6 core SEO goals for 2025 & how to achieve them

Setting clear, measurable SEO targets or 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.

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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 digital marketing goals, such as increasing organic traffic, improving rankings, or boosting conversions.

Clear SEO goals and objectives 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: analyze your current performance, set SMART goals, and track progress using relevant KPIs.

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, SEO 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. 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 in 2025.

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 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 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)

Then, tackle them separately, as each one builds on the next.

But how would this look in practice?

Let’s walk through the SEO goals I recommend focusing on in 2025. These are the same goals we use for our clients’ SEO strategies.

1. Have zero technical issues

Achieving zero technical issues is a foundational SEO goal because it ensures your website is fully accessible, user-friendly, and optimized for search engine crawling and indexing. It supports both website optimization aims and long-term SEO success.

Reaching this goal guarantees your website is easily accessible, user-friendly, and optimized for search engines like Google so you can maintain good 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

Publishing high-quality content consistently is essential for SEO success as it builds topical authority and satisfies user intent, directly influencing search rankings and organic traffic.

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

You'll need to focus on two areas:

1. Content quality: High-quality content is relevant, in-depth, original, engaging, and user-friendly. It satisfies search intent and signals value to search engines.
2. Content velocity: You need to publish content regularly to improve crawlability and build topical authority. The right frequency depends on your resources, but we’ve found that publishing 3–5 articles per week works well for us.

What's important here is finding the right balance between quality and quantity. Focus on building a well-optimized content creation process first, 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

Increasing organic traffic should be a core SEO goal, as it expands your reach, attracts more qualified visitors, and supports long-term growth without relying on paid channels.

But 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 by targeting new long-tail keywords and updating underperforming content.

Or, perhaps you'd prefer more high-level goals, such as becoming a go-to source for information in your industry. That’s how one of our clients grew their traffic 20x, and many others have seen similar results using the same approach.

» Discover 10 safe ways to drive organic traffic in 2025

4. Generate more conversions

Driving more conversions from organic traffic turns SEO into a revenue-generating channel, making this goal key to aligning SEO with overall business growth.

As I mentioned earlier, SEO is a marketing activity. Its ultimate objective is to turn visitors into customers or leads.

Once you've worked through the first three SEO strategy objectives, 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

Staying aligned with changes in search is crucial to maintaining visibility as algorithms, user behavior, and technologies evolve.

Recent research from Ahrefs shows AI Overviews reduce clicks by 34.5%, and some websites, particularly publishers like Investopedia, are seeing a huge drop in traffic.

Investopedia's traffic data via Semrush



On the other hand, websites that sell products or services and don't rely on informational traffic aren't as affected by these changes. Some, like Upstep (one of our loyal clients), aren't even experiencing much traffic loss.

Upstep's traffic data via Semrush



These websites' main SEO goal is to sell, which means product traffic is more important to them. So, as long as their content helps them build topical authority, they'll be fine.

However, many businesses struggle to "read the map" or interpret this new landscape.

Some businesses think that because content is now easier and less expensive to produce, they should create a lot of cheap AI-generated content. But the opposite is true. There’s a hyperinflation of content, so the focus should be on creating better content.

Google’s AI Overviews may be shifting how users engage with search, but you can get ahead of zero-click search by creating high-quality, comprehensive content that offers depth, nuance, and value AI can’t. Content that demonstrates E-E-A-T is also more likely to be cited or surfaced by AI as a reliable source.

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use AI. But it doesn’t replace the need for high-quality, valuable content. We’ve been guiding our clients with these principles since ChatGPT was introduced in 2022, and they've managed to achieve success.

READ MORE: Our client success stories

6. Focus on the right KPIs

No set of SEO goals is complete without a way to measure success. Tracking the right SEO KPIs ensures your strategy stays data-driven and results-focused, allowing you to measure what truly matters and refine your efforts over time.

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

Instead of getting lost in too many of them, 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

Effective planning is the foundation for SEO success. Too many strategies fall short simply because there are no clear goals in place. 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.