6 SEO goals to target in 2025 (& how to achieve them)

Setting clear, actionable SEO goals is extremely important—you can't measure success without them. However, knowing which specific goals to set and making sure they're realistic can be challenging.

In this article, I'll break down why SEO goals matter, how to set them, and which specific SEO goals you should focus on in 2025.

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What is an SEO goal and why is it important?

SEO goals are clear, measurable objectives that guide your strategy and help you track success. They're usually related to a company's overall business objectives, such as increasing organic traffic, improving rankings, or boosting conversions.

Clear SEO goals help you focus your efforts and prioritize strategies that move the needle. Without them, it's impossible to measure the impact of your SEO operations or optimize effectively.

» Learn how to measure SEO ROI and see the impact of your SEO strategy.

How to set SEO goals

Setting achievable SEO goals involves a systematic approach. Here's a breakdown of how to do it.

Analyze your current situation

You have to know where you've been to know where you're going. So, start by analyzing your current SEO performance—organic traffic, keyword rankings, conversion rates, and engagement metrics—and decide what you'd like to improve.

Set benchmarks based on where you are now. This will act as your baseline, helping you set realistic targets and track meaningful improvements over time.

» Not sure where to start? Start with the best content marketing KPIs.

Set SMART SEO goals

SEO goals are often too vague (e.g., "increase conversions"), making it hard to create a clear path to success. That’s why setting realistic, achievable goals is so important—and for that, you need SMART SEO goals.

SMART SEO goals are:

• Specific: Make sure your SEO goals are clearly defined and leave no room for ambiguity.
• Measurable: You need specific metrics to track progress and know when you've reached your goal.
• Achievable: Your SEO goals should be realistic. Always consider your website's performance, resources, and the overall search landscape.
• Relevant: Ensure your SEO goals align with your company's objectives and contribute to its success.
• Time-bound: Set a deadline for achieving your goal to help you stay focused.

An example of a SMART SEO goal would be: "Increase conversions from organic traffic by 15% in six months."

This goal is specific (boost conversions by 15%), measurable (15%), achievable (reasonable target), relevant (aligns with a core business objective), and time-bound (six months).

Track your progress

Finally, define your KPIs (key performance indicators). Depending on your goals, these could include organic traffic, keyword rankings, conversion rates, or backlinks earned. Tracking the right SEO KPIs helps you stay on course and measure the impact of your SEO efforts.

Now that you understand how to set SEO goals. Let's discuss which SEO goals you should target this year.

READ MORE: How to choose the right metrics & KPIs for the SEO funnel

6 SEO goals to target in 2025

The specific SEO goals you set should really be based on what you want to achieve. Because SEO is a marketing activity, this usually involves generating revenue. So, the goal should be derived from that.

The difficulty is that, unlike other marketing activities, SEO is more complicated. Google looks at many different signals and factors when ranking your website, so it's much more difficult to isolate cause and effect.

For that reason, I would recommend breaking your SEO goals into four categories:

1. Technical goals (e.g., having perfect page speed)
2. Content goals (e.g., improving content quality)
3. Traffic goals (e.g., increasing traffic)
4. Conversion goals (e.g., getting more conversions from organic traffic)

To set proper goals, you need to break them down into all these pillars and tackle each separately, as each one builds on the next.

But how would this look in practice?

1. Have zero technical issues

Ensuring your website is free of any technical issues is the foundation for any successful SEO strategy. Reaching this goal guarantees your website is easily accessible, user-friendly, and optimized for search engines like Google.

Regularly checking your website for technical issues like these is crucial for maintaining good search engine rankings. Some common technical issues you should check for include:

• Crawled but not indexed pages
• 404 errors
• Slow loading speeds
• Mobile incompatibility
• Indexing issues (problems with robots.txt, noindex tags, sitemap, etc.)
• Poor site structure
• Core Web Vitals issues (LCP, INP, CLS)

» Facing indexing issues? Find out how to ask Google to index your site.

2. Publish high-quality content regularly

This may seem like an obvious goal, but the reality is that a staggering 96.55% of content gets zero traffic from Google. If you want to avoid that fate, creating high-quality content that stands out is non-negotiable.

So, what is high-quality content?

High-quality content must be relevant, in-depth, original, engaging, and user-friendly to satisfy searchers and signal value to search engines.

Another important factor to consider is content velocity. You need to publish content regularly to improve crawlability and topical authority (without sacrificing quality, of course).

Essentially, you should focus on creating valuable content first and foremost, then aim for a regular publishing schedule to maximize its SEO impact.

When setting this goal, ask yourself:

• How will I improve the quality of my content?
• How often do I want to publish content?
• How will I measure content quality?

3. Increase organic traffic

Organic traffic is a strong indicator of the success of your SEO strategy. That's why it's important to have goals related to increasing traffic.

Before setting a specific SEO goal that has to do with organic traffic, measure the following:

• The number of queries your site ranks for
• Impressions
• Organic traffic

Next, come up with a strategy to increase these numbers. For example, you might want to increase organic traffic by 20% in six months. Or, perhaps you'd prefer more high-level goals, such as becoming a go-to source for information in your industry.

» Discover 10 safe ways to drive organic traffic in 2025

4. Generate more conversions

As I mentioned earlier, SEO is a marketing activity. Its ultimate objective is to turn visitors into customers or leads, so adding conversion to your SEO goals is a must.

Once you've worked through the first three SEO goals separately, you should have a steady flow of traffic. The next step is converting that traffic.

There are many different ways to increase conversions, including creating content that converts and optimizing your site for conversions. At Entail, our strategy revolves around increasing revenue per visitor. That's the most important conversion metric when it comes to SEO lead generation.

5. Keep up with the search landscape

The search landscape is changing because of AI, although I'd say it's been mostly noise until now. People say they're losing traffic because Google is sending fewer clicks to the Internet, yet many websites—like NerdWallet—still get a lot of traffic.

NerdWallet's traffic growth via Semrush



Some sites like Hubspot have been losing a lot of traffic, but websites have been losing and getting traffic long before ChatGPT. There's no solid evidence to show that traffic going from Google to the Internet is decreasing yet.

Still, many businesses struggle to "read the map" or interpret this new landscape. Just because content is now easier and less expensive to produce doesn’t mean you should create a lot of cheap content. In fact, the opposite is true—there’s a hyperinflation of content, so the focus should be on creating better content.

Think about it like this: if you uploaded a boring, AI-generated video to TikTok, would it get views? Probably not. Creating good content for TikTok requires effort—whether it's creativity, talent, or just being famous.

The same applies to SEO. You can’t expect cheap, low-quality content to rank.

Not to mention, TikTok promotes content from successful accounts based on their reputation, even before evaluating the content itself. Google works similarly—if your site has authority and consistently produces valuable content, your rankings will improve.

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use AI—it can enhance content quality. But it doesn’t replace the need for high-quality, valuable content.

READ MORE: AI-generated content for SEO: The good, the bad, and the ugly

6. Focus on the right KPIs

No set of SEO goals is complete without a way to measure success. Tracking the right metrics helps ensure your efforts lead to real results.

That said, SEO comes with endless lists of possible metrics, making it easy to get overwhelmed.

So, instead of getting lost in too many metrics, I would recommend focusing on a few KPIs that provide the clearest insights:

• Zero technical issues: Aim for a technically flawless site. While one small issue may not tank your rankings, consistent technical issues can add up.
• Engagement: Because you want to publish valuable content regularly, measure its impact by tracking engagement metrics like clicks, time on page, scroll depth, interactions with specific on-page elements, etc.
• Traffic: Organic traffic is a key measure of SEO success. Track how many visitors come from search and analyze which pages and topics drive the most growth.
• Click-through rate (CTR): If users click on your content, that's the best engagement that the content can have. Optimizing for higher CTR ensures your content attracts attention in search results.
• Revenue per visitor (RPV): This metric pretty much encapsulates everything in terms of SEO. Tracking how much revenue each visitor generates gives a clear picture of how well your SEO efforts drive results.

Failing to plan is planning to fail

Too many SEO strategies fail simply because there are no clear goals to work toward. Without a specific target, efforts become scattered, progress is impossible to measure, and success is left to chance. Setting goals gives your SEO strategy direction, keeps your team focused, and ensures every optimization serves a purpose. If you don’t define what success looks like, how can you expect to achieve it?

» Talk to an SEO expert for more guidance on setting and achieving SEO goals.