Listly by matt-33
Here are some of the biggest SEO mistakes I’ve seen (and maybe even made myself 🤫). Drop your favorites (or most painful experiences) in the comments, and don’t forget to vote for the worst offenders.
There’s no shortcut to sustainable SEO.
It’s all about playing the long game with strategy and smarts.
SEO takes time. If you expect overnight success, you might as well be trying to grow a tree in a day.
Backlinks are hard. They’re also the biggest ranking factor. Quality matters more than quantity, so stop grabbing spammy links from Fiverr and thinking you’ve cracked the code.
Google’s algorithm is a billion-dollar machine. It’s smart. It knows when links are legit and when they’re garbage. But it’s also not perfect, which is why some shady tactics do work… for a little while. Then? Boom—penalty, lost rankings, and a long road to recovery.
There’s no shortcut to sustainable SEO.
Google loves fresh, relevant info. Your 2017 blog post on “SEO trends” isn’t exactly cutting it anymore. Update it or watch it fade into the abyss.
Competing with Forbes and Wikipedia? Cute. Try niching down instead.
This is when having an SEO expert on your side really matters.. Understanding search intent, knowing how to pick winnable keywords, and having the insight from years of ranking content across niches is what separates amateurs from pros.
Instead of wasting time on impossible targets, the smart move is to focus on strategic, achievable keywords that actually drive results.
SEO isn’t just about backlinks. Link your own content, or enjoy your lonely, forgotten pages. Backlinks still matter though!
Most website builders get this right out of the box, so it’s not a huge concern—unless you’re going full custom. But still, worth checking to make sure your site doesn’t look like a Picasso painting on mobile.
AI-generated, zero-research, word-vomit blogs? Google sees you. And ignores you.
Congrats, your homepage is now titled “Home” and your blog post is “Untitled.” Killer SEO strategy. Yes, Google doesn';t consdiering meta descripitons a rnaking facotr and will often rewrite it.
Yes, let’s shove best cheap SEO tool for best cheap SEO ranking in best cheap SEO into one sentence. Genius.
It’s literally Google telling you what’s wrong, and you’re out here ignoring it? Bold move.
It’s the only tool that gives you real data straight from the source—Google itself. Everything else? Just estimates. If you’re not using it, you’re flying blind.
But let’s be honest, it’s not perfect. Google Search Console loves to flag things that aren’t always real problems.