2025 is all about brand building. At Ahrefs, we’ve already been doing that for over a decade, but there’s never been a better time for us to ramp things up.
After writing an article on 11 ways to measure brand awareness, I figured now’s also the perfect time for us to get a clearer picture of where we stand today, so we have something solid to measure against when those brand wins come rolling in 😉
I needed a reliable way to track Ahrefs’ brand performance—regularly and over time.
Luckily for me, we already have a Looker Studio Template hooked up to all our main tools via the API, which made it easy to create a live, auto-updating dashboard of the key organic brand metrics I cared about.
Below, I show you exactly how to replicate this for your own brand.
Rank Tracker is useful for overview stats and project-level analysis. It helps you track SoV against competitors, SERP Feature ownership, and positions across a specific set of keywords.
Site Audit is useful when you want to go deep into the technical SEO side of things. It gives you indexability insights, on-page content issues, and core web vitals status updates.
I mostly wanted to monitor broad brand metrics, so I started off with the Site Explorer template, and then fed in Rank Tracker data to home-in on some of our most important keywords.
To adapt a template, just click on the three dots on the right and click “Make a copy”.
Then under “New data source” click “Create data source”…
…and search for your chosen Ahrefs data connector.
Choose your project, and leave all other fields blank—you can adjust them later on in the actual report.
The exception to this rule is if you’re adding “Rank Tracker” as a data source. In this case, you’ll need to select a “Device type” before you can “Connect”.
On the next screen, hit “Add to report”.
This way you can quickly spot-check your brand positions, SERP features, share of voice, and traffic, and monitor any growth or decline with “sparkline” visuals.
Finally, set up an “Is your website filter” to monitor only your site, and sift out any competitors you track in your project.
Then create a pie chart to visualize your SERP Feature ownership.
1. Add “Keyword URL feature” as the dimension
2. Add “Keyword” as the metric
3. Add “Keyword” as the sort feature (by descending)
4. Add a filter “Keyword URL remove blanks” (Exclude → Keyword URL feature → Is Null)
Then build a simple table of keyword performance data, including metrics like volume, keyword difficulty (KD), positions, traffic, and traffic growth, so you can see the data behind performance peaks and troughs.
5. Test brand content optimizations
If you’re experimenting with including your brand name more frequently alongside relevant phrases, ideas, and features—like in titles, meta descriptions, or on-page copy—you can use the dashboard to see whether it’s improving your branded keyword performance.
Wrapping up
We’re living in a brand-first era. Brand is increasingly a top funnel and bottom funnel play—it drives both discovery and conversions.
Without brand awareness, you will be invisible in search, LLMs, and buyer discussions.
You can’t optimize what you don’t measure. With AI reshaping the landscape, it’s critical to monitor your brand presence now.
Have a go at creating your own brand awareness report with Ahrefs Looker Studio template, and let me know how you get on.
Similar Posts

More Videos Added to Module Developer Guide Tutorials
This week, we’ve added 7 new videos to existing tutorials in our Module Developer Guide. The Module…

The Practical Guide to Crowdfunding
We’ve all heard stories of overnight success in crowdfunding, where a product like Pebble or Ouya gets…

Semantic SEO: The Advanced Skill Most SEOs Pretend to Understand
Semantic SEO sounds complicated, but it simply boils down to doing SEO without cutting corners. If you…

The 7 Phases of the Search Demand Lifecycle: Going Beyond Search Volume
Many junior SEOs make the same mistake: they chase high search volume, assuming it means long-term opportunity….

Bybit Hacked? Here’s what REALLY happened…
🟢 Here are my 2 favorite cold wallets: Tangem Wallet (Use Code CYBERSCRILLA for 10% OFF):https://tangem.com/en/pricing/?promocode=CYBERSCRILLA#pricing Tangem…

Why Eastern Europe Is A Startup Powerhouse
Embarking your entrepreneurial journey makes one painfully aware of the resources needed to create a successful business….