The start of a new year is the perfect time to assess how your website is contributing to your small business business goals. Whether your aim is to increase sales, expand your customer base, or build brand recognition, setting goals is the foundation for success.

But achieving those goals requires more than wishful thinking. It calls for actionable steps and measurable strategies.

That’s where SEO comes in.

Search engine optimization isn’t just about getting your website to rank higher on Google. It’s a tool to help you meet both your short-term goals and long-term goals for your business. By breaking down big aspirations, into smaller, manageable milestones, you can align SEO tactics to directly support your broader strategy.

In this guide, I’ll show you how to set and track SEO goals that align with your short-term and long-term business goals. 

I’ll use the example of a common goal—boosting sales—and walk through how to pair it with an actionable SEO strategy. By the end, you’ll see how SEO is an essential tool for keeping your business goals on track this year.

Define Your Big Umbrella Business Goal

Most business owners are very familiar with setting goals. But just in case you are new to it or need a refresher, here’s a quick breakdown for you. 

Every successful strategy starts with a clear and measurable goal. For small business owners, one of the most common small business goals is increasing sales, so let’s use that example: you want to grow your sales by 20% by the end of the year.

To ensure that your goal is actionable and attainable, it’s important to define it using the SMART framework—Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Let’s break down how this works for your sales goal:

• Specific: Your goal should be clear and focused. Instead of saying, "I want to grow my business," define exactly what you want to achieve. For example, "I want to increase sales by 20% by the end of the year." This removes ambiguity and sets a precise target.

• Measurable: You need a way to track your progress. A 20% sales increase is measurable because you can easily track how much revenue you're making month by month and compare it to the previous period.

• Achievable: Your goal should be realistic given your resources, timeframe, and capabilities. Increasing sales by 20% is ambitious but achievable if you pair it with a solid strategy—like boosting your SEO, improving your website’s user experience, or launching targeted campaigns. Check the previous year’s growth to see what is a reasonable target for you. 

• Relevant: Your goal must align with your broader business objectives. Increasing sales is directly tied to business growth, making it highly relevant.

• Time-bound: Set a specific deadline for achieving the goal. For example, “Increase sales by 20% by December 31, 2025.” Having a deadline creates urgency and keeps you motivated to take actionable steps toward achieving it.

Break Your Business Goal into Quarterly Milestones

Now that you’ve set a clear, SMART business goal, the next step is to break it down into smaller, more manageable milestones.

This is where quarterly goal setting for entrepreneurs becomes essential. By dividing your large goal into quarterly milestones, you make the path to success much clearer, measurable, and more achievable.

For example, if your goal is to increase sales by 20% by December 31, 2025, here's how you can break that down into quarterly milestones:

Q1 (January - March) - 4-5% increase

Q2 (April - June) - 6-7% increase

Q3 (July - September) - 5-6% increase

Q4 (October - December) - 4-5% increase

Obviously your quarterly goals will be different and will be based on your business’ seasonality and trends. This is just an example.

Now it’s time to see how SEO can support your goal to increase sales.  This is the exciting part (for me anyway 🤣).

Align SEO Goals with Business Milestones

Okay now that I’ve laid that baseline, let’s get started with the content you came for. How exactly does SEO align with that business goal?

This is where a lot of people miss the mark. They think that the only goal of SEO is to increase organic traffic to your website. But let me break down why that’s NOT an effective goal of SEO on it’s own.

Sure more traffic to your website is great. More traffic means potentially more sales. But what if the traffic you are getting to your site is not taking action? That means that you are getting the wrong traffic. 

Think about it. Would you rather have 1 million visitors to your website with 50 conversions? Or would you rather have 2000 visitors to your website with 100 conversions? 

Higher visitors does not always mean a higher conversion rate.

So while having a goal in organic traffic is fine, it should never be your only SEO goal. 

Make your SEO goals more specific. And make sure that every SEO task has a clear purpose and measurable outcome.

Your SEO goals will vary significantly by what your SEO audit reveals and by your business goals. But here are some examples of SEO goals that would align with a sales goal:

Example A: Small Business A has a milestone goal of wanting to increase foot traffic sales in a physical store (not just online). Here’s what their SEO goals could look like: 

Goal #1: Increase [city] users by 20% in 3 months.

Actions: Optimize website with local keywords, set up GBP, partner with other local businesses.

Metric: Users by City in Google Analytics

Why it supports local sales: More local customers finding you online means they are more likely to walk into your store. 

Goal #2: Increase clicks to search terms ‘[keyword] in [city]” and “[keyword] [neighborhood]” by 10% in 3 months.

Actions: Optimize pages to include those localized keywords. 

Metric: Clicks to keywords in Google Search Console. 

Why it supports sales: More local user clicks to your website with the right intent means more customers are discovering your store.

Goal #3: Increase visits to the “visit us” page by 5% in 3 months. 

Actions: Make the visit us page prominent and easy to find. Include directions, pictures, parking info, etc. Optimize page for direct organic search results as well. 

Metric: Page visits on Google Analytics. 

Why it supports sales: If people are viewing your “visit us” page, they are searching for your location, therefore showing interest in visiting your physical location. 

Example B: Small Business B has a serviced based business. Here are some examples of some SEO goals that would align with increasing sales them:

Goal #1: Increase clicks to the search terms “[keyword 1]” and “[keyword 2]” by 10% in 3 months. 

Actions: Optimize website for targeting keywords.

Metric: Clicks to keywords in Google Search Console.

Why it supports sales: The more of the right users clicking to your website with the right intent, the more customers are likely to convert.

Goal #2: Decrease bounce rate to 50% or below by end of year.

Actions: Check intent of keywords, meta descriptions, and UX.

Metric: Bounce rate in Google Analytics. 

Why it supports sales: If people are clicking on your site and then bouncing right off, it shows that your service is not meeting their intent (via keyword and meta description) or they are finding it to be a bad experience (UX). Getting users with the matching intent onto your site and keeping them engaged increases your chances of conversions. 

Goal #3: Achieve first page Google rankings for 3 high intent keywords in 6 months. 

Actions: Research the best keywords for the right intent and optimize your web pages for them. 

Metric: Keyword tracker like SEMRush or Ahrefs to track keywords over time. Alternately, use Google Search Console to see each keyword average position. 

Why it supports sales: Ranking for high-intent keywords ensures visibility when customers are ready to purchase or hire, driving targeted leads to your site.

I think it’s important to note here that a lot of small business owners hire marketing agencies or SEO contractors. If that’s the case, you shouldn’t need to set these SEO goals on your own. 

If you already work with a marketing agency or an SEO contractor, they should be asking you about your small business goals and setting SEO goals that align with them. They should be tracking and reporting these metrics monthly. If they aren’t doing that, you should have a talk with them. 

This is something I do for all of my clients. 

Choose SEO Metrics to Track Progress

So how do businesses track goals? Or if you hire an SEO agency, how do they track and report these SEO goals?

Any good goal has to include good metrics. Notice that in my examples above, I listed Google Analytics (GA4) and Google Search Console (GSC) repeatedly for metric tracking. These two tools can cover almost everything you’d want to track for free. Here’s how to set up GA4, and here is how to set up GSC.

In addition, SEO contractors and agencies typically use a variety of SEO specific tools like SEMRush, Ahrefs, Screaming Frog, etc. But, if you aren’t a marketer or you aren’t super serious about SEO, I wouldn't recommend spending hundreds of dollars on these tools. I would instead just recommend using GA4 and GSC for free. Also, many website platforms (like Squarespace or Shopify) will have their own analytics that you can use.

Check the video below for a demo of where to find some of these key metrics. But feel free to reach out to me if you need help finding the metrics that you need. I’d be happy to walk you through it.  

So your baseline metrics should be taken before any actions. You could put this in a table, a graph, or set up a cool dashboard to measure your metrics. 

Then check in and get your metrics each month. 

Monitor and Adjust Quarterly SEO Strategies

If you are completely new to doing any search engine optimizations on your website, you may not notice much of a change in the first couple of months. Or you might get a quick boost the first month that levels out in the second. Don’t panic with any fluctuations for the first couple of months.

By the end of your third month, you should be checking in on your quarterly goals to see if you are heading towards your target.

This is the benefit of quarterly goal setting for entrepreneurs. At the end of each quarter you can reassess, make adjustments, and pivot if needed. 

Let’s take a look at a few possible scenarios: 

Sales Goals Met / SEO Goals Not Met: Let’s say your first quarter goals SEO goals were not quite met, but they were close. And your sales goal WAS met. This is a win. Your main goal was to increase sales by 5% that quarter and you achieved that. Maybe you just set your SEO goal a bit too high. For the next quarter, you know how to adjust that SEO goal to be a smaller percentage.

Sales Goals Not Met / SEO Goals Met: Or let’s say your quarterly sales goal was not met, but your SEO goals were all met. In that case, I would see if there are other SEO goals that could help reach the next target, and I would be looking at other metrics outside of SEO to see what else could be missing.

Exceeded Both Sales and SEO Goals: Or say you exceeded both your quarterly sales goal and all of your SEO goals. Great! Before adjusting your goals for the next quarter, consider the seasonality of your business. Then you could consider increasing your goals or keeping them the same. 

Neither Sales or SEO Goals Met: Or, worst case scenario, none of your goals were met. In this situation, I would recommend taking a step back and reassessing the achievability of the goals that you set, as well as how well you actually performed the actions aligned with the goals. Maybe the wrong keywords for your business were used. Maybe there is a technical issue on your website preventing traffic. This would be a good time for another site audit and goal-setting reevaluation. This might be a good time to get some consultation from an outside source if you haven’t yet.

Aligning SEO with Your Goals for 2025 Success

Setting and tracking SEO goals that align with your business objectives is a powerful way to drive measurable growth. By breaking down a big-picture goal into actionable milestones, you create a roadmap that keeps your marketing efforts focused and effective. Whether you aim to increase sales, grow your local visibility, or boost engagement, an intentional approach to SEO ensures your business continues moving forward.

The example we’ve outlined—starting with an annual sales increase of 20% and building out quarterly and monthly SEO objectives—demonstrates how achievable success can be with the right strategy. And remember, tracking progress consistently and adapting as needed will set you up for long-term results.

Ready to make your business goals a reality with an actionable SEO strategy? Let’s work together to build a customized plan that supports your vision.

Schedule a Free SEO Consultation Today
Together, we’ll review your current website performance, discuss your business goals, and map out a clear plan to achieve them with SEO. Don’t leave your growth to chance—let’s make it happen!

FAQs: Common Questions About SEO and Goal Setting

Why should small businesses set quarterly goals in addition to annual goals?

Quarterly goals give you a chance to check on your metrics to then reassess, make adjustments, and pivot if needed. You definitely shouldn’t wait till the end of the year to check on your goals! 

What are good short-term SEO goals for a small business?

SEO goals will vary wildly by your business and umbrella business goals. But some of my favorites metric to track are:

• Active Users: I like tracking active users instead of just organic traffic because these numbers indicate people who are actually spending time on your site - not just bouncing off. These people are more likely to convert.

• Time on Page: This also indicates the quality of your site and content. If people are spending more time on your web pages, that means that they are engaged. Start with where you are now and improve from there, but in general, anything close to or above 1 minute is considered very good.

• Clicks to Keywords: I prefer to track the number of clicks to a keyword over just the ranking number for a couple of reasons. One reason is that it doesn’t matter if you show up first in the search results if no one is clicking on it. The goal should be to get people actually onto your website. The other reason is because keyword ranking fluctuates constantly. I use a tracking tool to see my rankings of specific keywords and I can tell you that my top performing keywords will go up by 5 spots one day to then go down by 10 spots the next and then back up 7 spots the next. They are all over the place. And especially localized keywords will also vary greatly by where the user is physically located with searching. Google will show the businesses within the closest distance to the sarcher’s location at the time. 

How do businesses track SEO goals effectively?

Businesses track their SEO goals using tools like Google Analytics and Search Console, so setting up these free accounts set up should be your first step in setting and tracking your website goals.  Here’s my guide for setting up Google Analytics and here’s my guide for setting up Search Console.

What happens if my SEO goals aren’t helping me meet my sales targets?

If your SEO goals aren’t helping you meet your sales targets, then you may have the wrong SEO goals, you aren’t completing your SEO tasks effectively, or there could be something else going on entirely. I would recommend revisiting your keyword strategy, improving your content quality, or focusing on technical issues on your site. A consult and a website audit with a specialist would be a good next step to get a clear plan.