In this Kitchen Side episode of The Long Game Podcast, Alex Birkett and the team unpack a question that’s coming up more and more: who actually “owns” being found in AI search—and what AI visibility means for modern marketing teams. They explore why the “AI is killing SEO” debate misses the point, and how AI search is collapsing traditional channel boundaries while changing how buyers discover brands.

They also dig into what’s actually being cannibalized (undifferentiated, consensus content), how teams should rethink success metrics as clicks get harder to track, and what the velocity vs. quality debate looks like now—especially as some teams bet on subject-matter depth while others bet on scaled output with AI-assisted production.

Key Takeaways

AI isn’t “killing SEO” so much as reducing the value of undifferentiated, consensus content that used to earn easy traffic.
Losing traffic doesn’t automatically mean losing business value—teams should validate impact through conversions, leads, and pipeline, not sessions alone.
AI visibility is increasingly a composite outcome of everything a company publishes and does (content, comms, brand, product, reviews, community, and customer experience).
Measurement is getting harder as discovery shifts to “dark” channels (e.g., AI tools) and attribution breaks—teams may need new proxies and self-reported attribution.
“Listicles dominate AI citations” may be partly a prompt and sampling bias problem—inputs strongly shape outputs and visibility reporting can be manipulated.
The hardest visibility problem is higher up the funnel: influencing problem-aware searches before buyers even know what category or solution to ask for.
Content teams are splitting into different bets: deep, SME-led quality (often from people who’ve done the job) vs. high-velocity production supported by AI.
A modern in-house writer role trends toward “jack of all trades” output (research, PR-like writing, CEO comms, etc.), using AI to lower marginal cost without collapsing quality control.

Show Links

Connect with David Khim on LinkedIn and Twitter
Connect with Alex Birkett on LinkedIn and Twitter
Connect with Allie Decker on LinkedIn and Twitter
Connect 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 SEO

Should 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/

Who Owns AI Visibility?