In this episode of The Long Game Podcast, David Ly Khim interviews Michael Walrath, CEO and Chairman of Yext. Known for building and exiting multiple companies—including RightMedia and Moat—Michael shares how Yext evolved from a local lead-gen platform to a digital presence powerhouse. He dives deep into the fragmentation of search, the shift toward generative engines, and the rise of “agentic” AI-powered experiences. With candid reflections on strategy pivots and digital transformation, Michael urges marketers to rethink discoverability, measurement, and structured content in an era where your next customer might not be human, but an AI assistant making decisions on their behalf.

Key Takeways

• Yext’s Strategic Pivots: The company evolved from call-based lead gen to local visibility, to enterprise search—each requiring bold but risky reinvention.
• Google Dominance Has Peaked: With 92%+ of search traffic once flowing through Google, that landscape is now fragmenting due to LLMs and AI agents.
• Structured Data Drives Discovery: Clean, contextualized data remains a marketer’s best lever for visibility—whether on Google or in LLM-powered engines.
• Brand Visibility Beats SEO Rankings: As AI agents answer more queries, brands must optimize for visibility across platforms, not just search engine results pages.
• The Agentic Web Is Coming: AI assistants with memory and context will handle more decision-making—marketers must build for both humans and machines.
• AI Shifts Are Already Here: Yext observed traffic shifts 6+ quarters ago—marketers should act now, not wait, to influence AI results.
• Reframing Attribution: Zero-click answers and agentic transactions require a shift from traditional web metrics to outcome-focused measurement.

Show Links

• Visit Visit Yext on Linkedin and X
• Connect with Michael Walrath on LinkedIn
• Connect with David Khim on LinkedIn and Twitter
• Connect with Omniscient Digital on LinkedIn or Twitter

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/

In this episode of The Long Game Podcast, Alex Burkett interviews Logan Freeman, Global Head of SEO at ManyChat. Together they explore the evolving landscape of SEO in the AI era, particularly the rise of GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) and how it’s changing everything from keyword strategy to attribution modeling. Logan shares tactical approaches for optimizing content for LLMs (large language models), including using FAQ schemas, focusing on off-page visibility, and thinking like a product marketer. They discuss how brand mentions are now more powerful than backlinks, why traditional SEO tools fall short for GEO, and how Logan approaches measurement when attribution is nearly impossible. The episode also explores LLM perception, off-site trust-building, and creative ways SEOs can future-proof their strategies by merging content, digital PR, and product

Key Takeaways

• SEO vs. GEO: Traditional SEO focuses on keywords, while GEO requires optimizing for hyper-personalized, conversational queries used in LLMs.
• LLM Perception Is Real: How AI models “perceive” your brand based on off-site mentions can limit (or expand) your visibility in AI answers.
• Brand Mentions > Backlinks: In the world of AI search, brand visibility across trusted platforms outweighs classic SEO signals like links.
• SEO as Product Marketing: SEOs must deeply understand users and position content like a PMM would—focused on problems, personas, and differentiation.
• Dark Attribution Is Growing: Most traffic influenced by LLMs doesn’t click through—making measurement harder and more reliant on referral glimpses and qualitative insights.
• Go Beyond On-Page Optimization: Embedding schema, FAQs, and latent questions can increase the odds of being cited in LLMs.
• Get Creative with PR: To influence LLM results, you may need broad digital and traditional PR campaigns that shift how your brand is referenced across the web.

Show Links

• Visit Manychat
• Connect with Logan Freedman on LinkedIn
• Connect with Alex Birkett on LinkedIn and Twitter
• Connect with Omniscient Digital on LinkedIn or Twitter

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/

In this Kitchen Side episode of The Long Game Podcast, the Omniscient Digital team reflects on one key question: “What should we automate?” The discussion unfolds into a broader examination of agency culture, strategic thinking, and the nuanced costs of automation. They share personal experiments—from HARO email parsing to multi-agent PR systems—and debate the tradeoffs between saving time and losing essential context, mentorship, and learning. The team also explores how AI tools can be both empowering and distracting, and why automation shouldn't come at the expense of human development, team connection, or communication that builds trust. It's a thoughtful, candid look at what AI can't (and shouldn't) replace.

Key Takeaways

• Automation Isn’t All or Nothing: Not everything needs full automation—sometimes it's just about streamlining small, repeatable parts of a process.
• Human Touchpoints Still Matter: Automated communication can lack the warmth, accountability, and nuance of a genuine human message.
• AI Can Undermine Learning Opportunities: Over-automation risks removing hands-on work that builds junior talent and deep strategic expertise.
• Remote Culture Needs In-Person Balance: Offsites help rebuild alignment, context, and emotional connection that remote work alone can't deliver.
• Effort Signals Care: Taking the “harder” route—whether writing by hand or reviewing raw data—can demonstrate thoughtfulness and create deeper understanding.
• Small Talk Has Strategic Value: Informal conversation often reveals insights and context that structured meetings miss.
• AI Is Best as an Assistant, Not a Replacement: Tools like Fireflies or ChatGPT are useful for transcription and ideation, but real clarity comes from processing ideas manually.

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.

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/