SEO teams are being warned they must prove clear commercial value or risk losing budgets as AI continues to reshape digital marketing and wider business operations.

The topic was discussed on a recent episode of the SBC podcast iGaming Daily, hosted by SEO expert Ivana Flynn and featuring Andrew McGarry, Head of SEO at PowerPlay, who said the industry has spent too long focusing on technical tasks without linking activity to revenue growth.

McGarry argued that SEO strategies should now be built around forecasting business impact, similar to the approach used in paid media.

“You consider yesterday, former Twitter CEO Jack (Dorsey) announced there that they’re letting 4,000 people go because they can replace them with AI,” McGarry said. “The thing I would say to anyone listening is it’s never been more important to be able to not only celebrate your wins but be able to visibly show them.”

He explained that many SEO teams still struggle to justify budgets because they fail to present realistic forecasts tied to acquisition targets such as First Time Depositors (FTDs).

Instead of focusing on the value of individual technical fixes, McGarry said teams should use historical performance data to model potential uplifts and show executives what growth is realistically achievable.

The discussion also looked at SEO planning around major events such as the FIFA World Cup. McGarry warned operators against chasing heavily saturated search terms already dominated by major publishers and media companies.

Rather than producing content purely for traffic, he said operators should calculate whether projected search volumes can generate enough conversions to justify the investment.

AI-generated content was another focus of the episode, with concerns raised that Google is increasingly de-indexing low-quality and repetitive pages.

McGarry said operators need to prioritise original, opinion-led and data-driven content to maintain rankings and hit performance targets.

The podcast also highlighted the importance of collaboration between SEO, development, UX and content teams. McGarry noted that shared KPIs and collective responsibility are key to maintaining support for SEO projects across a business.