SEO Strategy Checklist for 2025

Align your 2025 SEO efforts with current business objectives, industry trends, and changes in search.

As we kick off a new year, it’s important to evaluate what has worked well, and what hasn’t worked so well over the last year for your SEO strategies. It doesn’t matter if you’re looking for little nuggets and pearls of wisdom, or wanting to make bigger changes – this checklist will help you roadmap your SEO program, and give you better odds of success in 2025.

 

1 – Align SEO with Your Business’ Objectives

Too often do I see marketing professionals create SEO goals without assessing business goals first. Remember, your SEO strategies are to augment your business’ goals, and without a goal – you can’t score. Engage with key stakeholders to gain insights into:

• New Products or Services: Anticipate upcoming launches to tailor your SEO strategy accordingly.
• Customer/Audience Personas: Identify new demographics or regions to focus your efforts.
• Business Goals: Ensure your SEO objectives support overarching business objectives.

 

2 – Monitor Industry Trends

Without getting political, I think it’s safe to say 2025 has gotten off to an interesting start, and we’re hearing the word “tariffs” a lot. However, that’s not the only thing that can impact the economy, and your industry. So make sure you’re informed about:

• Competitor Movements: Analyze your competitors’ strategies, and make adjustments. Do you remember that thing we learned about in our “Intro to Marketing” course in college called a SWOT Analysis? Even if you don’t make the quadrants, it’s important to understand your Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities and Threats versus your competitors.
• Market Shifts: Be aware of changes in consumer behavior and adjust your approach. If you’re not paying attention to the US Consumer Confidence Index (CCI) – now is a good time to do that. Why? In a nutshell, the CCI measures how optimistic consumers are about the economy, labor market, and their finances. If it’s low, odds are commerce is low.

 

3 – Get to Know Your Audience Even Better

Times are a changing, and if you don’t regularly update your knowledge of your target audience to ensure your content is useful to them, then you’re gonna get left behind.

• Customer Journey Mapping: Identify touch-points where search plays a pivotal role.
• Behavior Analysis: Utilize analytics to track changes in how users interact with your site.
• Feedback Loops: Engage with customers to gather insights into their needs and preferences.

 

4 – Conduct Comprehensive Keyword Research

Keyword relevance evolves over time, so ensure your keyword strategies and mapping reflects current search behaviors.

• Update Keyword Lists: Are new terms and phrases emerging? Are People searching for your products or services differently? Remember to take off your in-depth industry knowledge hat to try to think through the lens of your average customer.
• Analyze Search Intent: Focus on understanding the purpose behind search queries.
• Utilize Advanced Tools: Leverage platforms that offer insights into keyword performance and trends. My favorite two platforms are BrightEdge (this is an enterprise level SEO tool), and Ahrefs (they provide some free versions of Ahrefs tools, and various paid price tiers – totally worth it)

 

5 – Embrace Changes to Search Engines

While I have a slightly pessimistic view of what Ai-Search will do to the quality of content found on the internet (which is already pretty poor), as a marketing professional you have to lean into the changes.

• Google AI-Overview (AIO): Have you figured out which keywords trigger these? Do you know which ones don’t? Funny thing, some SEO’s figured out adding curse words to your search on Google is a sure fire way to not trigger an AIO in the SERP. But back to the point, it’s important for you to understand how Google’s AIO is impacting your SEO efforts so you can formulate strategies.
• LLM Optimizations: If you don’t know what this is, then you’re already behind. Let’s just say, you want to do your best to have your brand, products/services mentioned in the same breath as keywords you want to target, and to do so in the most natural way possible. I’ll have a full post on this later, but in summary – most people are missing the mark on the “most natural way” part, and that’s why I have a pessimistic view on AI and what it’ll do to the quality of content on the web. I’m already seeing lots of sites optimizing like this for LLM: “A is a B that does C for D” and there’s lots of this happening on a single page which makes content harder to read.

 

6 – Optimize On-Page Elements

It’s still important to ensure your website follows SEO best practices. Also, make sure you’re following ACTUAL best practices as there are far too many myths out there… I’ll throw a grenade into the SEO conversation and say keeping the length of your title tags under 55-60 characters or 600 pixels, and disavowing “toxic backlinks” are complete myths. However, I’ve found:

• Title Tags & Meta Descriptions: These do move the needle a lot. While Title Tags can give strong ranking signals, don’t under estimate good meta descriptions. Sure, those don’t give ranking signals anymore and get replaced in SERPs frequently. But a well-written meta description can still encourage a user to click your link versus a competitor’s in search results. Even though Google swears clicks aren’t a ranking signal, there have been plenty of studies, and data points that say otherwise.
• Header Tags: I still like to use a hierarchical (aka cascading / waterfall) structure to my headers. While this won’t be the make or break reason to whether your page ranks, users find it helpful when identifying sections of your webpage.
• Content Quality: While this isn’t an optimization, there’s already an abundance of low-quality content on the internet – so don’t contribute more junk. Make sure your content is informative, engaging, and original so it’s helpful to the user.

 

7 – Technical SEO

This is like the foundation to your house, and technical SEO is like a solid foundation to building an effective SEO strategy for a site.

• Site Speed Matters: Optimize loading times to improve the user experience. My best example of this – I had a client redesign their site, and their global HQ decided they were going to host the US site on their server. The problem was the server was not only in another country, but another hemisphere far, far away. Even worse, the dev company they used didn’t even bother to suggest using a CDN. Another helpful hint, if your site is loading slow, and it’s hosted on Bob’s Half-Price Hosting – where hosting is half-the-price for half-the-quality start with upgrading that.
• Mobile Optimization: Where in the age of mobile search, yet I still see websites looking all busted up on mobile. So ensure your site is responsive and offers a seamless mobile experience.
• HTTPS: Do I even need to mention this? HTTPS is a ranking signal, Google even acknowledged it’s a ranking signal. However, in 2025 I still came across a site that was HTTP… no S.

 

8 – Leverage Data & Analytics

Don’t guess, and when making decisions, ask yourself “What does my data say?” Data-driven decisions lead to more effective SEO strategies:

• Set Up Tracking Tools: Utilize platforms like Google Analytics and Search Console.
• Monitor Key Metrics: Focus on traffic sources, bounce rates, and conversion rates.
• Adjust Strategies Based on Data: Be prepared to pivot your approach based on performance insights.

In another post, I’ll have reports you should run in GA4 to help you set your SEO priorities.

 

9 – Cross-Channel / Department Collaboration

SEO doesn’t operate in a vacuum. In fact, no marketing channel does. Collaboration amplifies success:

• Content Teams: Work together to know what your content teams are doing. Do you know how many times I’ve seen a post on social and said “I’ll Google it later?” The answer is a lot, and if content marketing is executed well, it helps with LLM too. Yes, another post coming just about this topic.
• Marketing and Sales Departments: Sometimes these departments don’t mingle as often as they should, and you should really be aligning campaigns to have a cohesive strategy that’s mutually beneficial.

 

10 – User Experience

About a month ago, I got an inquiry from a prospective client, and the entire business hinged on the ability to get leads from the website. However, it took me forever to even find a “contact” page. After crawling the site, I also discovered there were no targeted landing pages. Yep, you read that right – all the paid traffic was going to the homepage leaving them wondering why there were no conversions. At a minimum, a website should have:

• Easy Navigation: Menus should be intuitive, and there should be a clear journey for the user.
• Readability: Use clear fonts and concise language… I have a problem with being concise.
• Targeted Pages: The page has a focused purpose in relation to the user journey.
• Clear Call to Action: What do you want the user to do on the page

 

To be an effective marketer, you need to stay agile, and adaptive. The digital landscape is constantly evolving so challenge yourself to always learn more (networking with other marketing professionals is a must); experiment (I have a client I don’t charge much, and when we started he had zero organic traffic – so he lets me test my theories on his site); and don’t be dogmatic in your approach. There are no absolutes in SEO, or anywhere in marketing – all you’re trying to do is increase your probability for, and level of success.

I hope this helps you with your 2025 SEO planning. If there’s anything I, or my agency, DRVN Media, can do to help you – please don’t hesitate to reach out to us.

 

Articles You Might Also Be Interested In:

• What’s An SEO Audit: Why are SEO audits important?
• DRVN Media’s SEO Audit Guide: Our Checklist for SEO Audits

 

Author Bio:
Vinh Huynh is Digital Marketing strategist, specializing in SEO & Paid Search, and also the owner of DRVN. He helps businesses improve their online visibility, through data-driven strategies. Outside of Digital Marketing, you can find him coaching the sport of Olympic Weightlifting, and networking with entrepreneurs, and local businesses.