AI search attribution is tricky, but you can still tell the story based on directional metrics. And you can relatively easily measure SEO performance.
With Semrush, you can locate both AI search and SEO metrics and put together a report that shows the full story. This article shows you how to do just that in a few ways.
Step 1. Choose Your Metrics
Choosing the right metrics allows you to build an SEO report that clearly conveys how you're tracking toward your business goals.
The best reports focus on a handful of core metrics that answer critical questions:
- Are we generating leads, conversions, or purchases?
- Are we visible to our target audience on search and AI platforms?
- Do we have more visibility than our close competitors?
- Does our visibility translate to conversions?
- Are people engaging with our brand?
- Are we seen as trustworthy and authoritative?
Avoid overwhelming stakeholders with too many charts or vanity metrics. The strongest reports focus on a small set of metrics that clearly tie back to revenue, demand, or brand visibility.
Think of your metrics in tiers, based on how close they are to business value.
- Tier 1: Primary KPIs—Pick one or two metrics as your key performance indicators (KPIs) that directly reflect business impact (e.g., conversions, assisted revenue, and qualified leads from organic search and AI traffic)
- Tier 2: Secondary Metrics—Choose a few more metrics to add context that explains why your KPIs moved (e.g., SEO rankings, AI citations, share of voice, and engagement)
- Tier 3: Supporting Metrics—Keep track of other relevant signals to understand more about what’s working
Choose KPIs Related to SEO and AI Search Visibility
For your SEO and AI search KPIs, consider a metric that directly shows how visibility contributes to the business. Like:
- Organic traffic conversions
- AI referral conversions
- Organic and AI referral traffic to purchase pages
- Revenue from organic and AI referral traffic
Some of these KPIs can be found in your Google Analytics 4 (GA4) by setting up proper event tracking.
Then, you can report on your GA4 events with My Reports (Semrush’s PDF report builder).
To track new leads from AI search, self-reported attribution can reveal AI-influenced conversions that don't show up as AI referral traffic—like when someone finds your brand in ChatGPT but visits your site directly later.
Add a simple "How did you hear about us?" form to your site with an option for customers to say they found you from AI search.
Choose Secondary Metrics to Show your Overall Search Visibility
Next, consider additional metrics that show the overall picture of your search visibility (both traditional search and AI search). These are meant to show directional insights that give more context as to why your KPIs are going up or down.
Some metrics for AI search and SEO you can track include:
- AI Visibility Score (this is a Semrush metric)
- Keyword rankings
- AI citations
- AI mentions
- Share of voice (for SEO)
- Share of voice (for AI search)
Use Domain Overview to get high-level metrics for AI visibility, organic keyword rankings, AI citations and mentions, and more.
To measure share of voice with Semrush, use Position Tracking for SEO and Brand Performance for AI search.
You’ll be able to use these metrics to tell the story behind whether you’re meeting performance expectations.
Choose Supportive Metrics to Further Understand Performance
Finally, you can consider additional metrics that provide even more insight into your SEO or AI search performance.
Metrics like backlinks, branded mentions, and AI sentiment all factor into how your brand performs on search engines and AI platforms.
In Semrush, you can track the following metrics:
- Backlinks: Find your total backlinks and referring domains in Backlink Analytics
- Branded mentions: See how often your brand name is mentioned across the web with the AI PR Toolkit
- Site Health: Measure your site’s technical SEO and AI search health with Site Audit
- AI sentiment analysis: Understand the sentiment behind conversations about your brand when it gets mentioned in AI platforms with Brand Performance.
Step 2. Build Your Report
To build your report, we’ll show you two options:
- Using Semrush My Reports for streamlined report creation with drag-and-drop widgets
- Using a Google Sheet for fully customized report with a bit more manual work
Option 1: Build It in Semrush My Reports
You have two ways to use My Reports:
- Build a custom report from scratch
- Build a report from a ready-to-use template
Both options allow you to drag and drop widgets with Semrush data, Google Analytics data, images, formatting, and a lot more.
Helpful templates to start with include:
- AI Brand Performance: To measure your brand’s share of voice and sentiment in a specific LLM like ChatGPT and get actionable insights
- Visibility Overview: To measure a domain’s overall AI visibility with metrics like your AI mentions, most-cited pages, and estimated monthly audience
- AI Traffic Report:To get GA4 data that measures the behavior of AI-driven visits to your website
Whether you choose a template or start from scratch, you’ll want to add some widgets, screenshots, and annotations to make a comprehensive report.
Drag and Drop Relevant Widgets
Start by adding your primary KPIs to the report, such as with the Google Analytics widgets.
If you’re using metrics from Google Analytics, connect your Google Analytics account to pull in traffic, conversions, and key events.
All Google Analytics widgets can be adjusted for any traffic source, meaning you can single out conversions and activity for a specific source. And compare sources side by side.
- For SEO performance, filter for organic traffic
- For AI search performance, filter for AI referral traffic
- For performance driven by brand awareness, filter for direct traffic
Here’s what that could look like, with widgets to track sessions, engaged sessions, and session key event rate across organic, AI referral, and direct traffic sources:
Note that direct traffic helps reveal the indirect impact of your AI visibility that isn’t captured as AI referral traffic.
For example, someone might see your brand name mentioned in a ChatGPT response or AI Overview, then later visit the site directly after exploring your brand elsewhere. That visit would register as direct trafficin Google Analytics.
You can also drag in supporting metrics from available Semrush tools like Site Audit.
Add Screenshots for Additional Insights
Next, add in more context with screenshots from tools that don’t have a dedicated drag-and-drop widget.
Focus on adding charts or tables that indicate which direction your visibility is trending, and if you’re on the right track.
For metrics without pre-set widgets (For example, AI Visibility Score), take screenshots to add to your report. Just click the “Image” widget from the report builder and drag it into your report.
With one screenshot from Domain Overview, you can include many high-level SEO and AI search metrics in one screen. Or, break it up into separate sections with their own headings and screenshots:
Add Text Commentary After Metrics
After adding images and charts—add context with a few lines of text for each section.
Include commentary that explains what changed, why it changed, and what it means for the business.
Adding commentary to a report transforms data into a story execs can understand and that you can act on.
Option 2: Build It in a Google Sheet
If you’re not ready to use My Reports or want more customization, use a Google Sheet to track all your metrics over time.
Here’s a basic template you can use:
Each month, just find the corresponding metric from Google Analytics, Semrush, and any other tools you use to update your report.
Step 3. Share Your Report with Stakeholders
Automate monthly report emails for yourself, clients, or your leadership team.
Just remember to update screenshots manually each month — widgets auto-refresh, but images do not.
In My Reports, you can share the report with the green “Generate PDF Report” button.
Choose your preferred format: online dashboard or emailed PDF. Then, choose the automated timing to schedule your report.
In Google Sheets, you can manually export your report each month and send it as an email attachment when reporting. Or, use a plug-in like Mail My Sheets to automate this process.
Where to Find SEO and AI Search Metrics
You'll need data from multiple platforms to build a complete picture of your SEO and AI search performance.
Here's where to find your key metrics:
- Google Analytics 4: Track conversions, leads, revenue, and traffic by source
- Google Search Console: Monitor impressions, clicks, and average position for your organic search performance
- Semrush Organic Research: Find all your keyword rankings, top-10 ranking positions, and organic visibility metrics from Semrush's database
- Semrush Brand Performance: Measure your AI Share of Voice and sentiment across AI search platforms. Track how often your brand appears in AI-generated answers compared to competitors.
- Semrush Domain Overview: Get high-level metrics for AI Visibility Score, AI mentions, cited pages, keyword rankings, and organic traffic estimates in one dashboard.
- Semrush Position Tracking: Track daily keyword and prompt rankings to monitor your visibility over time
Start Reporting on Your SEO + AI Search Results
Once you’ve collected all of these baseline metrics for your first month, update your report. If you opted to use a Google Sheet, it should look something like this:
Now you have your starting benchmarks.
As you work on improving your brand’s visibility, just update your metrics each month.
Make a copy of this free template or build with Semrush My Reports to get started today.