If you’re looking for fresh numbers you can paste into a slide and defend in your budget/RFP meetings, this is the place for you.

We pulled the most recent, B2B-specific stats and organized them around the most important things in B2B SEO.

Below are the stats worth citing in 2025.

• The average conversion rate for organic search is 5.0%. (Ruler Analytics)
• 27% of marketers who can identify a top channel cite organic search as #1. (Binary Demand)
• B2B SaaS SEO shows ~702% average ROI with ~7‑month break‑even across a 3‑year window. (First Page Sage)
• Organic traffic typically produces lower CPL ($147) than paid search ($280) in SaaS. (First Page Sage)
• Google sends 345x more traffic to websites than ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity combined. (Ahrefs)
• 96.98% of clicks happen in the top 10 search results. (Ahrefs)
• 45.7% of Google searches are branded. (Ahrefs)
• AI Overviews reduce clicks to websites by 34.5%. (Ahrefs)
• 26% of brands have zero mentions in AI Overviews. (Ahrefs)
• 28% of ChatGPT’s most-cited pages have zero organic visibility in Google search. (Ahrefs)
• AI search platforms prefer to cite content that is 25.7% fresher than content cited in traditional organic results. (Ahrefs)
• The top 50 brands appearing in AI Overviews account for 28.9% of all citations. (Ahrefs)
• 76% of AI Overview citations are pulled from the pages, ranking in Google’s top 10 organic results. (Ahrefs)
• ChatGPT has driven AI traffic growth to websites almost single-handedly, growing 85% since January. (Ahrefs)
• ChatGPT is the top AI referrer, accounting for over 80% of AI traffic to websites. (Ahrefs)

AI may have changed the game for SEO, but great technical health still matters. If you can’t be crawled or indexed, you can’t appear in Google or other LLMs.

• 55.6% of SEO professionals say technical SEO is often undervalued. (TripleDart)
• 40% of B2B companies say they lack the internal expertise needed to manage technical SEO. (Statista)
• 78% of websites use some form of schema/markup. (W3 Tech)
• 80% of B2B buyers are using mobile at work, and more than 60% report that mobile played a significant role in a recent purchase. (BCG)
• Around 40% of websites now pass all Core Web Vitals thresholds. (Addy Osmani)

• 46% of B2B marketers think their content marketing budget will increase in 2025. (Content Marketing Institute)
• 40% of B2B marketers say their biggest challenge in content marketing is conversion. 39% say it’s resource constraints, and 33% say it’s measuring content effectiveness. (Content Marketing Institute)
• 87% of marketers use AI to help create content. (Ahrefs)
• AI content is 4.7x cheaper than human-written content. (Ahrefs)
• Companies spend an average of $188 per month on AI tools for content creation and marketing. (Ahrefs)
• 51% of companies plan to increase their spend on AI-generated content. (Ahrefs)
• Marketers using AI publish 42% more content: the median monthly publishing frequency using AI was 17 articles, compared to 12 for those not using AI. (Ahrefs)
• Blog posts are the most common type of AI-generated content (87%). Brainstorming (76%), outlining (73%), and content updates (67%) are the top AI-assisted SEO tasks. (Ahrefs)
• 48.6% of SEOs believe digital PR is the most effective tactic for 2025. (Buzzstream)
• The average cost of a high-quality or top-tier guest post is $692 – $957. (Buzzstream)
• 95% of B2B decision makers say that strong thought leadership makes them more receptive to sales and marketing outreach. (Edelman-LinkedIn)
• 51% of B2B decision makers say that high-quality thought leadership helps them convince C-level executives to support their choice of vendor. (Edelman-LinkedIn)
• 79% of B2B decision makers say that during the RFP process, they’re more likely to advocate for proposals from companies that consistently produce high-quality thought leadership. (Edelman-LinkedIn)

Buying cycles are longer, yet buyers are making shorter lists and buying from their preferred vendors.

• 61% of B2B buyers prefer a rep-free buying experience; 73% actively avoid suppliers that send irrelevant outreach. (Gartner)
• Shortlists are shrinking: 45% of buyers had 4 to 7 products on their shortlists in 2023, but 49% had 1 to 3 products in 2024. (G2)
• 34% of B2B buyers say that research is the longest stage in their buying process, but AI power-users are less likely to focus on it. (G2)
• 31% of B2B buyers consult review sites more often than other sources. (G2)
• B2B customers use an average of ten interaction channels in their buying journey (up from five in 2016). (McKinsey)
• Only 5% of B2B customers are “in-market” at any time. (LinkedIn)
• 81% of B2B buyers report having a preferred vendor on first outreach. (Demand Gen Report)
• The average buying group has grown to include at least 10-11 stakeholders. (6Sense)
• The typical B2B buying cycle now spans 11.5 months. (6Sense)
• 71% of buyers went with their first choice product after creating their short list. (TrustRadius)

Final thoughts

These B2B stats point to the same direction: Despite the growth of AI, organic search still remains a primary discovery and conversion channel. So, while you’re focused on gaining more AI visibility, don’t forget the basics.

SEO is still important.

Just how stable are AI Overviews? If you manage to get your brand mentioned or cited in them, can you take the rest of the month off? Or do you have to fight for ongoing visibility? 

To find the answers, our data scientist, Xibeijia Guan, analyzed over 43,000 keywords—each with at least 16 recorded AI Overviews—over the course of a month.

She extracted this data from Brand Radar, our new AI visibility tool that tracks hundreds of millions of prompts and queries across seven different AI assistants.

The results reveal a surprising paradox in how Google’s AI operates—a constant state of change on the surface, but a deep, underlying stability.

The content of the AI Overviews we studied changed drastically over the month of our analysis.

In fact, we found that AI Overviews have a 70% chance of changing from one observation to the next.

This is known as the “Pointwise Change Rate”, and is calculated by dividing the number of changes observed by the number of consecutive pairs.

# of change observed/ # of consecutive pairs

• Number of consecutive pairs: The total number of times we compared two sequential AI Overview responses for the same search query.
• Number of changes observed: A count of how many of those comparisons resulted in the AI Overview content being different from the previous version.

Here’s an example of that flux in action.

Below are two AI Overviews for the query “renters insurance”, captured two minutes apart in incognito mode.

For easy comparison, one is in light mode…

And the other in dark mode…

It’s immediately obvious that the phrasing and content of each overview is different.

For instance, the opening paragraph of the dark mode AI Overview lists out the types of events that renters insurance covers (e.g. fire, theft, or flood)…

Whereas the light mode AI Overview focuses more on whose responsibility it is to obtain renters insurance…

Other differences include the use of examples, the level of detail, and the overall structure.

Our research revealed that AI Overviews have a persistence of 2.15 days on average, meaning their content tends to change every 2.15 days.

Since our checks weren’t daily, it’s likely that the real citation change rate is even higher.

To illustrate this, here’s an example of the query “Best protein powder”, captured in Ahrefs’ SERP Overview tool via Keywords Explorer.

Forbes and Fortune showed up consistently between October and November, but the third URL changed.

Initially, a Reddit comment about protein powders took second place, but a month later it was replaced by Fortune’s “best” list, and a new article from NBC on “protein shake safety” entered the third spot.

Here’s one more example for the query “renter’s insurance”—each AI Overview was captured just a week apart.

The first AI Overview returned three citations, but only two of those carried over to the second capture, where a further ten citations joined the list.

It’s clear that AI Overview visibility doesn’t follow the same consistency patterns as traditional search rankings.

Your brand can be cited today, and gone tomorrow.

Entity representation in AI Overviews is nearly as volatile as citations.

We define entities as specific, identifiable named items that appear in the text of the AI Overview—for example: people, organizations, locations, and brands.

Of the AI Overviews we studied, 37% contained entities—with each of those displaying roughly three entities per response.

By studying entity overlap, we were able to measure how often real-world information stays the same between two sequential AI Overview responses for the same search query.

The formula we used was:

# common entities / total entities consecutive pairs

• Common entities: This is the count of the named things (people, organizations, or locations) that appeared identically in both of the consecutive AI Overviews being compared.
• Total entities consecutive pairs: This is the total count of all unique entities found when you compare both sequential AI Overviews.

From this, we were able to calculate the percentage of named entities that remained consistent when the AI Overview changed—otherwise known as the “entity overlap”.

This worked out as 54%—or approximately 1 entity change for every AI Overview update.

Meaning that the remaining 46% experienced volatility—that’s just a .5% difference in flux vs. citations.

It could be a coincidence, but one theory is that Google regenerates URLs and entities at a similar rate.

This constant swapping of text, sources, and subjects means that you can often get a different AI Overview answer just by refreshing the page.

Here’s Despina Gavoyannis from our blog team experiencing exactly that…

While words are in constant flux, the underlying meaning of the AI Overview is incredibly consistent.

We measured the “Semantic stability” between consecutive AI Overview responses and found an average cosine similarity score of 0.95, where 1.0 represents a perfect match.

This score indicates an extremely high degree of semantic consistency.

It’s like asking two different experts the same question—you’ll get different wording, different phrasing, and maybe different examples, but the fundamental answer is the same.

My earlier “renters insurance” example proves this.

Though each AI Overview differed in length, language, and structure, they covered largely the same topics and themes—like personal property coverage, liability protection, and common exclusions.

In other words, AI Overviews are continuously rephrasing a stable, underlying consensus drawn from their sources—this is the nature of probabilistic large-language models.

They don’t change their “opinion” on a topic day to day.

The core message remains the same, even if the text, citations, and entities switch in and out.

Our CMO, Tim Soulo, had a theory that Google might cache AI Overviews belonging to popular keywords to save on computational resources.

In fact, his hypothesis sparked this whole study…

But the findings disprove this.

Firstly, we’d expect to see far more stability across AI Overview content if some were being cached.

But, as we already know, consecutive AI Overviews showed different content 7 out of 10 times.

Secondly, Xibeijia measured the actual relationship between a keyword’s search volume and its AI Overview change rate, and found a Spearman correlation of -0.014.

A correlation this close to zero indicates there is likely no relationship between the two variables—hugely popular search queries are just as likely to have their AI Overview text change as very niche ones.

So, it’s unlikely Google caches popular AI Overviews—at least based on our data.

Wrapping up

You can understand which themes AI ties to your brand using Ahrefs Brand Radar.

Just drop in your brand, and head to the “Topics” report. This will show you which themes individual AI responses ladder up to.

For example, Ahrefs is most closely linked to the topics of “SEO tools” and “SEO software” in AI Overview responses.

Tracking AI visibility over a volume of answers will also help you see past the variance of AI responses.

By focusing on aggregated visibility and AI Share of Voice, you can:

• See if AI consistently ties you to a category—not just if you appeared once.
• Track trends over time—not just snapshots.
• Learn how your brand is positioned against competitors—not just mentioned.

Winning the topic, not the query, is the best way to stay visible—even when AI answers are changing daily.

What triggers an AI Overview? What types of queries are most likely to generate an AIO, and which are relatively safe? Can we predict where AIOs will appear, and even target SERPs without them?

To answer these questions, we analyzed our database of 146 million SERPs and explored how often AI Overviews appeared for 86 different keyword traits, from YMYL to CPC to query length.

Across our data set, AI Overviews appear for 21% of keywords. But looking at specific keyword categories, some categories have as high as a 60% chance of triggering an AI Overview, and others as low as 1%.

• AIOs appear on 21% of all keywords.
• 99.9% of AIOs appear on Informational intent keywords
• AIOs are 1.9x more common for non-branded keywords than branded keywords
• AIOs appear on 46% of 7+ word queries
• AIOs appear for 57.9% of all question queries
• 44.1% of Medical YMYL queries trigger an AI Overview
• Only 6% of news queries trigger an AI Overview
• The categories with highest AIO share are Science (43.6%), Health (43.0%), Pets & Animals (36.8%), and People & Society (35.3%).
• The categories with lowest AIO share are Shopping (3.2%), Real Estate (5.8%), Sports (14.8%), and News (15.1%).
• Only 4% of NSFW queries trigger AIOs
• Only 7.9% of local searches trigger an AI Overview

Given that YMYL queries are—according to Google themselves—deserving of extra care and attention, it seems surprising to see AI-generated answers so prevalent.

In fact, AI Overviews are more common for YMYL queries than normal queries. 34.3% of all YMYL queries trigger an AI Overview, far higher than our 20.5% baseline. Non-YMYL queries are less likely to trigger AIOs, at just 17.2%:

All YMYL categories—Medical, Financial, Safety, Legal, and Other—show an increased occurrence of AI Overviews.

This is especially true for Medical YMYL queries, with 44.1% of medical queries triggering an AI Overview—more than double the frequency at which AI overviews appear across all keywords.

This has not gone unnoticed by SEOs in the healthcare industry:

As part of a bug bounty, Mark Williams-Cook found a series of query classifiers used by Google as part of their search systems. (Learn more here.)

All but one of these categories (other) are much more likely than average to trigger an AI Overview. At the extreme, 59.8% of all reason queries trigger an AI Overview, the greatest percentage of any category in this research.

Google acknowledges four types of user intent in its Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines:

• Know query, some of which are Know Simple queries
• Do query, when the user is trying to accomplish a goal or engage in an activity
• Website query, when the user is looking for a specific website or webpage
• Visit-in-person query, some of which are looking for a specific business or organization, some of which are looking for a category of businesses

99.9% of the keywords that trigger AIOs fall into the “Know” category, suggesting strong overlap between Know keywords and our definition of Informational keywords (which also account for 99.9% of AIO triggering keywords). Google seems unlikely to trigger AIOs for other intent types.

Do, Visit-in-person, and Website all trigger AIOs less frequently than the base rate, with Website queries returning them less than 1% of the time.

The Visit in person AIO rate is virtually on par with our Local queries category (7.1% and 7.9% AIO rate respectively); and the Website AIO rate is identical to our Navigational classification from earlier (both returning an AIO rate of 0.9%).

Final thoughts

An AI visibility audit provides a structured approach for search and brand teams to assess how their brand shows up on platforms like Google’s AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and Perplexity.

It measures where the brand is mentioned in AI search platforms, how often, how accurately, and based on which sources.

Here’s a step-by-step process for how you audit your brand’s AI visibility today.

1. Define the scope of your AI visibility audit 

Before benchmarking your AI visibility, start by defining exactly what you’re auditing and where.

This scope determines how consistent and comparable your data will be across platforms and time periods.

Here’s what to clarify:

• AI platforms: Which platforms will you include in the audit? (e.g., Google AI Overviews, Gemini, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Copilot)
• Entities: List all the brand entities and sub-entities to analyze, such as your company, products, authors, thought leaders, or executives.
• Regions and languages: Define geographic or linguistic scopes, especially if your brand operates internationally.

Listing this information upfront avoids inconsistent baselines when comparing visibility across different AI models or reporting cycles.

For example, there’s a difference between only tracking mentions of your main brand and tracking all connected sub-brands or entities as well. For Ahrefs, it could include:

Once your scope is defined, you’ll have a clear foundation for benchmarking and a repeatable structure you can use for future audits.

2. Benchmark your current brand visibility in AI search 

The next step is to assess your current brand visibility in search.

You can manually check your brand’s search visibility for free by:

• Asking similar questions as your customers on ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google.
• Comparing whether your brand appears in the AI responses, what’s cited, and how results differ.
• Checking monthly or quarterly to track visibility changes.

However, manual checks can’t scale and are easily skewed by model updates or personalized responses.

For consistent, comparable data, you can use a tool like Ahrefs’ Brand Radar to track visibility across multiple AI platforms in one go. Enter your brand and select the region you’d like to receive data for:

Take note of how metrics like your brand’s mentions, citations, impressions, and Share of Voice change across various AI search platforms:

• Mentions: The number of times your brand is mentioned in AI responses.
• Citations: The number of times your brand’s website is cited as a source in AI responses.
• Impressions: An estimation of exposure based on how often responses containing your brand are shown in search results.
• AI Share of Voice: How often your brand is mentioned in AI responses compared to competitors.

You can also benchmark whether people are searching for your brand in the Search demand tab:

This graph shows how branded search interest changes over time. A rise in search volume means more people are actively seeking your brand, while growth in search query count indicates users are asking a wider range of questions about you (from brand-level queries to specific product or feature searches).

Check out these metrics periodically to see how your brand’s visibility changes over time and to report the results of your optimization efforts.

3. Analyze branded AI responses for accuracy and sentiment 

Once you’ve gathered your benchmarks, it’s time to go deeper. Start by looking at all of the AI responses that mention your brand in the platforms you care about.

Navigate to the AI responses report, selecting the AI index you care most about to begin your analysis:

The responses will look like this in the dashboard, with bolded mentions of your brand:

Try using these filters to help make the analysis easier:

You can mix and match filters to deepen your analysis. Here’s a helpful guide with more filter combinations and tips worth trying out.

As you go through the responses, you’ll start to notice patterns about how AI mentions your brand.

For example, you might notice that your brand appears in a lot of comparative searches, but your content isn’t cited. This means that the AI platform sources information about your brand from competitors or third-party, neutral sites that have compared you to competitors.

Other patterns worth paying attention to include:

• Accuracy: Is your brand information in the response accurate?
• Sentiment and framing: Is your brand presented in a positive, neutral, or negative light?
• Differentiation: Are any unique attributes and positioning of your brand present in the response, or is it generic information?
• Authority: Is your brand presented as the lead mention with the most authority compared to others?
• Call-to-action: Does the response make you the recommended source to guide the user on the next step in their journey?

If you notice incorrect, outdated, or potentially harmful information about your brand, make a list of the queries, responses, and cited sources so you can overcome misinformation and brand inconsistencies.

Repeat this process for every AI search platform you want to analyze. You may notice that different patterns emerge for each platform.

4. Analyze AI visibility for unbranded queries and topic associations 

There are two types of analysis you can do here. The first is to search for your brand and filter out queries that do not contain your brand name. In the filter settings, set it to “Query doesn’t contain {your brand}”:

Then, analyze the Topics report to see what your brand is commonly associated with. You can see the exact responses about the topic that also mention your brand:

For example, Ahrefs is closely associated with SEO topics such as keyword research, backlinks, and website traffic. In most cases, if you’re visible in AI responses, the core topics you want to be aligned with will be reflected here.

But you can also follow through with the next step to help you identify topics you might be missing. Instead of doing a brand search, this time, only include the main topics you want to be found for:

It can help to analyze one topic at a time if there are a few you want to check out. Then use the filters to remove any results that mention your brand in the query, response, and citations.

Check out the Topics report again to find sub-themes you may want to connect to your brand. Look for gaps you’d like to close, like where your brand is:

• Not mentioned, but a competitor is
• Not strongly associated with important sub-topics in AI responses
• Missing content formats AI frequently cites (like guides, videos, reviews)

Then, you can close the gaps on your website by either publishing new pages or improving the topic coverage of existing ones.

You can use AI Content Helper for this. It analyzes your content and helps you identify essential topics to cover on each page.

5. Find your top-cited pages in AI responses 

Analyzing your brand’s top-cited pages reveals which content AI systems consider most authoritative, helping you understand, replicate, and expand the signals driving your visibility in AI search.

There are two ways to find your most popular pages that are cited in AI responses.

The first is to use a tool like Brand Radar, which shows you the exact queries and responses you’re cited for. The second is to analyze your page-level traffic from AI by using a tool like Ahrefs’ Web Analytics or GA4.

Check your top-cited pages in Ahrefs’ Brand Radar

Cross-check the top pages earning AI traffic in your analytics data

6. Identify your best brand mentions that enhance AI visibility 

A major aspect of earning brand visibility in AI is how others talk about your brand online. You can run a full audit to analyze your brand mentions everywhere people talk about you.

Doing this will give you a holistic idea of the language patterns and knowledge about your brand that AI is likely to include in responses about you.

If you’re working agency-side or just don’t have time to do the full process, try out this shortcut that will help you prioritize which online mentions to analyze first.

Run an empty search in Brand Radar and use the filters to only include the AI responses that mention your brand:

Then, check out the Cited pages report. You will get a list of all pages that AI cites for responses that mention your brand. For instance, Zapier and Reddit are frequently cited in responses that mention Ahrefs:

You can check out the responses themselves for an idea of how your brand was mentioned.

Then check out the content cited on these websites to see exactly if (and how) they mention your brand.

This analysis is useful for:

• Spotting your best web mentions and how they influence the way AI also talks about you
• Identifying misinformation in AI responses and tracking down the exact source
• Seeing what content formats are frequently cited in your industry (and publishing similar posts)
• Partnering with websites that frequently get cited and often mention you favorably
• Learning how people (and AI) position you against your competitors

This provides a prioritized list of web mentions that significantly impact how AI describes your brand. Replicate the best ones for quick-win visibility gains while also reaching out to those that may need updating.

Once you’ve identified these influential mentions, the next step is to find gaps you can close or opportunities your competitors have yet to tap into.

7. Compare your visibility to competitors to close gaps 

To benchmark your brand’s AI visibility against competitors, search your brand and then add one or more competitors like so:

You can also try out the AI suggestions to auto-populate your top competitors in AI search.

In the Overview tab, you’ll be able to compare your AI visibility directly to each competitor you entered. You can see each brand’s visibility metrics like mentions, impressions, citations, and AI Share of Voice for each AI search platform.

Hover over the platforms you care most about until you see this window pop up:

Each option will take you to a pre-filtered view of the AI responses report.

• Only brand: This report will show you queries and AI answers where the only brand mentioned is the one you’ve selected. It is great for assessing brand-specific queries and responses.
• With others: This report shows queries and/or responses that contain all the brands you’re comparing. It is great for assessing topics that are likely to mention you alongside competitors.
• Others only: This report shows queries that only mention the other brands you’re comparing against. It is great for finding topics that mention your competitors but not you.

Check out these reports periodically for insights into which competitors might be growing their AI visibility quickly.

If you add a topic as part of the main search, you can also hone in on any specific topics where competitors are mentioned but your brand isn’t.

Pay attention to the AI Share of Voice metrics to see who has the highest visibility share in responses about that topic.

It’s also worth checking out the Cited domains and Cited pages reports to identify the top sources mentioning each brand.

Look for websites that mention competitors more than you and see how you can increase your mentions within them, too.

There are numerous possibilities here, depending on which competitive insights matter most to your stakeholders.

8. Turn these insights into a strategy for AI visibility 

By this point, you’ll have a clear picture of how your brand appears in AI search: what’s working, where you’re absent, and how you compare to competitors. The final step is turning those insights into action.

Use your findings to prioritize next steps based on impact and effort:

• Fix: Correct misinformation or outdated brand descriptions
• Build: Expand content coverage for missing topics and formats that AI cites most
• Influence: Strengthen relationships with authoritative sites that AI relies on for citations

Depending on the task, you may need to collaborate with other teams to help you implement these actions. For example, if you have a PR team, they may be able to reach out to publications and correct misinformation about the brand in other people’s content.

If you need to seek approval before you can start implementing these actions, take the time to create a report for your stakeholders.

Download our free AI Visibility Audit Report Template if you don’t already have one. Replace all the pink sections and summarize your key findings in scorecards and quick snapshots of key points.

Finally, turn your audit into an ongoing cycle, ideally monthly if you have the bandwidth. Otherwise, quarterly will do.

With AI search platforms changing as quickly as they are, and competitors scrambling to win the largest share of voice, it’s worth checking your visibility frequently.

Record the same metrics as you did in step two so you can see how your visibility shifts over time.

Final thoughts

With the recent launch of our remote MCP server, anyone can now chat directly with Ahrefs data to get actionable SEO insights.

MCP, which stands for Model Context Protocol, is an open standard that companies can use to integrate their external tools and data with compatible AI assistants.

Imagine you’ve recently launched a new clothing brand and want to find eCommerce stores ranking well for the types of products you’ll sell— a common goal before reverse-engineering what makes them successful.

The standard Ahrefs interface enables you to look up any site to uncover things like the keywords they’re ranking for, their most linked-to content, and how overall search traffic is trending.

Our new MCP server, which integrates with popular AI assistants like ChatGPT and Claude, offers the ability to automate these and countless other processes to gain insights at scale.

Ask for advice as if you’re talking with a friend and, in this case, we now have a list of potential competitors to start investigating further.

Available on Ahrefs Lite, Standard, Advanced and Enterprise plans, you’ll now be able to tap directly into our API without needing to know how to code.

The only problem you might face is, “What should I ask next?”.

This guide aims to answer that very question.

Whenever I’m working on SEO projects for clients, I typically use multiple tools to perform similar tasks.

For example, I crawl websites using the Ahrefs Site Audit tool, Screaming Frog, and custom software.

My process for keyword research includes Ahrefs, Google Trends, Google Autosuggest, and manual checks of search results.

I learned early on that some of my best insights come from having multiple perspectives on related data. When you’re working on sites with tens of thousands or even millions of pages, it’s possible to miss finer details in one tool that stand out in another.

I view using the Ahrefs MCP server in a similar way: I gain new insights thanks to a different perspective that AI provides, and as a bonus, it enables me to scale operations that I already know how to perform.

It won’t (and shouldn’t) fully replace all manual checks and human intelligence.

At times, you’ll receive recommendations you’re already aware of, and like many AI assistants, it might make things sound simpler than they are in reality.

But it can also tell you about a cluster of uncommon keywords a site is ranking for that sparks an idea of how you can compete with your own take.

It will remind you that specific rankings a competitor has picked up are seasonal, and that it might be good to prepare content for the traffic “peak” coming in a few months.

It will inform you about the small niche site you initially overlooked which has ramped up content production in recent months and, from an SEO perspective, is getting results.

And if you’re still not convinced, chatting directly with Ahrefs data is just plain fun.

A note on set-up and prompting

Our MCP help docs provide the full details on how to link your Ahrefs account to your preferred AI assistant.

There are guides to five popular AI tools including Claude, ChatGPT, and Microsoft Copilot Studio. Alternatively, you can use our remote connection URL directly: https://api.ahrefs.com/mcp/mcp.

While you can get the same great functionality from the ChatGPT integration as Claude, MCP connectors are in beta in ChatGPT, and that’s noticeable at times.

I say this as a paying ChatGPT customer for years and a Claude one for just a few weeks, I much prefer the experience in Claude.

Tools don’t always know to use the Ahrefs MCP server versus searching the web, so it’s highly recommended that you’re specific about that, starting requests with “Use the Ahrefs MCP server” or “Using the Ahrefs MCP server,…”.

Assume that I may have had to add that to the following prompts if they didn’t route through the Ahrefs MCP connection automatically.

As a final note, your Ahrefs account level determines how many rows you can pull back for each request. 

15 prompt ideas across three levels of insights

Simple prompts can provide actionable responses in seconds, while others that require more data (such as analyzing the backlink profile of multiple sites) can take a few minutes to process.

Generally, the more in-depth your request, the more units you’ll consume and the longer it will take to finish your response.

Response time: typically under two minutes.

1. Identify sites growing organic search traffic in 2025

Note: This is just one part of the answer. Specific sites in the response are hidden to be respectful.

Prompt:

Using this list of 10 sites in my niche, tell me which have grown organic search traffic from January 2025 to September 2025: [Domains 1-10].

Your AI assistant will quickly look up the estimated organic search traffic each site received over the suggested timeframe.

It will also likely add commentary on overall growth percentages and any interesting stand-out months for a particular domain.

2. Discover the terms competitors rank on the first page of Google for

Prompt:

Tell me about the rankings [Competitor] has on the first page of Google that [My Site] doesn’t have first-page rankings for.

To approach this manually, you could use Ahrefs’ Competitive Analysis tool, with numerous specific filters to hone in on what you’re looking for.

If a simple overview is all you need, the MCP will quickly list terms you’re not ranking for compared to any competitors.

3. Find the most linked-to content on any site or subfolder

Prompt:

List the top 10 pages on [industry blog] ranked by how many links each has. Also include their estimated organic search traffic.

I like to look up how specific directories are performing — not just domains as a whole. For instance, finding the most linked-to articles on Ahrefs.com/blog/ provides very different insights from the overall Ahrefs website.

4. Find organic search competitors for any site

Prompt:

Give me a list of the closest organic search competitors for [My site, e.g. Docusign.com].

The Ahrefs API has a specific endpoint that shows organic search competitors ranked by the number of common keywords each site shares. We can use the MCP to tap into that.

In the example above, if we’re researching Docusign, we’ll get insights on sites like PandaDoc and SignWell.

You can perform this action manually in the Ahrefs Dashboard by going to Site Explorer > Organic Competitors.

5. Combine keyword research with blog post headline ideas

Prompt:

My business sells [product type, e.g. coffee tables], and I’m looking to research more blog post ideas. Help me find keywords that people use for research before making a purchase.

This prompt will pull data directly from Ahrefs’ keyword database, looking up informational, comparison, question-based, and similar query types relevant to your specific scenario.

Response time: typically 2-10 minutes.

6. Uncover trending keywords (and why they’re growing in popularity)

Prompt:

I’ve covered [my niche e.g. gardening] with a lot of evergreen content angles. Are there any trending terms closely related to my industry that you could recommend considering? Preferably up to 20 terms with the potential to increase in popularity in 2026.

The MCP can utilize Ahrefs Keyword Explorer to analyse relevant insights for each keyword, such as search volume over time, traffic potential, and keyword difficulty.

I specifically like the descriptions as to why a term might be increasingly popular.

7. Batch analyze specific domain insights (like Organic Traffic and Domain Rating)

Prompt:

Here’s a list of 20 sites in my niche [attach a file or type each domain]. Please create a table that includes their Ahrefs DR, Organic Traffic, and the number of keywords they’re ranking in the top 3 positions for in search results.

It’s often the case that I’ll have a list of sites to dive into, discovered through research outside of Ahrefs, on which I now want additional SEO-focused insights. The MCP helps to provide these at scale.

8. Structure content outlines using insights from keyword research

Prompt:

I’m writing a guide on [topic, e.g. the best travel backpacks]. Conduct keyword research to help identify key terms I should cover, then structure an example article outline using your findings. Keep it natural, rather than overly keyword-focused.

Combine keyword research with an AI assistant’s understanding of how articles are typically structured.

Our AI Content Helper can take this to the next level, but the MCP can provide a great starting point.

If you like, you can also request an analysis of top-ranking pages for relevant queries.

9. Discover the top-ranking sites across any group of keywords

Prompt:

Across this list of 20 different keyphrases relevant to my niche, tell me which sites rank for the most terms and in the best positions. [Include your keyphrases]

This prompt is great for quickly discovering the top sites in niches you aren’t already familiar with.

10. Find broken backlinks to any domain or URL path

Prompt:

Find broken backlinks pointing to any URLs under the following subdirectory: [e.g.nytimes.com/wirecutter/]. I’m specifically looking for individual URLs that receive the most links from other sites but don’t exist. Focus on high DR links, and just one per domain.

This prompt provides direct insights from the Broken Backlinks report we offer in Site Explorer. If you’re familiar with the filters we have in place (like only returning One link per domain), then you can easily enhance your prompts with more specifics.

Response time: two to 10+ minutes. The bigger the request (i.e., the more keywords, search results, or sites to analyze), the longer it will take.

11. Research international SEO expansion opportunities

Prompt:

I run a [business type, e.g. fashion marketplace] primarily for the US market. We’re looking to expand internationally. Please find up to 10 examples of similar businesses that expanded into other countries. Outline what they were, and how their organic traffic is trending in those countries.

The goal here is to identify the countries where competitors are ranking well, and the markets they haven’t targeted, to initiate the research process for future business decisions.

In this example, the MCP quickly checked international search traffic for brands such as UNIQLO, Shein, H&M, ASOS, Nike, and Mango.

12. Insights into competitor content strategies

Prompt:

Analyze the top ten organic search competitors to [Site e.g. AllRecipes.com]. I want to get an idea of any unique, non-standard approaches they’re taking to content creation and the terms they’re targeting, outside of [common topic, e.g. recipes].

The aim here is first to discover the content strategies across multiple sites, then strip out the commonalities to reveal any interesting outliers.

13. Overall site recommendations to increase organic search traffic

Prompt:

You’re an SEO expert. Your job is to increase organic traffic to [Site, e.g. Chewy.com] in a legitimate, whitehat way. You have access to the best SEO data on the planet via the Ahrefs MCP. Research the most relevant information you can about my site and the industry in which it operates. Offer any advice you feel is appropriate.

This example was inspired by Marie Haynes, who kindly messaged me (with permission to share) to say she was gaining some great insights from prompts along this line.

I think it perfectly fits into the ‘fun’ category, where it’s not super obvious what kind of response you’ll get, but potentially identifies something you might have overlooked.

14. In-depth industry research based on specific rankings

Prompt:

Provide a list of the top 20 keyphrases that [Site e.g.GarageGymReviews.com] is ranking first-page for, where the ‘People Also Ask’ SERP feature is present. Rank them by estimated search volume. Only include terms at least four words in length, and exclude any that are branded (i.e., [mention ‘Garage Gym Reviews’]). Then tell me the top ten sites ranking overall for those terms combined.

Here we start by identifying rankings that only one site has, then use those terms to gain a different perspective on organic competitors.

You can request other SERP features to be present, such as Videos or ‘Discussions & Forums’.

The idea is that you can combine two (or more) separate angles into a single request.

15. Analyze multiple backlink profiles at once

Prompt:

Provide me a comprehensive overview of the backlink profile of these five websites I’m researching: [Sites 1,2,3,4,5]. Be sure to include the rate at which they’re picking up links from new domains.

I specifically like knowing how quickly competitors are picking up new backlinks compared to my own brands.

Analyzing multiple sites at once helps you form a good overview as to where you stack up. You can build on this by adding more sites or requesting specific types of links (e.g., excluding those that are nofollowed).

Having spent a lot of time with the MCP testing creative ways to improve my workflows, I’ve learned a few things to make the experience more valuable.

Once connected, try asking your AI assistant of choice for inspiration on what to prompt.

This sounds meta, but it works: Explain the current situation of the projects you’re working on from a marketing perspective and what you’re struggling with. You can then see some example prompts which might help with what to ask.

Especially for ChatGPT, make sure you mention the Ahrefs MCP server in your prompts.

As an example, a request for something around the top blogs in a specific niche can quickly trigger your AI assistant of choice to start searching the web.

Including “Using the Ahrefs MCP server, please list the top blogs ranking for…” in your prompt will ensure it collects data directly from Ahrefs instead.

Be specific about the number of sites you’re looking to analyse, keyword suggestions you would like, and the date range you want insights from.

This way you can avoid getting too few insights, or too many that you consume unnecessary units.

While ChatGPT connectors are in beta, I’ve personally found Claude to be a more enjoyable experience.

I prefer ChatGPT’s design, but not when it comes to calling tools (like the Ahrefs MCP server).

If you’re already familiar with a process to follow, be clear about the order of the task you want your AI assistant to follow.

If you typically look up the keywords a site is ranking for before you analyze its backlinks, prompt your assistant to do the same.

If you encounter any oddities (they’re rare), you can inspect the response to gain an idea of what might have gone wrong.

ChatGPT’s own documentation recommends this step to help debug any issues. It may be the case that your prompt could be improved, or you’ve asked for something we don’t have data on (like where a site ranks in DuckDuckGo).

You can easily check your current usage and limits via the Ahrefs dashboard.

Simply navigate to Accounts > Limits & Usage and scroll down to the API units / mo section.

Don’t expect the MCP to replace all human intelligence (or our typical interface), but see it as an addition to those.

Some tasks are always going to be more enjoyable in a purpose-built UI than in a chat-like interaction.

But when scale and a new perspective are what you’re looking for, you might just wonder how you worked without the MCP before now.

Wrapping up

I didn’t initially expect to enjoy using the MCP server as much as I have. Now that it’s here, I keep finding new use cases to gain insights and increase productivity.

On a personal note, I’m honored to be writing my first-ever blog post here after recently joining the company.

I’ll be working with the Ahrefs marketing and product teams to help tools like this one (and everything else in the pipeline) be as valuable as possible.

If any additional use cases or requests come to mind, I would absolutely love to hear them. Reach out to me on LinkedIn or X, and I’ll see what we can do.

You don’t need another debate about whether optimizing for AI counts as SEO. You need to know what to actually do. 

This checklist combines proven SEO essentials with the new steps that matter for AI search. No fluff, no fuss.

It will help you strengthen your SEO foundation, adapt to changing behaviors in AI search, and keep your brand visible across every platform people use for answers.

1. Set up your brand’s online foundation: Create a logo, brand colors, and messaging doc, and ensure that they are used consistently everywhere you have an online presence. Ensure your brand story and product categories are clearly connected.
2. Create branded profiles on alternative platforms: Ensure your profiles are consistent across social media, directories, apps, and niche platforms. Doing so expands your brand recognition beyond Google and Bing, including on Reddit, TikTok, YouTube, and other platforms where people search.
3. Create or update Wikipedia pages related to your brand: For big brands, ensure your Wikipedia entry is complete and accurate, providing one of the most trusted references for both search engines and AI models.
4. Protect your branded real estate in search: Ensure that your branded search results are filled with pages you own, such as your website, social profiles, and listings. This stops competitors or negative results from taking valuable positions.
5. Apply for awards and industry recognition: Submit to relevant industry awards and recognition programs to enhance your perceived authority, credibility, and visibility in traditional and AI search results. Feature these prominently on your website to build trust and increase conversions.
6. Encourage happy customers to leave reviews: Build trust and develop a strong online reputation with positive reviews on Google, Trustpilot, and recommendations from users in online communities like Reddit.
7. Build your experience, expertise, authority, and trust (EEAT) signals: Strengthen EEAT signals at a brand, website, and page level to win favor with search engines and AI platforms. Start by adding clear author bios, publishing expert credentials, and showcasing trusted reviews.
8. Check your Home and About pages for brand consistency and EEAT: Consider redesigning your homepage (and other core pages) to ensure branding is consistent and you showcase clear trust signals, such as reviews, testimonials, awards, or certifications.
9. Invest in paid ads and bid on competitive keywords: Google Ads and SEO can work together to increase brand awareness and demand, ensuring your name appears alongside (or above) competitors in key searches.
10. Promote your brand to build awareness: Spark branded searches on Google by running social ads or email campaigns that highlight a unique offer and prompt people to search for your brand directly.

11. Audit current brand visibility around the web: Review how your brand appears across search, directories, and platforms to uncover inconsistencies like: 
    • Different brand names (e.g., Domain vs The Domain Group)
    • Old logos or inconsistent taglines
    • Old addresses or phone numbers
12. Benchmark your current visibility in AI search: Track how often your brand appears in AI-generated answers to establish a baseline for future growth.
13. Audit links and mentions around the web: Use tools like Ahrefs’ Site Explorer to find lost, unbranded, or broken links and reach out to the website owners to reclaim them. You can also use Brand Radar to audit your brand mentions. Benchmark the number of mentions and compare with competitors to spot gaps you can fill.
14. Audit your top pages visible in AI responses: Improve those that are underperforming, update those doing well, and improve their accuracy and business value.
15. Audit your content completeness and topic coverage: Use AI Content Helper to evaluate whether your content fully covers subtopics and intents, ensuring comprehensive topical authority.
16. Identify decaying content and update it: Refresh outdated pages with new information and links to recover rankings and preserve visibility in search and AI. To find decaying pages, look for:
    data-nobefore
    1. Dropped rankings for relevant keywords
    2. Fewer mentions in AI responses for key terms
    3. Decreased organic and AI traffic in analytics
    4. Outdated data or information in the body content
17. Audit competitors to find gaps or new opportunities: Analyze competitor keywords, content, and formats to uncover areas where you can differentiate and outperform. Reverse engineer competitor visibility to find gaps to fill or new untapped opportunities. 
    1. Do a brand gap analysis 
    2. Do a content gap analysis
    3. Do a link gap analysis
18. See what AI says about your brand and if it’s true: Check the accuracy of AI answers about your brand to catch errors or misinformation early.
19. Do an AI brand gap analysis to close gaps against competitors: Compare your AI visibility with competitors and prioritize strategies to strengthen your presence.

Build topical authority

20. Publish original data like research and statistics: Release proprietary studies and benchmarks that attract authoritative backlinks and establish subject authority.
21. Keep your most cited pages fresh and improve their business value: Regularly update pages that AI frequently cites and strengthen the business value of those pages to convert more visitors who find you in AI search.
22. Close topic gaps to win visibility for new queries: Expand into emerging or missing subtopics to reinforce topical relevance and AI recognition.
23. Create content hubs around core topics and long-tail keywords: Start by identifying your main pillar topic (e.g., ‘email marketing’) and then list related subtopics (e.g., ‘subject lines,’ ‘A/B testing,’ ‘deliverability’) to build cluster pages that link back to the pillar.
24. Find questions to answer in your content: Find questions your audience is actively asking to capture demand in both traditional search and conversational, AI-driven search. 
    • Use Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer to find common questions searched on Google
    • Mine Google Search Console data for the questions people ask that lead to your site
    • Use Answer the Public and Also Asked to find questions related to a given topic
    • Analyze People Also Ask questions on Google for core keywords
    • Review internal call transcripts and support tickets to find FAQs that existing customers ask
    • Gather ‘voice of customer’ data via surveys and interviews
25. Create an SEO topical map that extends beyond keywords: Start by identifying your core topics and related subtopics that have strong relevance to your brand and potential to drive traffic to your website. Map these topics to existing pages on your website or plan new pages to close topic gaps.
26. Update your content strategy for AI search: Adapt planning and content strategy processes to prioritize AI-specific opportunities alongside SEO, like: 
    • Identifying pages or content hubs that should be cited in AI responses but aren’t
    • Finding topic gaps against your competitors
    • Uncovering untapped topics your competitors have yet to discover

Content quality and credibility

27. Provide clear author or team bios and create dedicated pages: Publish detailed bios showcasing expertise to strengthen EEAT signals.
28. Interview experts and quote them in your content: Add unique, authoritative perspectives that make content more trustworthy and AI-citable. Include expert quotes, cite and link recognized experts in your field, and reference authoritative sources in your content.
29. Adapt your writing tone to match the content format: Tailor voice for blogs, guides, or sales content to improve resonance and engagement. For example, opt for a conversational tone where possible. Use a declarative tone when answering a question. Lean into an authoritative or expert tone for a ‘how to’ section and so on.
30. Optimize content for actions or jobs-to-be-done instead of just questions: Frame content around outcomes and tasks, not just query-based answers. Then, instead of just writing an article that answers a query, give users a resource that helps them complete the action (e.g., a template for ‘creating a content calendar,’ or a calculator to ‘track ROI’).
31. Define technical terms the first time you use them in content: Explain jargon concisely to make material accessible for broader audiences. It also sets the scene for AI systems to interpret and categorize your content correctly.
32. Enrich content with original multimedia, like video, images, or audio: Add engaging formats that enhance experience and provide additional AI-referenced material. This can help secure visibility across more search surfaces that lean toward different types of content.

Structure and readability

33. Emulate content formats AI frequently cites for your topic: Study successful content in AI responses and mirror those structures, such as step-by-step guides, comparison tables, checklists, FAQs, or how-to tutorials.
34. Start your content with a TL;DR summary section: Provide condensed key takeaways upfront to help users and AI grasp value instantly. Here’s an example of what that looks like: 
35. Make sure your content is logically structured and scannable: Use clear sections, short paragraphs, and an information hierarchy that naturally leads from one section to the next. This helps readers (and AI) follow the flow of ideas without hitting dead ends or jarring jumps.
36. Implement answer-oriented writing with one idea per section: Write clear, direct content with each section focused on a single point. Lead with the bottom line, then support it with context, anecdotes, or examples. This timeless writing approach now also improves visibility in both SEO and AI search.
37. Use headings to create a logical content hierarchy: Organize content with a single H1 containing your primary keyword, supported by H2s and H3s that reflect the natural flow of topics. Headings should guide readers through the topic, making complex material easier to scan, while also helping search engines and AI understand context and relationships between sections. Do not apply heading tags purely for visual effect.
38. Use bullet points, numbered lists, and tables to provide clarity: Present data in concise, structured content formats that improve both readability and snippet eligibility. For instance, avoid uploading tables as images. Use HTML or text-based tables so search engines and AI can read them.
39. Add relevant FAQs for which you can write an original answer: Create FAQ sections that answer common user questions and that you can provide original, worthwhile answers to. The more your responses add information gain to the content, the more likely they will appear in AI search responses, too.

Classic on-page SEO

40. Include a keyword in your page’s URL slug: Use short, descriptive slugs with the target keyword to strengthen relevance signals.
41. Add a compelling title tag with the main keyword included: Write concise, keyword-rich titles that maximize click-throughs and topical alignment.
42. Add a conversion-optimized meta description: Craft persuasive descriptions that highlight benefits and encourage clicks from SERPs.
43. Internally link related pages and articles to each other: Add internal links between topically related pages on your website.

Content distribution & repurposing

44. Repurpose your content and distribute on multiple platforms: Repurpose your top content into multiple formats (e.g., videos, carousels, podcasts, infographics) and distribute them across platforms that are gaining visibility in AI and search, like LinkedIn, YouTube, and Reddit. In short, squeeze multiple formats out of one winning piece of content and get it in front of more audiences.

45. Build links and brand mentions around the web: Earn references from trusted publications to strengthen authority and AI recognition.
46. Get links and mentions near topics that matter to your business: When backlinks and anchor text are tied to your core topics, they strengthen your topical authority instead of diluting it. Focus your outreach on sites, articles, and conversations where your brand naturally fits the topic, so search engines and AI associate you with those themes.
47. Partner with writers already getting cited in AI responses: Collaborate with authors frequently surfaced in AI answers to boost visibility in content already surfaced by search systems and discovered by humans. You can use the Cited pages report in Ahrefs’ Brand Radar to find top pages for your topic and then reach out to the people who wrote or edited them
48. Publish guest posts on publications with strong visibility in AI responses: Contribute content to outlets often cited by AI.
49. Create shareable assets that naturally attract links and mentions: Design tools, visuals, or templates people want to reference. Or share original thought leadership, thought-provoking opinion pieces, and data studies that can naturally attract links. For example, this data study by a marketing agency led to multiple links earned from major news outlets sharing news and updates about Taylor Swift’s jet emissions. 
50. Clean up inconsistent brand information or misinformation on third-party sites: Fix errors like outdated addresses, old logos, broken links, or incorrect descriptions to maintain trust and entity clarity.
51. Reclaim lost backlinks and mentions to maintain visibility: Track down broken or removed links on partner sites, news articles, or directories, and ask site owners to reinstate or update them.
52. Contribute to relevant conversations on forums and discussion threads: Join industry-specific spaces (e.g., Reddit communities, LinkedIn groups, or specialist forums) and answer questions where your expertise is useful. Be authentic and helpful so mentions of your brand feel natural.
53. Find the most cited pages for your topic and get mentions in them: Find pages AI frequently cites in its responses and add these to your link outreach so you can get mentions and links on them. Doing so could lead to faster increases in AI visibility for your brand.

54. Set up Ahrefs’ Site Audit and schedule ongoing crawls: Run automated audits to catch issues before they impact visibility. The tool flags hundreds of potential problems and ranks them by importance, so you know what to fix first. Enterprises with large websites can also use Patches to resolve issues affecting search visibility without needing developer involvement.
55. Use HTTPS for content and website security: Secure your site with SSL to meet baseline ranking and trust signals.
56. Check robots.txt allows AI bots to access your content: Ensure you’re not accidentally blocking AI or search crawlers.
57. Update your XML sitemap and submit to Google and Bing: Keep sitemaps fresh to improve the discoverability of important pages.
58. Create a clean and crawlable site architecture: Organize navigation and hierarchy for better crawling and indexing.
59. Ensure fast-loading pages: Optimize performance for both user experience and rankings. Try optimizing file sizes, minifying CSS and JS, using browser caching, and implementing a content delivery network like Cloudflare.
60. If you use Cloudflare, check that it’s not blocking LLM access: Cloudflare has added many new settings controlling how AI platforms can access your website, often setting the default to block AI platforms. Check that these defaults aren’t applied to your account; otherwise, your website likely won’t surface in AI responses.
61. Measure and improve Core Web Vitals: Track and optimize loading, responsiveness, and stability metrics.
62. Implement structured data: Add schema to improve machine understanding of your content and how your pages appear in traditional search results. Semantic HTML can also help turn your content into structured data that search engines and AI systems can interpret more accurately.
63. Apply hreflang for multilingual and/or multiregional content: Use hreflang to deliver correct content versions internationally.
64. Optimize your images for speed and performance and add alt text: Compress and label images for accessibility, SEO, and AI recognition.
65. Use server-side rendering for visibility to search and AI crawlers: Pre-rendered pages ensure search engines and AI systems can index everything, even if your site relies heavily on JavaScript.
66. Prioritize mobile-first and responsive design on mobile devices: Build mobile experiences as the default for indexing and AI.
67. Redirect broken pages and URLs hallucinated by AI: Catch errors and direct users to relevant content.

68. Create and optimize business profiles on Google, Bing, and Apple Maps: Claim and complete listings with accurate information.
69. Create location pages on your website: Publish content for individual cities or regions to strengthen local rankings.
70. Ensure consistent name, address, and phone number (NAP): Keep NAP data standardized everywhere your business appears online.
71. Build localized citations in your region: Submit consistent NAP information across trusted directories like Yelp, Yellow Pages, or industry-specific sites.
72. Keep your business profiles updated and post on them regularly: Maintain active listings to improve visibility and AI trust, as well as to provide accurate information to searchers in your area.

73. Set up Ahrefs Web Analytics to measure your website traffic: Track organic, paid, and AI performance. Find pages earning the most traffic and conversions.
74. Set up Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools: Gain insights into indexing, crawling, and performance issues.
75. Set up your internal reporting dashboard to measure brand awareness: Centralize reporting on branded search and mentions.
76. Monitor your top pages and organic traffic from SEO and AI: Track performance of priority content across both ecosystems. You can do this using Ahrefs’ Web Analytics:

    Check out the list of top pages by each channel to see which perform best in traditional SEO results vs in AI search specifically.

    

77. Track rankings in the top 20 organic positions: Monitor keyword movement in the top ranking spots to assess meaningful gains and losses.
78. Track growth in links and mentions around the web: Use Ahrefs’ Brand Radar > Web visibility report to see whether your brand is earning more backlinks, citations, and references over time. 
79. Measure your AI Share of Voice compared to competitors: Benchmark your presence against rivals in AI search. 
80. Measure your brand’s appearances in AI answers: Track frequency of AI citations, including your brand across platforms. You can do this in Ahrefs’ Brand Radar > AI responses report: 
81. Track how closely AI connects your brand to key topics: Use tools like Brand Radar to filter queries and responses by your brand and topic, and see how often they co-occur. The stronger the overlap, the stronger the association.
82. Track hallucinations and inaccurate brand info in AI responses: Catch and correct false information before it spreads widely.

Final thoughts