Looking for SEO Specialist? Define These Goals First
Gordon Ibarra
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Posted Apr 10, 2025
Looking for SEO specialist? Define clear SEO goals first to align strategy, track results, and avoid wasted spend. Learn how to set goals that drive ROI.
Looking for SEO Specialist? Define These Goals First
Why SEO Goals Matter
Steps to Define Your SEO Goals
1. Determine Your Core Business Focus
2. Identify High-Impact Keywords
3. Plan Resource Allocation
4. Align With Marketing Channels
5. Schedule Regular Check-Ins
What Is an SEO Specialist
Ways an SEO Specialist Targets Your Defined Goals
Tools and Metrics to Track SEO Progress
Frequently Asked Questions About SEO Goals
How often should I revisit my goals?
Can I manage SEO goals without premium tools?
Does a freelancer help more with goal flexibility?
Parting Thoughts
Looking for SEO Specialist? Define These Goals First
I’ve been on both sides of the SEO conversation—hired to fix broken strategies, and brought in when there were no goals to begin with. Both situations feel the same: confusing, reactive, and expensive.
Last week, a client messaged me asking if I knew “any good SEO people.” They weren’t sure what they needed—just that “traffic was down.” That’s more common than people think.
The problem isn’t always the SEO specialist. It’s not having a clear goal before the hiring even begins.
Hiring an SEO without goals is like asking a contractor to "build a thing"—what thing? A shed? A stadium?
That’s why I always start any SEO conversation by asking what they’re actually trying to achieve.
Why SEO Goals Matter
Clear, measurable SEO goals create structure. Without them, it’s easy to chase rankings that don’t lead to anything useful.
Goals also connect SEO efforts to business results. Whether it's more leads, product sales, or booked demos, goals show what matters and what progress looks like.
They also make it easier to evaluate an SEO specialist’s work. No goals means no way to measure success—or failure.
In practice, goals help prioritize work. Instead of optimizing every page, you focus on what drives the most return.
And when goals are specific, the strategy becomes easier to design. Vague goals like “get more traffic” don’t guide much. Specific ones like “increase organic conversions from service pages by 15% over 3 months” do.
That specificity helps the SEO specialist know what tools, tactics, and timelines to use. No guesswork.
It also keeps the project aligned with business objectives. SEO becomes part of the growth process—not just a checklist.
Steps to Define Your SEO Goals
1. Determine Your Core Business Focus
Start by identifying your primary revenue streams or brand priorities. For example, a B2B SaaS company might focus on demo signups, while an e-commerce brand might prioritize product category traffic that leads to conversions.
Break these down into specific areas—services, product lines, regions, or customer segments—and rank them by impact. This filters out distractions and helps avoid spreading SEO efforts too thin.
Trying to optimize everything at once? That’s how you end up with 200 blog posts and no leads.
2. Identify High-Impact Keywords
Look for keywords that reflect user intent and align with your business objectives. Use tools like Google Keyword Planner, Ubersuggest, or even your own site search data to find phrases people actually use.
Focus on keywords with clear commercial or transactional intent. “Buy standing desk online” is more valuable than “history of ergonomic furniture.” Check monthly search volume and keyword difficulty to decide where to compete.
Use SERP analysis to see what kind of content ranks—product pages, blog posts, or comparison lists—and match your content type accordingly.
3. Plan Resource Allocation
Estimate how much time, budget, and people are available to work on SEO. This includes content writing, development, design, and analytics.
For example, if technical implementation isn’t possible for three months due to dev cycles, don’t set technical SEO goals for April. If the content team can only produce two posts per month, build around that constraint.
SEO is long-term, but resource caps are real. Align timelines and priorities with what’s actually doable this quarter.
4. Align With Marketing Channels
SEO doesn’t live in a vacuum. If you’re running paid ads or email campaigns, make sure SEO goals complement—not compete with—those efforts.
For instance, if you’re launching a product and using paid ads to drive traffic, SEO content can support that launch by targeting long-tail queries or comparison searches. Same goes for social content—repurpose, reuse, and cross-link.
This makes sure that messaging stays consistent and that you're not duplicating efforts across teams.
“SEO vs. Paid Search” is a false fight. They’re just different people rowing the same boat.
5. Schedule Regular Check-Ins
Set calendar reminders to revisit your goals either monthly or quarterly. This helps keep SEO aligned with shifting business priorities or unexpected changes—like algorithm updates or product pivots.
Use tracking tools like Google Search Console, Looker Studio, or Ahrefs to review what’s working and what’s not. Adjust timelines, reassign priorities, or drop goals that no longer make sense.
Even small tweaks—like changing a target keyword based on better CTR data—can compound gains over time.
What Is an SEO Specialist
An SEO specialist is a professional who improves a website’s visibility in search engines by optimizing content, site structure, and technical performance. Their work focuses on increasing qualified organic traffic using data, tools, and algorithmic best practices—without relying on paid promotion.
In practical terms, they translate business goals into search-optimized strategies. This includes selecting target keywords, improving page load speed, fixing crawl errors, and making sure pages are structured correctly for Google’s index.
They also manage technical audits. These audits typically cover issues like broken links, improper redirects, missing metadata, unoptimized JavaScript rendering, and Core Web Vitals performance. For example, a site with slow Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) may get deprioritized in rankings—an SEO specialist would flag that and work with a developer to resolve it.
“An SEO audit is like an x-ray for your website. It shows where the bones are broken—even if the homepage still smiles.”
Stakeholder communication is another part of the role. SEO specialists explain technical issues to non-technical teams, align keyword strategies with marketing goals, and report on metrics in ways leadership teams can understand. This means they often act as translators between business, dev, and content.
They’re also involved early in setting SEO goals. For example, they might take a vague goal like “rank higher” and reframe it as “increase organic sessions to /pricing by 20% in Q2 using bottom-funnel keywords.” That goal then guides their audit process, prioritization, and content recommendations.
Their work often overlaps with other channels—like paid search, email, and social—but their focus stays on long-term organic growth.
Ways an SEO Specialist Targets Your Defined Goals
Once goals are defined, SEO specialists translate them into action by working across technical, content, and analytical layers of a website. Their work begins with identifying performance gaps relative to the goals—these are typically technical issues, content mismatches, or missed keyword opportunities.
For technical SEO, common tasks include resolving broken redirects, optimizing Core Web Vitals, compressing large media files, or cleaning up crawl errors in Google Search Console. Specialists use tools like Screaming Frog or Sitebulb to surface these issues and prioritize fixes based on impact.
On the content side, the specialist audits existing pages against the target keywords and search intent. This might involve rewriting meta titles, updating outdated content, or restructuring pages so that headings and internal links better support the goal. Pages that rank but don’t convert are flagged for UX or copy improvements.
“Sometimes the problem isn’t traffic—it’s that the landing page looks like it was designed in 2012 🧓🏼.”
Freelancers typically manage these tasks through a clear workflow. They’ll document technical issues in spreadsheets, create keyword maps for each URL, and deliver content briefs or outlines for writers. This helps align their work with your internal team or other contractors.
Link-building is approached with specificity. If the goal is to rank a product category page, they focus on earning links from relevant blogs, industry directories, or forums. They avoid spammy outreach and instead look for contextual opportunities, such as unlinked brand mentions or guest posts with keyword relevance.
Freelancers often rely on tools like Ahrefs or Semrush for backlink audits, keyword tracking, and competitive gap analysis. They use Google Analytics and Looker Studio to build dashboards that report on performance relative to the original SEO goals—usually segmented by page type, keyword group, or funnel stage.
Data analysis is ongoing. Specialists monitor rankings, bounce rates, click-through rates, and conversions. They use this data to adjust strategies or flag when a tactic isn’t working. For example, if a keyword isn’t moving after three months of optimization, they might reassess search intent or page structure.
“If SEO feels like guesswork, it probably is. Specialists replace guesses with patterns.”
By April 2025, most freelancers are also integrating AI tools into their workflows. They use NLP platforms to analyze top-ranking pages, extract semantic patterns, and suggest content structures that align with Google’s expectations. This doesn’t replace strategy—it supports it with faster analysis at scale.
In remote freelance setups, task management is often handled in tools like Notion, Trello, or ClickUp. Specialists share weekly or biweekly updates that tie directly back to the defined goals, usually with status notes on technical tasks, content updates, or SERP changes.
Tools and Metrics to Track SEO Progress
Progress tracking begins with a small set of tools used consistently. Most freelancers rely on a combination of Google Search Console, Google Analytics (GA4), and a rank tracking platform like Ahrefs, Semrush, or Nightwatch. These tools provide visibility into organic traffic patterns, user behavior, and keyword performance over time.
Google Search Console shows impressions, clicks, average position, and CTR for each keyword and URL. This helps identify which queries drive traffic to specific pages, and whether rankings are improving or stalling. It also flags indexing issues, page experience errors, and mobile usability problems.
GA4 tracks user engagement on-site, but it’s less intuitive than Universal Analytics. Most SEO specialists configure custom dashboards in Looker Studio to extract SEO-specific insights—like conversions by landing page or engagement by organic channel. Event-based tracking in GA4 enables monitoring actions like form submissions, button clicks, and scroll depth, which connect SEO performance to business outcomes.
“If Search Console tells you how users found the house, GA4 tells you what they did once inside.”
For keyword rankings, Ahrefs or Semrush report daily or weekly changes based on tracked keyword sets. These tools also uncover keyword cannibalization, competitor movement, and SERP feature volatility over time.
Technical audits are handled with tools like Screaming Frog, Sitebulb, or JetOctopus. These generate crawl reports on broken links, redirect chains, duplicate content, and Core Web Vitals performance. Specialists use Lighthouse scores and Chrome UX Report (CrUX) to monitor metrics like Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS).
Backlink monitoring is handled through Ahrefs or Majestic. Specialists track referring domains, anchor text distribution, page authority, and new versus lost links. This helps assess domain strength and isolate any negative SEO trends like spammy backlinks or unnatural link velocity.
Metrics that tie directly to business impact include:
Organic conversions: tracked through GA4 events tied to lead forms, purchases, or button clicks.
Goal completions by landing page: isolates which pages are contributing to business outcomes.
Organic-assisted conversions: shows when SEO played a role in multichannel journeys.
Click-through rate (CTR): from Search Console, used to evaluate how well titles and meta descriptions perform.
Bounce rate and engagement rate: from GA4, used to assess content quality and user intent alignment.
Ranking position for commercial-intent keywords: tracked over time to see movement against competitors.
“Traffic is a vanity metric until it converts. Conversions are a vanity metric until they generate revenue.”
It's April 10, 2025. Most freelancers now also use AI-driven audit tools like Content Harmony or Surfer SEO to speed up content gap analysis and alignment with semantic expectations. These tools don't replace manual work but help flag pages that fall short on topical depth or search intent coverage.
For reporting, weekly snapshots typically cover rankings, traffic, CTR, and conversions. Monthly dashboards include trend lines, annotations for algorithm updates, and goal progress summaries. Stakeholders get visibility without needing to dig through raw data. Freelancers often maintain reporting templates in Notion, Airtable, or Looker Studio to streamline updates.
Frequently Asked Questions About SEO Goals
How often should I revisit my goals?
Most SEO goals hold for one to three months before needing review. Quarterly check-ins are common unless the business is in an early growth stage or experiencing rapid shifts—such as a rebrand, product launch, or algorithm penalty.
If rankings are volatile, competitors are moving aggressively, or Google rolls out a core update, earlier reviews are common. In stable periods, monthly monitoring is usually enough to track trends without overreacting to noise.
SEO strategy isn’t a mood board—it doesn’t need weekly changes unless something breaks 🔧
For seasonal businesses, timing matters more than frequency. Goals tied to spring sales or holiday traffic often require earlier setup and tighter review cycles during those windows.
Can I manage SEO goals without premium tools?
Most core SEO goals can be tracked using free platforms like Google Search Console, Google Analytics (GA4), and Looker Studio. Search Console handles impressions, clicks, and keyword positions. GA4 tracks conversions with event data.
For basic audits, tools like Screaming Frog (free for <500 URLs) or Chrome DevTools cover page speed and crawlability. Google’s PageSpeed Insights and Mobile-Friendly Test also give actionable scores without cost.
Paid tools become relevant when tracking hundreds of keywords, auditing large sites, or analyzing competitors at scale. These include Semrush, Ahrefs, and Sitebulb. They're often used by specialists, not mandatory for internal teams.
Free tools get 80% of the job done. Paid ones help scale that work, not replace it.
Does a freelancer help more with goal flexibility?
Freelancers adjust strategies based on real-time performance, business changes, or team bandwidth. Unlike agencies with standardized workflows, freelancers typically work closer to internal teams and shift priorities faster.
For example, if a product launch gets delayed, a freelancer can pause content tied to that campaign and pivot to evergreen topics. Agency pipelines might not shift that quickly due to fixed scopes or account handoffs.
“Freelancers don’t need a status meeting to change two H1s and reindex a page.”
Freelancers also tend to use shared tools like Notion, Trello, or ClickUp, allowing direct updates and async feedback. This setup makes smaller adjustments easier—like changing target keywords mid-month or reworking a content brief based on new data.
Parting Thoughts
Once SEO goals are defined, the next step is to operationalize them. This often means assigning ownership, defining timelines, and selecting the right tools or collaborators to move things forward.
Hiring a freelance SEO specialist becomes relevant at this point—not before. Goal clarity turns vague project scopes into focused deliverables. It also helps filter out generalists who can’t execute on specific needs like JavaScript rendering audits or structured data implementation.
Freelancers on Contra work without platform fees or commission cuts, which means the scope and budget you agree on are what actually gets delivered. This setup supports direct negotiation and faster iteration—especially helpful when goals shift due to algorithm updates or product launches.
“No middleman fees means more budget for what actually matters—like fixing that broken canonical tag 🛠️”
If the goal is rooted in technical performance, look for freelancers who’ve worked with crawl budget optimization or Core Web Vitals. If the goal is content-based, target specialists familiar with semantic search, intent mapping, and NLP-driven content modeling.
As of April 10, 2025, many freelancers are combining traditional audits with AI tools to spot keyword gaps, automate SERP analysis, and flag low-performing content clusters. These workflows adapt quickly to goal changes and avoid the lag time that comes with larger teams or agency processes.
The next move depends on where the goals point. If they’re defined clearly, the right freelancer won’t just execute—they’ll help course-correct when the data says it’s time.