challenge popular narratives around listicle penalties, Reddit citations, and one-size-fits-all GEO tactics.They discuss how personalization and context-rich prompts make AI search fundamentally different from Google, why long-form content is losing its role in the buyer's journey, and the rise of cold inbound leads who arrive with no prior connection to the brand. The conversation also covers why positioning, reputation, and on-site source material matter more than mass third-party mentions, why attribution is getting harder as marketing becomes multi-channel, and how brands need to rethink where they earn attention.Key TakeawaysSelf-promotional listicles are not penalized by default; the widely cited examples involved thousands of AI-generated pages with misleading claims, while human-written, category-relevant comparison content has stayed stable through Google updates.Aggregate citation studies overweight Reddit and Wikipedia because their datasets skew toward high-volume consumer queries, whereas Grow and Convert found 86% of citations for B2B buying prompts came from industry-specific sites.YouTube shows up in citations across B2B clients far more often than the industry discusses, making video a real opportunity for reaching buyers.Roughly 80% of sources cited by LLMs in Grow and Convert's research ranked in Google for ordinary keywords with search volume, which suggests SEO fundamentals still drive much of AI visibility.AI summaries strip out the differentiated arguments that used to win readers over, producing cold inbound leads who compare several vendors on deliverables and need to be educated on your point of view during the sales process.Personalization means the same prompt can return entirely different recommendations for different users, so prompt-tracking tools cannot capture many of the moments where a brand actually wins a lead.Positioning and voice-of-customer research are now root-level requirements, because content on topics outside your core category can weaken the brand associations LLMs form about you.Hyper-specific, pain-point content lets smaller brands beat incumbents in AI search, and there is no 301 redirect for LLMs, which makes rebrands, pivots, and reputation fixes much harder than in traditional SEO.Holding a defined experimentation budget with expected-value thinking keeps low-cost tests like FAQs separate from expensive bets like newsletter sponsorships that rarely justify their cost.Third-party mention strategies work best when they back into the specific topics and sites that influence your category, while strong on-site source material is both more persuasive and more defensible against inaccurate claims.Show LinksVisit Grow and ConvertConnect with Benji Hyam on LinkedInConnect with Devesh Khanal on LinkedInConnect with Alex Birkett on LinkedIn and TwitterConnect with Omniscient Digital on LinkedIn or TwitterDescriptionPast guests on The Long Game podcast include: Morgan Brown (Shopify), Ryan Law (Animalz), Dan Shure (Evolving SEO), Kaleigh Moore (freelancer), Eric Siu (Clickflow), Peep Laja (CXL), Chelsea Castle (Chili Piper), Tracey Wallace (Klaviyo), Tim Soulo (Ahrefs), Ryan McReady (Reforge), and many more.Some interviews you might enjoy and learn from:Actionable Tips and Secrets to SEO Strategy with Dan Shure (Evolving SEO)Building Competitive Marketing Content with Sam Chapman (Aprimo)How to Build the Right Data Workflow with Blake Burch (Shipyard)Data-Driven Thought Leadership with Alicia Johnston (Sprout Social)Purpose-Driven Leadership & Building a Content Team with Ty Magnin (UiPath)Also, check out our Kitchen Side series where we take you behind the scenes to see how the sausage is made at our agency:Blue Ocean vs Red Ocean SEOShould You Hire Writers or Subject Matter Experts?How Do Growth and Content Overlap?Connect with Omniscient Digital on social:Twitter: @beomniscientLinkedIn: Be OmniscientListen to more episodes of The Long Game podcast here: https://beomniscient.com/podcast/
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    1 hr and 22 mins
  • Kitchen Side: The Price of Certainty

    Kitchen Side: The Price of Certainty
    Sep 10 2026
    In this Kitchen Side episode, Alex Birkett and David Khim unpack the volatility of AI search, from citation drift and the sudden Reddit citation drop to why chasing every new AEO tactic is both exhausting and, often, a losing game.They explore how to build durable brand visibility upstream of any single citation source, the difference between expertise and tools in the age of AI, and a decision philosophy rooted in capping downside risk, preserving optionality, and making intelligent bets with asymmetric upside.Key TakeawaysCreating a perception of ubiquity through repeated exposure is the same underlying play across SEO, AEO, and PR, essentially the mere exposure effect applied to search surfaces.Citation sources turn over fast, roughly 50 percent month over month in their own analysis, so optimizing only for currently cited URLs means chasing a moving target.Rather than targeting individual citation sources, brands should optimize for the probability of adding more of their own marbles to the urn, a path-dependent advantage that compounds over time.For brands with near-zero AI visibility, almost any mention on an influential surface compounds, so early-stage effort should focus on tactics and outreach.As brands mature, the leverage shifts upstream to things that make citation sources irrelevant, like great customer experience, original research, and shipping products worth talking about.Original research does not need to be a 30-page report; quick surveys and single-chart studies can spark conversation and earn citations with far less effort.The Reddit citation drop matters less than whether a brand's ICP is genuinely active there, since Reddit stays valuable as training data and a decision-influencing surface regardless of citation metrics.Chasing whatever is trending on LinkedIn is a paper-hands strategy; durable growth requires a long-term hypothesis and a genuine point of view that daily data should not override.The real value of an experienced partner over AI plus a content team is judgment, knowing what to ignore, spotting risk, and debating a client out of detrimental moves.People systematically overweight improbable, low-impact downside and miss asymmetric upside; capping the downside through experiments and expected-value thinking lets you take high-upside bets without risking everything.Show LinksConnect with David Khim on LinkedIn and TwitterConnect with Alex Birkett on LinkedIn and TwitterConnect with Omniscient Digital on LinkedIn or TwitterWhat is Kitchen Side?One big benefit of running an agency or working at one is you get to see the "kitchen side" of many different businesses; their revenue, their operations, their automations, and their culture.You understand how things look from the inside and how that differs from the outside.You understand how the sausage is made.As an agency ourselves, we're working both on growing our clients' businesses as well as our own. This podcast is one project, but we also blog, make videos, do sales, and have quite a robust portfolio of automations and hacks to run our business.We want to take you behind the curtain, to the kitchen side of our business, to witness our brainstorms, discussions, and internal dialogues behind the public works that we ship.Past guests on The Long Game podcast include: Morgan Brown (Shopify), Ryan Law (Animalz), Dan Shure (Evolving SEO), Kaleigh Moore (freelancer), Eric Siu (Clickflow), Peep Laja (CXL), Chelsea Castle (Chili Piper), Tracey Wallace (Klaviyo), Tim Soulo (Ahrefs), Ryan McReady (Reforge), and many more. Some interviews you might enjoy and learn from:Actionable Tips and Secrets to SEO Strategy with Dan Shure (Evolving SEO)Building Competitive Marketing Content with Sam Chapman (Aprimo)How to Build the Right Data Workflow with Blake Burch (Shipyard)Data-Driven Thought Leadership with Alicia Johnston (Sprout Social)Purpose-Driven Leadership & Building a Content Team with Ty Magnin (UiPath)Also, check out our Kitchen Side series where we take you behind the scenes to see how the sausage is made at our agency:Blue Ocean vs Red Ocean SEOShould You Hire Writers or Subject Matter Experts?How Do Growth and Content Overlap?Connect with Omniscient Digital on social:Twitter: @beomniscientLinkedIn: Be OmniscientListen to more episodes of The Long Game podcast here: https://beomniscient.com/podcast/
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    49 mins
  • Kitchen Side: The Internet Has a Memory

    Kitchen Side: The Internet Has a Memory
    Aug 12 2026
    In this Kitchen Side episode, Alex Birkett and Allie Decker unpack what actually makes content valuable in the age of AI, moving past the tired debate over human versus AI-produced content to the deeper question of how companies should measure quality at all. Drawing on decision theory and the idea that almost anything can be measured, they argue that production method matters far less than whether a piece teaches something new and lands with the people it is meant for. They explore AI visibility as a kind of digital brand recall, why sentiment and context matter more than raw share of voice, and how incumbents and startups face very different battles in shaping their narrative across the web. The conversation also digs into why brands no longer own their own story, the compounding risk of building exposure in the wrong category, and why a human QA layer grounded in real customer understanding is the one part of the content system that should never be automated. Key Takeaways The debate over AI-produced versus human-produced content misses the deeper question of how to define and measure content quality in the first place.Almost anything can be measured if a decision carries uncertainty and risk, including fuzzy concepts like brand affinity or customer experience, by breaking them into concrete, quantifiable components.Measurement is only worth doing when the cost of collecting it is lower than the value of reducing uncertainty, and when you will actually act on the result.AI visibility works like a digital brand recall survey, but raw visibility is meaningless without understanding the context and sentiment in which a brand is mentioned.Segmenting prompts by ICP and buying stage reveals visibility gaps that aggregate scores hide, such as a brand appearing at 40 percent overall but only 4 percent for enterprise queries.Brands no longer own their own narrative, because if the rest of the web contradicts a company's website, LLMs treat the external consensus as the truth.Incumbents with high domain authority have an SEO advantage but face a harder AEO battle, since years of press, mentions, and third-party content are slow and expensive to re-steer.Startups can win by getting specific for narrow prompts and buying-journey stages, but building heavy exposure around one positioning creates risk if they later pivot.AI content programs fail because of weak systems, not the AI itself, so the durable model is human strategy up front, AI in the middle, and a human QA layer at the end.Customer understanding is the last defensible advantage, and the one part of the content system that should stay human is the empathy to judge whether a piece will actually land. Show Links Connect with Alex Birkett on LinkedIn and TwitterConnect with Allie Decker on LinkedIn and TwitterConnect with Omniscient Digital on LinkedIn or Twitter What is Kitchen Side? One big benefit of running an agency or working at one is you get to see the "kitchen side" of many different businesses; their revenue, their operations, their automations, and their culture. You understand how things look from the inside and how that differs from the outside. You understand how the sausage is made. As an agency ourselves, we're working both on growing our clients' businesses as well as our own. This podcast is one project, but we also blog, make videos, do sales, and have quite a robust portfolio of automations and hacks to run our business. We want to take you behind the curtain, to the kitchen side of our business, to witness our brainstorms, discussions, and internal dialogues behind the public works that we ship. Past guests on The Long Game podcast include: Morgan Brown (Shopify), Ryan Law (Animalz), Dan Shure (Evolving SEO), Kaleigh Moore (freelancer), Eric Siu (Clickflow), Peep Laja (CXL), Chelsea Castle (Chili Piper), Tracey Wallace (Klaviyo), Tim Soulo (Ahrefs), Ryan McReady (Reforge), and many more. Some interviews you might enjoy and learn from: Actionable Tips and Secrets to SEO Strategy with Dan Shure (Evolving SEO)Building Competitive Marketing Content with Sam Chapman (Aprimo)How to Build the Right Data Workflow with Blake Burch (Shipyard)Data-Driven Thought Leadership with Alicia Johnston (Sprout Social)Purpose-Driven Leadership & Building a Content Team with Ty Magnin (UiPath) Also, check out our Kitchen Side series where we take you behind the scenes to see how the sausage is made at our agency: Blue Ocean vs Red Ocean SEOShould You Hire Writers or Subject Matter Experts?How Do Growth and Content Overlap? Connect with Omniscient Digital on social: Twitter: @beomniscient LinkedIn: Be Omniscient Listen to more episodes of The Long Game podcast here: https://beomniscient.com/podcast/
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    57 mins
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