SEO is a long-term process, if it is done correctly and ethically. But the idea of waiting up to 12 months for favorable, noticeable results causes many business owners to balk.
Many business owners think SEO is a quick fix for their lagging business performance and have reduced SEO to merely selecting a few keywords to rank for. SEO is hard work that must be monitored and adjusted sometimes on a daily basis.

While you might not have the time or expertise to implement an effective SEO strategy on your own, you can lay a strong foundation for your online marketing by implementing smart goals.

Start Your SEO on the Right Goals

If you’re new to this acronym, it simply stands for specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely.
You’ll be more likely to harness the full power of SEO by going about doing it the right way. If your only SEO goal is to rank #1 for a given keyword, you’ll likely get frustrated, and discouraged, throwing time and money after an elusive objective.

Specific Goals


• Saying that you want to rank #1 for a certain keyword may seem specific, but as mentioned above, how will ranking #1 help achieve your business actually grow.
• A lot of people can rank #1 for a range of keywords and never see any actual benefit from it.
• Ranking for a specific keyword is often too large and broad a goal for small and medium-sized businesses.

Measurable Goals

Specific goals are better than grand, vague goals because they are more easily measured. A goal that has no way of being measured is virtually pointless.
The whole idea of ranking highly for a keyword is to increase website traffic, which will ideally lead to more sales. In the process of getting more website traffic, many companies often overlook important analytics that contributed to their results.

When it comes to SEO, there are a lot of the factors you could measure. We think that this list from Search Engine Land is a good place to start:

Rank for main converting organic and local keywords

Rank for secondary benchmark organic and local keywords

Citation flow

Trust flow

Trust and citation balance

Link-building metrics

Total links built

Number of links from authority sites

Number of links from relevant sites

Real-world metrics

Increase in organic traffic

Increase in number of pages on the site that generate traffic

Increase in non-branded search traffic

Percentage increase in organic conversions

Organic Impressions