Koozai Couch: Interview with Sean Barber

Welcome back to Koozai Couch, our interview series where we speak to people from across digital marketing about the ideas, tools and changes shaping the industry.

For our second interview, we spoke with Sean Barber, SEO Manager at Macmillan Cancer Support and Host of Search with Sean, about the attention being given to AI search, the tools helping him understand performance and why SEO professionals could have a more important role than ever.

Sean also shares what he’s been watching lately and where he believes digital marketing could be heading over the next 12 months.

The Interview

For each Koozai Couch, we ask the same five questions to get a quick but useful snapshot of what people across digital marketing are seeing, using and rethinking.

Here’s what Sean had to say.

1. What’s one thing the industry is getting completely wrong right now?

I think many are getting too distracted by AI in search. Although it should not be ignored, I feel people may be forgetting the fundamentals, mainly learning from customers, understanding their needs and offering the best product or service possible.

From there, it is about getting the basics right, such as indexability, crawl budget, reducing website friction points and improving overall technical performance.

 2. What tool or resource has genuinely changed how you work lately?

Lately, I have really enjoyed using the Ahrefs MCP connector within ChatGPT.

We have also been using Profound, which is giving us some really interesting insights into our AI search performance.

Finally, Botify has been fascinating to use, especially being able to understand how different bots are crawling and interacting with our site.

3. What’s a take you’ve changed your mind on in the last 12 months?

This is something I talk about quite often on the channel, but when all the AI search changes started happening and traffic began to decline, I questioned the future of those working in SEO. However, as things have developed, I now believe we have a more important role than ever before.

Our role will be to guide businesses through this new AI search landscape, help shape strategies and educate other teams across organisations about the part they play in improving visibility, trust and overall digital performance.

4. What are you reading, watching or listening to that others in digital should know about?

First off, I would recommend checking out InsideAI, Majestic’s SEO in 2026 series and Vanessa Windgard.

Then, as I spend most of my time editing, I am going to make a shameless plug for my own channel.

Some recent videos worth checking out include an e-commerce panel show we hosted, a Real Talk With Sean episode featuring the likes of Mordy Oberstein and Dawn Anderson, plus recent interviews with Louisa Frahm, Gianluca Fiorelli, Myriam Jessier, Dixon Jones and Rejoice Ojiaku.

5. Where do you think digital marketing is heading in the next 12 months?

I am hoping the industry starts to get things in order and helps clean up some of the mess across the internet, where content being created genuinely adds value and everything indexed is high quality. The opportunity to manipulate results needs to continue to reduce.

It is clear that brands now need to step up their reputation management, and channels such as SEO, paid, social, UX and communications will need to become much more aligned throughout the entire customer journey.

I can see Google continuing to integrate more AI elements, potentially including more agentic experiences such as completing actions like signing up for events. I think OpenAI may face challenges as they continue trying to find a sustainable and profitable business model.

Reporting and attribution will remain difficult, and teams will need to focus on a combination of directional metrics mapped against bottom-line business outcomes to understand overall performance.

Thank you, Sean!

A huge thank you to Sean for joining us on the Koozai Couch.

His answers are a useful reminder that, while AI is changing how people search, successful digital marketing still starts with understanding customers, getting the fundamentals right and bringing teams together around meaningful business outcomes.

Enjoyed this interview? Catch up on our first Koozai Couch interview with Erin Simmons, where Erin discusses trust, community and why doing less can sometimes support growth.

Would you like to feature on the Koozai Couch? Get in touch and tell us what your answers would be. We’d love to hear from you.