17+ SEO Mistakes to Avoid
20 minutes
The digital era has transformed a business approach across most industries, shifting entrepreneurs' focus to website rankings and online visibility. As SEO is cost-effective and delivers long-term results, many dive into it, and here's the kicker: They think they've mastered it.
Spoiler alert: they haven't and keep falling into common SEO traps.
Instead of bombarding you with another long and tedious SEO guide on improving rankings, visibility, traffic, and so on, let's discuss the most common SEO mistakes and how to avoid them.
What Are the Common SEO Mistakes?
Believe it or not, even the best experts make mistakes in SEO. The Databox team conducted a poll of SEO specialists with many years of experience under their belt to find out how many of them still make mistakes from time to time.
Over 30% of respondents said that they've committed to more than five SEO fails.
Only 5% of specialists are confident they avoid mistakes that can harm their SEO. Want to be one of them? Keep reading to learn how to do it.
We've compiled a list of SEO mistakes, complete with comments and tips from experts with years of experience on how to avoid them.
No fluff: just facts👇
1. Earning Links That Aren’t Relevant to the Website They’re Linking To
Digital PR Director at JBH
When getting your link featured, make sure the coverage hits these four essentials: 1) Keywords – is the topic something you want to rank for? 2) Customer – can you picture your target audience diving into the content? 3) Newsworthiness – is the topic trending in the media? 4) Authority – are you seen as a go-to expert on the subject your link is tied to?
2. Jumping to Conclusions About Why Traffic Is up and Down Without Doing Due Diligence
SEO manager at Digital Sisco
For algorithm updates, we should wait at least 1 week after the update is done rolling out. But generally speaking, in every day reporting and performance analysis we should always look at seasonality, search trends, if there are promotions or PPC ads running, etc. it's more than just clicks went up or down.
3. In B2B SEO, It’s Prioritizing Traffic Over Conversions
SEO Specialist at Growth Hacker
The best way to stop focusing on traffic over conversions in B2B SEO is by implementing Conversion Rate Optimization. Begin by analyzing which parts of your website are losing visitors or failing to turn them into leads. Create data-driven hypotheses for how to improve those areas, prioritize, and run A/B tests to see what changes make the largest impact. Continuously iterate on, monitor, and analyze these tests for honing. Putting more energy into CRO means the strategy shifts from just driving traffic to actually converting the traffic into leads and customers.
4. Images Not Optimized. Keyword Cannibalization. Not Using Content Marketing More Strategically
Most believe that optimized images lead to longer load times for webpages, while they create multiple pages targeting the same keywords and fail to strategically use content marketing to improve their results in other SEO efforts.
Founder of Demand Path
1) Optimize images for the correct size and compress down to have a lower file size while still keeping the quality. 2) Make sure you have a proper landing page to keyword targeting set up so you don't run into Keyword Cannibalization. 3) Tie keyword research to your content marketing efforts to get search traffic to your blogs and boost your website engagement.
5. Non-indexable URLs in XML Sitemaps
Lead SEO Specialist at Digivate
Audit your XML sitemap with Screaming Frog or any other similar tool regularly and remove any URLs that are non-indexable. Look for 404s, redirected, canonicalised or pages set as NoIndex.
6. Image Pages
CEO at The SEO Works
If you're using WordPress, it's likely that every image you upload has a dedicated page. These pages can clutter your site and potentially harm your SEO. This leads to lots of low quality pages and a larger site footprint. You should noindex low quality pages in Google that you wouldn't want a searcher to find. This is an easy fix, as WordPress SEO plugins like Yoast have a built in option to redirect attachment URLS to the image. Just look for a media pages setting within your SEO plugin and disable it.
7. Not Having a Google My Business Account and Not Actively Seeking Reviews From Clients
Founder and Head Nerd at Nautilius Marketing
Setup a GMB and ask clients for reviews, it will build up your brand reputation.
8. Reporting on Vanity Metrics
Senior SEO Analyst at Uproer
Get to know your client's business. Know what actually matters to them. Stop reporting on keyword positions and start reporting on SQLs, revenue, and things that SEO has directly affected that they actually care about.
9. Giving up Too Early and Not Thinking Long-Term
Co-founder of TrioSEO
More common than not, people think in days and weeks, not months and years. Those with the best SEO are patient enough to see it come to life. The best way to fix this is to remember why you started and zoom out - SEO is a marathon, not a sprint.
10. The Tendency to Consolidate Multiple Product Categories or Services Onto a Single Page
CEO at Zahara Consult
1. Start by listing all the main products or services your business provides. 2. Perform keyword research to determine the most relevant search terms for each category or service. 3. Develop unique, in-depth content for each dedicated page, focusing on the specific features, benefits, and keywords related to that category or service. 4. Ensure that each page has unique meta titles and descriptions that reflect the specific keywords and intent of the page’s content. 5. Implement a strategic internal linking structure to connect these dedicated pages, making it easier for search engines to crawl and understand the hierarchy of your site.
11. Incorrect Meta Information Format on Website Pages
Senior SEO at Strategistat Lazydays
After a quick audit of all the pages on the website, going into the pages and implementing the fix is the easy part. Depending on the CMS and how much access I have, it might mean I can do the changes manually, or it might mean that I have to forward the recommended changes to the web platform dev to implement.
12. Relying Too Heavily on AI to Scale Content Production
Marketing Manager at SEOTesting
I am not saying AI isn't helpful, in fact I use it a lot in my content production process. But do not fall into the trap of publishing content that is heavily AI-generated. Instead, use AI to assist you with content research, help solve writer's block, and spell check your writing for you, but you should always make sure your content is original and unique to you.
13. Applying No Longer Valid Rules
SEO, WordPress, and UX Freelancer
Things in SEO change. Research. It's not easy - for example, there are still lots of resources saying that FAQ Schema is important to add to certain pages, while Google made some changes in how they present information based on search snippets. Searching for things like: Is it still valid to use meta keywords tag/do keyword stuffing/use FAQ Schema for search snippets? and restricting results to the past year or so could help. Also, could you try to search for counter-arguments? Keeping up with news and following some SEO communities could also be good practices.
14. Owners Removing On-Page Content
Founder & CEO at Double Your Ecommerce
I've worked with over a hundred Shopify stores in the last decade. There are stores that remove the heading/title/description on collection pages to improve the asthetics. This is shooting themselves in the foot! If you want a collection or category page to rank for a term, topic, or keyword, you need content on that page about that thing. For ecommerce stores, that content is often the high-on-page content on the collection page: the headline and description. If you remove that content, you're removing signals that your customers and Google use to understand what your page is about.
15. Being Too Much Focused on Keywords and Not on the Intention and the Value to Bring to Our Audience
Chief Marketing Officer at SATEP
Talk to your audience or to your colleagues that might be in direct contact with your audience (or survey your audience by email). Go where your audience is in order to see their challenges, their needs and struggles (online forums, offline events, comments section of media, etc.)
16. A Lot of Businesses Accidentally Doing Is Having Multiple Versions of Their Site Live
SEO Consultant & Founder of Optimisey
This is often staging sites that the developers forgot to hide; cloned sandbox sites (Squarespace does this by default); old versions of the site on a domain the business then moved away from and forgot about all sorts of things. First of all: Find them! Which is not always as easy as it sounds. Try and get a definitive list of every domain the company owns or has ever owned and check what — if anything — is on those domains. The Web Archive is a useful tool here too. A negative site search on Google can help. Say I wanted to find websites that talk about my company, Optimisey, that aren't me. If I search on Google for: site:optimisey.com optimisey. Google will bring back all the websites that talk about Optimisey that are NOT optimisey.com (bonus tip: this can be handy for link building too!). There are also lots of free sub-domain checker tools out there that can help you find rogue sub-domains everyone had forgotten about — like the fun staff party photos from 2016... that you probably don't want in Google's index.
17. Ignoring Link Building
Co-Founder at SmartSites
For every time I hear that SEO is dead, I hear that Link Building is 10 ten more times. While the top tier SEO vendors (like SmartSites) continue to do strategic link building, many other vendors (especially in automotive SEO) have given up the practice - mostly because of the amount of work it involves. However, Link Building continues to be as important today as it was 10 years ago. Make sure you have a strategy to acquire links and to have relevant, authoritative, websites link to you. That might be outbound link building, or perhaps a PR campaign? But at the very least, you should have some strategy in place to have authoritative websites link to your domain.
18. Forgetting to Update Content
Founder & CMO at TrioSEO
Work content updates into your monthly SEO content calendar. Instead of just focusing on creating new SEO content, analyze what content is ranking 5-25 for keywords on Google, find opportunities where you can upgrade the content, and make those updates. To find new content to add to the existing content, search the main keyword on Google and analyze the SERP results. Find new headings you didn't address, new secondary keywords to include, new examples to include, etc. Get your content upgraded to the level of the top 5 Google results. With this mentality, your monthly SEO content plan shifts from all new content to part updates and part new content.
SEO Tips on How to Avoid Biggest SEO Mistakes💡
Knowing the top SEO mistakes is certainly not enough to avoid them. SEO experts spend years gaining valuable experience and finding solutions to overcome various SEO traps. We asked them to share their insights with us. Let’s explore the right solution for each trap we’ve mentioned above.
1. How to Earn Relevant Links
Digital PR Director at JBH
Stay on top of the news to score links – with the BBC news app, you can customise your feed to focus on specific topics, making it easy to find content relevant to your industry.
2. How to Effectively Analyze Data
SEO manager at Digital Sisco
Spend more time looking at data, without spending too much time looking at data! Finding a balance is challenging but if we never try, we'll never get there!
3. How to Improve B2B SEO
SEO Specialist at Growth Hacker
Create a google title and meta description for all pages using keywords.
4. How to Optimize Images, Effectively Use Content Marketing, and Avoid Keyword Cannibalization
Founder of Demand Path
Always think about the end user with any SEO initiative. It's important that you don't do SEO marketing tactics to game the algorithm, but instead, use SEO tactics to enhance your brand and go-to-market strategy for gaining new customers!
5. How to Avoid Non-indexable URLs in XML Sitemaps
Lead SEO Specialist at Digivate
Always ensure that your XML sitemap only contains the URLs you want search engines to find. Don't make them waste time checking unnecessary URLs!
6. How to Work With Image Pages
CEO at The SEO Works
It’s important to review and take stock of the content on your site periodically to ensure it’s performing at its best and not going stale. Particularly with sites that have been publishing content for years, there are likely to be articles that no longer align with your brand, are no longer accurate in terms of their information, or content that isn’t helping your brand to achieve any certain goals. Look at your Google Analytics to uncover articles that have received no traffic or minimal traffic in the past year to create a shortlist. Then if the content still has value, consider merging related articles together to create a better article. Otherwise, delete and 301 redirect the pages.
7. How to Work With Client Reviews
Founder and Head Nerd at Nautilius Marketing
Always reply to reviews, whether they are positive or negative; it says a lot about a company based on how they respond.
8. How to Build Public Relationships
Senior SEO Analyst at Uproer
Meet with the client to talk about the business and not about SEO. These conversations give you insight to the business that you can connect the dots to your work to make it more valuable.
9. How Not to Give Up Too Soon
Co-founder of TrioSEO
Don't try and reinvent the wheel when it comes to SEO, just focus on the basics become obsessed with the game.
10. How to Work With Multiple Product Categories or Services Onto a Single Page
CEO at Zahara Consult
Always align your content with the intent behind the search queries you're targeting. Understanding what users are looking for — whether it’s information, a product, or a service — and delivering that in a clear, accessible way is key to improving your rankings and driving meaningful traffic to your site.
11. How to Deal With Incorrect Meta Information Format on Website Pages
Senior SEO Strategistat Lazydays
The best tip I have for this situation is to make sure the meta information is relevant to the page that it appears on. So many clients have tried to make the meta information more global, but in reality, the way Google works, keeping it page specific is a higher impact strategy for SEO.
12. How to Use AI for Scaling Content Production
Marketing Manager at SEOTesting
Use AI as a tool and not a replacement. AI is great for tasks like content ideation and structuring, but don't use it to write your content for you. AI is correct 96.3% of the time, but that 3.7% chance that it could give you wrong information is too big to risk. Write your content yourself, take E-E-A-T into account, and you will go far.
13. How to Keep Your SEO Strategy Up-to-Date
SEO, WordPress, and UX Freelancer
My most important SEO tip is to keep an open view of things. Even after long years in SEO, things still surprise me. Keep an open mind and look for the tiny things. Don't create a list of 20 immutable rules, or if you do, try to challenge them constantly.
14. How to Improve On-Page Content Asthetics
Founder & CEO at Double Your Ecommerce
Make sure to include high-quality, relevant content on your collection pages. It doesn't need to be too much! Just ~30-50 words can make a sizable impact.
15. How to Bring Value to Our Audience
Chief Marketing Officer at SATEP
Check the queries on which your pages appear (might be some uncovered topics to tackle). Embrace a more organic approach to your content strategy. Being too focused on text-based ressources and keywords might harm your brand.
16. How to Prevent Accidentally Having Multiple Versions of Your Site Live
SEO Consultant & Founder of Optimisey
Stop using UTM tracking on internal links!
17. How to Succeed in Link Building
Co-Founder at SmartSites
Always remember that most of the SEO that's done on the internet is public information. Meaning, you can easily see what backlinks & content your competitors are creating, what technical SEO strategy they are using, and how they are segmenting and organizing their content. Always keep an eye on what other successful sites in your niche are doing to make sure you're not missing out. Oh and of course, never hesitate to reach out to a good SEO company for advice & help.
18. How Not to Forget to Update Content
Founder & CMO at TrioSEO
Use a tool like Ahrefs of Semrush to make this content upgrade process simpler. Quickly pinpoint the pages and articles that are ranking 5 to 25+ so you can figure out if they are worth upgrading to compete better with the top 5 on Google.
Final Thoughts
The truth is that SEO mistakes happen even to the best of us. But what separates good SEOs from great ones is the ability to spot these errors before they affect your rankings. It's not always about the complex stuff (like the latest Google algorithm update); sometimes, the simple, easy-to-miss issues trap you up. Avoiding them will help you build a more effective, sustainable SEO strategy.
Need a hand? Follow this SEO checklist and make sure you're not falling into any of these common traps💪
