The time has come to put into practice all that you have learned in your SEO training. You are eager to jump into those skillfully planned strategies, but you’re missing the most vital element: a goal. Many people make the mistake of getting excited and throwing all your ideas into your site optimization without a lucid objective. Don’t be caught planning with nowhere to go and no goal in view.

SEO guru, Richard Vanderhurst, explains that the first step in setting your SEO goal is to recognize your business needs. Who are you trying to attract? And what are you trying to show them? For instance, a small business owner may intend to boost their traffic with some simpler SEO techniques, such as embedded links perhaps, while a major corporation may be better suited putting a little extra time and money toward increasing search rank. But no company, however small or large, should begin SEO work without a clear goal in mind.

Perhaps you want to enhance your current exposure to reach new customers, or improve revenue intact, in which case, you could implement sales transactions on your website as an attention-grabber for potential buyers. These are legitimate goals for applying SEO to your site. You also may simply wish to boost the traffic to your site. This is one of the most common reasons for SEO, but a very important one nonetheless. With increased ranking, it is almost guaranteed that customer views and site traffic will increase. As for how much it will increase depends on how thorough you are on your SEO work and the effectiveness of your strategies.

But before you can do anything, whether it is crafting your SEO plan or utilizing your strategies, you must have a goal that is both detailed to your needs and highly coherent. In his lectures, Richard Vanderhurst emphasizes that it is best to be as specific as possible so that you have a better idea of what you want and how to get it.

A common mistake is to make your goal too expansive. It should be obvious that you are trying to boost the rank and traffic to your site, but that is far too broad a spectrum to set as your goal. Narrow it to an aspect specific to your website, your product, and your business. By setting a goal to “complete a total sales transaction of at least $100 for every 20 views,” you are catering your efforts toward that end and thus, more likely to reach that objective. Just be sure to keep the goal realistic, or you’ll be chasing your tail in no time.

Natural traffic flow is an important factor to consider when dealing with SEO goals. Search engines have upped their standards since the idea of embedded links for optimization purposes. People were linking themselves to completely unrelated sites in an attempt to lure more traffic to their own, but today, this is banned and it is flagged as a form of spam. It has become quite a complicated process to apply affective links to a website, but by creating a lucid and plausible goal, you can balance an honest flow of traffic. In turn, it is very possible for your search engine status to increase naturally. This is a process Richard Vanderhurst advises in his lectures and practices in his own work.

But, there is one last thing to consider when setting SEO goals, and that is your business goals. SEO goals should reflect and enhance your business goals. If the SEO does not bring you substantially closer to the objective of your company, there is no point in using it. Cater your efforts wisely and work to uphold your business goal with your SEO goal. It should be a scaffold for your business to grow on, not a useless entity that ultimately wastes your time and money.

Also, remember that your goal sets a guideline. Surely, if you have a solid goal or set of goals, you should stick to them, but don’t keep them so fixed as to avoid other strategies that have the potential for greater growth. Let your SEO goal lead you to greater expansion and broaden your ideas, while still keeping on track. As was mentioned, a set of goals may prove to be far more effective than a singular objective.