Create a SEO + AI search marketing report [+ Template]

Now that you’ve done the optimization work to get your product found in Google search and social media AI, you may be wondering how to report your results to your leads.

AI search attribution is tricky, but you can still tell a story based on guiding metrics. And you can easily measure SEO performance.

With Semrush, you can get both AI search and SEO metrics and put together a report that shows the full story. This article shows you how to do that in several ways.

Step 1. Choose your metrics

Choosing the right metrics allows you to create an SEO report that clearly shows how you’re tracking your business goals.

The best reports focus on a few key metrics that answer key questions:

• Are we generating leads, conversions, or purchases?
• Are we visible to our target audience in search and AI platforms?
• Do we have more visibility than our closest competitors?
• Does our visibility translate into conversion?
• Are people engaging with our product?
• Are we seen as trustworthy and authoritative?

Avoid powerful stakeholders with lots of charts or useless metrics. The most robust reports focus on a small set of metrics that are clearly related to profitability, demand, or product visibility.

Think of your metrics in categories, based on how close they are to business value.

• Phase 1: Basic KPIs-Choose one or two metrics as your key performance indicators (KPIs) that directly show business impact (e.g., conversions, organic revenue, and qualified leads from organic search and AI traffic)
• Section 2: Secondary metrics-Choose a few other metrics to add context that explains why your KPIs have moved (eg, SEO rankings, AI citations, share of voice, and engagement)
• Section 3: Supporting metrics-Follow other relevant signals to understand more about what is 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 is impacting the business. Like:

• Modification of biological traffic
• AI transmission modification
• Organic and AI referral traffic for shopping pages
• Income from organic and AI referral traffic

Some of these KPIs can be found in your Google Analytics 4 (GA4) by setting up the appropriate 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, the self-reporting attribute can reveal AI-influenced conversions that don’t reflect AI referral traffic—like when someone finds your product on ChatGPT but visits your site directly later.

Add a simple “How did you hear about us?” form to your site with the option for customers to say they found you in 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). This is intended to show guiding information that provides more context as to why your KPIs are going up or down.

Some AI and SEO search metrics you can track include:

• AI Visibility Score (this is a Semrush metric)
• Keyword rankings
• AI quotes
• The AI ​​is talking
• Share of voice (for SEO)
• Voice sharing (for AI search)

Use Domain Overview to get top-level AI visibility metrics, organic keyword ranking, AI citations and attribution, and more.

To measure share of voice with Semrush, use SEO Location Tracking and Product Performance in AI Search.

You’ll be able to use these metrics to tell the story of whether you’re meeting performance expectations.

Choose Supporting Metrics to Better Understand Performance

Finally, you can consider additional metrics that provide more insight into your SEO or AI search performance.

Metrics like backlinks, branded mentions, and AI sentiment all impact how well your product performs on search engines and AI platforms.

In Semrush, you can track the following metrics:

• Backlinks: Get your total backlinks and referring domains with Backlink Analytics
• Brand 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 product when it is mentioned in AI forums for Product Performance.

Step 2. Create your report

To create your report, we will show you two options:

1. Using Semrush My Reports with simplified report creation with drag and drop widgets
2. Using a Google Sheets with a fully customizable report with more manual work

Option 1: Build in Semrush My Reports

You have two ways to use My Reports:

• Build a custom report from scratch
• Create 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 more.

Helpful templates to start with include:

1. Product performance of AI: To measure the share of your voice and emotion product in a specific LLM like ChatGPT and get actionable insights
2. Overview: Measuring AI site visibility with metrics like your AI mentions, most cited pages, and estimated monthly audience
3. AI Traffic Report:Getting GA4 data that measures the behavior of AI-driven visitors to your website

Whether you choose a template or start from scratch, you’ll want to add some widgets, screenshots, and annotations to create a complete report.

Drag and Drop Important Widgets

Start by adding your main KPIs to the report, such as Google Analytics widgets.

If you’re using metrics from Google Analytics, connect your Google Analytics account to pull traffic, conversions, and key events.

All Google Analytics widgets can be adjusted for any traffic source, meaning you can isolate conversions and activity from a specific source. And compare sources side by side.

• For SEO performance, the filter of organic traffic
• With AI search functionality, filter the AI referral traffic
• For operations driven by brand awareness, filter the direct traffic

Here’s what it might look like, with widgets to track sessions, sessions held, and event key session rate across environments, AI referrals, and direct traffic sources:

Note that direct traffic helps to generate the indirect impact of your AI exposure which can be captured as AI referral traffic.

For example, someone might see your product name mentioned in a ChatGPT or AI Overview reply, and then later visit the site directly after checking out your product elsewhere. Those visits will register as direct traffic for Google Analytics.

You can also drag and drop supporting metrics into Semrush’s available tools such as Site Audit.

Add screenshots for more details

Next, add more context with screenshots from tools that don’t have a dedicated drag-and-drop widget.

Focus on adding charts or tables that show where your visibility is trending, and if you’re on the right track.

For metrics that don’t have preset widgets (For example, AI Visibility Score), take screenshots to add to your report. Just click on the “A photo” widget from the report builder and drag it into your report.

With a single screenshot from the Domain Overview, you can include multiple SEO and AI search metrics on one screen. Or, divide it into different sections with their titles and screenshots:

Add comment text After the metrics

After adding pictures and charts—add context with a few lines of text for each section.

Include comments that explain what changed, why it changed, and what it means for the business.

Adding comments to a report transforms the data into something that subject matter experts can understand and 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, simply get the corresponding metric from Google Analytics, Semrush, or any other tools you use to update your report.

Step 3. Share your report with stakeholders

Automate your monthly report emails, clients, or your leadership team.

Just remember to manually update the screenshots every month — widgets update automatically, but images don’t.

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, you choose a default time to schedule your report.

In Google Sheets, you can manually generate your monthly report and send it as an email attachment when you report. Or, use a plug-in like Mail My Spreadsheets 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 search AI 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 the average location of your organic search performance
• Semrush Organic Research: Get all your keywords, top 10 rankings, and organic visibility metrics from Semrush’s database.
• Semrush Product Performance: Measure your AI share of Voice and Sentiment across all AI search platforms. Track how often your product appears in AI-generated responses compared to competitors.
• Semrush Domain Overview: Get top-level AI Visibility Score metrics, AI mentions, cited pages, keyword rankings, and organic traffic rankings in one dashboard.
• Semrush Position Tracking: Track daily keyword and speed rankings to monitor your visibility over time

Start Reporting on Your SEO + AI Search Results

Once you’ve collected all of these basic metrics for your first month, review your report. If you chose to use a Google Sheet, it should look like this:

Now you have your first benchmarks.

As you work to improve your brand visibility, simply review your metrics every month.

Make a copy of this free template or build one with Semrush My Reports to get started today.