Purchasers are asking questions businesses couldn’t reply a 12 months in the past: Are we displaying up in ChatGPT? Did AI Overviews kill our site visitors? Are your advertising methods nonetheless working?
How do you retain delivering outcomes and show your impression when the panorama adjustments weekly?
As an company, it is a large problem. How do you retain delivering outcomes and show your impression when the panorama adjustments weekly?
Under, 4 businesses share how they’re utilizing Semrush to trace AI visibility, show ROI to purchasers, and switch AI search into an actual progress channel.
The businesses doing this effectively aren’t constructing a separate AI follow. They’re extending what they already learn about web optimization into a brand new layer of search.
Earned Media Australia: Placing collectively the “AI Funnel” from Visibility to Leads
- Company: Earned Media Australia
- Purchasers embody: International SaaS, universities, well being dietary supplements, ecommerce sellers
- Focus: Evolution of reporting and revealing the AI funnel
- Instruments used: Place Monitoring, Natural Rankings, My Experiences
The very best factor that actually helps my purchasers out of Semrush proper now, is our potential to make use of the Place Monitoring device to get an understanding of AI overview share throughout queries, after which share of occasions that the shopper truly seems in these AI overviews.
Educating and Reporting the AI Funnel
Earned Media Australia studies on the total AI funnel, from high-level visibility metrics to AI referral site visitors and conversions, utilizing Semrush’s Place Monitoring and My Experiences.
David maintains shopper communication with a month-to-month AI digest overlaying current business information and adjustments. This retains his purchasers knowledgeable and builds belief within the company.
To trace the AI funnel with Semrush, the group breaks it down into three ranges:
High of the Funnel
Exhibiting high-level metrics like AI Visibility, Mentions and Citations show the model is within the normal “consideration set” and has the flexibility to get cited and beneficial by AI.
Visible Proof to Paint the Image
Monitoring a focused set of prompts for every shopper, and displaying screenshots of LLM responses the place the model is beneficial proper within the response.
This connects the dots for the shopper. As a substitute of seeing AI visibility as an summary metric, they see their model beneficial in an actual AI response.
Backside of the Funnel
To tie all of it collectively they use AI Referral Site visitors information to point out precise clicks and conversions from platforms like ChatGPT and Perplexity.
With Semrush’s My Reports tool, it is as simple as connecting Google Analytics and dragging the correct widget into the PDF builder.
Name it the “AI Funnel.” You’re seen in AI, and now you’re getting the clicks.
Additional studying: Create an SEO + AI Search Marketing Report
Positive Oak: Gaining Company Leads By way of AI Visibility
- Company: Sure Oak
- Purchasers embody: SaaS, monetary providers, B2B know-how, training
- Focus: Constructing company authority to promote AI providers.
- Instruments used: Natural Rankings, AI Visibility Toolkit, Looker Studio (for customized reporting)
Positive Oak grew to become their very own proof of idea by boosting their appearance in AI Overviews (+286%) and ChatGPT referral visits (41%). After this, 40% of all new leads for the company come from their AI visibility.
All through 2025, as they appeared in additional AI-powered searches, the leads began to return in. In the end, her group sees optimizing for AI search as an built-in addition to web optimization, and never a separate service.
AI search optimization is part of each web optimization engagement we ship. We carry out auditing, reporting, consulting, content material optimization, and quotation constructing for our month-to-month retainer purchasers, but additionally supply one-off initiatives, similar to an AISO (AI search optimization) audit if wanted. We really feel [SEO and AI Visibility] should be built-in to achieve success.
Observe: AI search optimization goes by a number of names within the business—AEO, GEO, AISO—and there is not any consensus but on which sticks. We’re utilizing them interchangeably right here to mirror how practitioners truly discuss this work.
Beginning with Rising the Company’s Visibility in AI Overviews
Earlier than promoting AEO (reply engine optimization) or GEO to purchasers, Andrea Schultz from Positive Oak optimized her personal company’s presence in AI outcomes.
For key search phrases like “successful saas website positioning,” Positive Oak appeared as a high supply. As soon as they’d their proof of idea, it was simple to copy the success for purchasers.
Andrea’s technique was grounded in web optimization fundamentals, however with an emphasis on making content material simply parseable by AI techniques.
- Creating high-quality, topic-cluster content material that solves complete person questions
- Including TOCs (desk of contents) and key takeaways for AI-friendly readability
- Implementing schema wherever attainable
- Guaranteeing correct HTML tagging and heading structure
To showcase outcomes to their purchasers, Andrea likes to make use of the AI Share of Voice line graph from the Brand Performance reports:
With Semrush Natural Rankings, we will pull the prompts and variety of appearances for a shopper’s web site inside Google’s AI Overviews. Over time, we then analyze the place new visibility has been gained, together with the development of general publicity inside Google’s AI Overviews.
Throughout the AI Visibility Toolkit, we dive deeper into share of voice on LLMs, sentiment, and alternatives to see the place we stand in opposition to rivals. We discover the place they’re cited, and the place we is probably not to achieve extra model mentions and citations.
After they optimize for each conventional and AI search collectively, the outcomes compound. For his or her cybersecurity shopper, this led to a 137% YoY increase in conversions together with 1,118% enhance in AI referral site visitors and 39% enhance in natural site visitors.
Activate Digital: Fixing Content material Gaps On Conventional and AI Search
- Company: Activate Digital
- Purchasers embody: Dwelling providers, auto sellers, finance, healthcare
- Focus: Content material technique that wins on all discovery channels
- Instruments used: Model Efficiency, AI Visibility Toolkit
Most SEOs assume you construct conventional search rankings first, then optimize for AI visibility second.
Jonathan Banks flipped that playbook.
His group makes use of Semrush’s AI Visibility Toolkit to search out the subjects the place rivals are being cited in ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews, however his purchasers are usually not.
These gaps quickly develop into content material plans to win on each visibility layers—conventional and AI search.
We use Semrush to establish subject gaps, entity gaps, and over-reliance on single key phrases. Then, we validate whether or not content material is inbuilt a method that helps AI summaries, reply extraction, and entity affiliation. With out that visibility layer, AI web optimization turns into guesswork. Semrush offers us a structured option to make it repeatable.
Their story is proof that AI visibility gaps can reveal high-value web optimization alternatives rivals are lacking.
Content material Hole Evaluation that Works for Each web optimization and AI Visibility
Right here’s how Activate Digital executed their content material hole technique for his or her dwelling providers shopper, Dryer Vent Wizard.
With Semrush’s AI Visibility Toolkit, they recognized widespread dryer error code queries folks requested AI about.
After they opened the Brand Performance report, it confirmed an inventory of related AI prompts associated to their enterprise. What stood out?
There was one query a couple of very particular dryer error code the place the competitors was talked about, however Dryer Vent Wizard wasn’t.
They created a complete information, localized it throughout 100+ Dryer Vent Wizard places, and every location now ranks regionally for error codes.
After working with Activate Digital, the shopper’s natural site visitors doubled and now 10% of all franchise leads come from AI visibility.
The Shopper Training Problem
The most important hurdle? Expectation-setting. AI visibility breaks the previous “one web page, one key phrase” mannequin.
Jonathan helps his purchasers perceive three key shifts:
- Authority beats frequency
- Fewer, higher pages usually outperform dozens of skinny web optimization pages
- AI techniques reward consistency, construction, depth, and mentions—not hacks
Semrush helps us bridge that hole as a result of we will present the info, not simply clarify the idea. It offers credibility to conversations that might in any other case sound summary.
When reporting, they construct a story from a number of viewpoints: key phrase monitoring to watch AI Overview volatility, content material audits to flag pages AI ignores, and aggressive evaluation displaying who AI techniques constantly cite.
Coalition Applied sciences: Rescuing Model Sentiment in AI Summaries
- Company: Coalition Technologies
- Purchasers embody: Eating places, Military surplus gear, area of interest ecommerce outlets
- Focus: Popularity administration and information accuracy.
- Instruments used: Model Efficiency, AI Visibility Toolkit.
After reviewing how their purchasers had been represented in AI solutions, Jordan Brannon’s group instantly noticed AI hallucinations and outdated information.
And with the Aggressive Notion chart in Semrush’s AI Visibility toolkit, that false impression was measurable.
Their Military Surplus World shopper sells surplus army gear like sleeping luggage and heavy jackets to the general public.
The gear is all high-quality and unused, however in a number of situations, ChatGPT was calling the merchandise “outdated know-how.”
Fixing Model Sentiment and Misrepresentations
Coalition Applied sciences refreshed messaging on their shopper’s homepage, about web page, and social profiles to appropriate ChatGPT’s misrepresentation of their merchandise as ‘outdated know-how.
The model visibility and sentiment rating assist us perceive the place there’s an issue. Trying on the prompts that we’re truly rating for. We’re capable of ask ourselves ‘what’s an actionable step we will take from right here?’
To assault this problem, his group examined the best way they phrase content material and refreshed messaging throughout key areas.
We’ve actually seen AIs and LLMs put an even bigger emphasis on very clearly worded, very straight phrased content material related to the prompts… We needed to refresh messaging on the about web page, homepage, and social profiles to steer these responses again towards accuracy.
Coalition Applied sciences is aware of that LLMs will see a model as an “entity” represented throughout the net (together with social media and third occasion publishers), and never simply the official web site. So the repair is greater than by yourself website.
With their updates to on-site and off-site messaging, they had been capable of increase AI referral traffic by 429%.
This identical shopper noticed a 547% raise in conversions over that very same time.
Sensible Takeaways for Your Company
These businesses don’t deal with AI visibility as a separate standalone service. It is an evolution of what they already do with web optimization, utilized to a different layer.
Here is what you’ll be able to take away to your personal company workflow:
- Join the dots of the AI funnel reporting: Use Semrush’s Position Tracking to point out AI Overview appearances, the AI Visibility Toolkit for point out and quotation information, and My Reports with Google Analytics 4 (GA4) widgets for AI referral traffic. Mix them in a single shopper report to point out the total image
- Show your case with your personal company: Arrange AI visibility monitoring to your personal area earlier than pitching it to purchasers. When you’ll be able to present prospects that you’ve got boosted your personal AI Overview appearances by 286% and that 40% of your new leads now come from AI visibility, you’ve got constructed instantaneous credibility earlier than the pitch even begins.
- Leverage AI Visibility gaps as content material alternatives: Discover subjects the place rivals are cited however you’re not, and construct content material to shut the hole and win on each conventional search and AI.
- Monitor sentiment to guard fame: Use the Perception report in Semrush’s AI Visibility Toolkit to overview Aggressive Notion and Key Sentiment Drivers weekly. Catch misrepresentations earlier than they price you purchasers.
Prepared so as to add AI visibility to your company’s providers?
