Whats you biggest SEO mistake?

[200]

Buying links on BHW
I've wasted too much money on links here. Like a lot of other members, it took a year or two before I realized that it's basically just overpriced Fiverr links. I've tested both cheap and expensive services, old and new. The wake-up call was when I bought one link for 150 dollars, and then found the exact same links on Konkerr for 30 dollar.

Wow. Really? Thanks for the heads up.
Thought they where carefully reviewed and stuff.

 

[yherrliche]

Hiring people to go my SEO. Just do it yourself

 

[Mariluelgado]

Not Investing in a Fast and Mobile-Friendly Experience

 

[Deleted member 1319755]

My biggest seo mistake was leaving this turned on


For more than 3 months, i was wondering why my posts and pages were not on google. Kept building links until i came across this.

 

[Get Web Growth]

linking all domains with each other

 

[Paul D. Owens]

Not Using Anchor Text for Internal Links this is my biggest mistakes

 

[invictus1021]

I've made a lot of the same mistakes that have already been mentioned, as I guess most of us have.

Above all I guess consistency was probably my biggest mistake, with high quality content, with good quality links, etc.

Early days when you think results will come quickly you're willing to do it all. But when the results don't come, it's too easy to drop the effort and move on. Being consistent here is key.

 

[SEO Grand Room]

Not concentrating on long-tail keywords

 

[Robert J. Dewey]

Not Taking Advantage of Great Design for Links

 

[Tuhin20]

For many years I was 'white hat' only - I was adding content regularly, it was thoroughly researched and written for visitors, any suspicious link toward my sites was disavowed right away, etc.

My 'best' site somehow reached PR2 back in a day, while my competitors ranked much better with crappy sites and crappy content, but they had at least 10-20x times more backlinks ... so, it took me some time to realize that all what Google wants is my money for their Adwords ... and they still do

These days, white hat, gray hat, black hat - it is all the same in the eyes of a Google - if it runs, Google will shot it sooner or later ...

Don't get me wrong, I am kinda new of this area. can you explain this?
"These days, white hat, gray hat, black hat - it is all the same in the eyes of a Google - if it runs, Google will shot it sooner or later ..."

 

[Tuhin20]

Nah, SEO should not be the main focus, main focus should be to create a great offer, a great digital experience, and have great content.

If you do that then people will do the SEO for you (i.e share your links).

But I would rather focus on PPC, if I stop buying traffic (and you don't have a great offer) then traffic stops. That's how you know you need to improve your offer and digital experience.

Agree with you, investing lots of money, time in return didnt fill my objects.
If you suggest for PPC, can you tell me where I can start this?

 

[vmMarketing]

Blocking all crawlers by mistake in the robots.txt for weeks. Byebye top 10 positions

 

[GeeLark AI]

PBN, 301, foot print problem

 

[skywilson]

I only just got into SEO for a estate agency I started, mainly looking to rank in local search.

seems to be contradicting advice, maybe someone can clear it up?

Don't buy expensive links, but build quality content. Don't get flagged by google, but also Don't listen to google.

 

[Sebastian Velandia]

I think that the most common mistake I see here is to buy fake backlinks. That's the most harmful way of damaging your SEO in the long run. The more backlinks you buy the more vulnerable you are to the Google updates, Google algos are smarter than you think.

NEVER buy fake backlinks. Invest in very very HIGH authority backlinks in your niche instead. Those backlinks tend to cost hundreds of dollars.

Another mistake that happened to me was to have a very low-security password in GoDaddy and to not have 2FA activated, a hacker steeled my domains and I had to pay a lot of money to the hacker to recover them. So please take cybersecurity seriously!!

 

[wisdomkid]

Buying Dexter (SAM's) link on a 5 year old white hat site. Being cheap is expensive!

 

[Deleted member 1333509]

Not going hard into it when it was super insanely easy and just required an EMD and a tonne of keyword cramming to bank.

 

[mezzofanti]

Don't get me wrong, I am kinda new of this area. can you explain this?
"These days, white hat, gray hat, black hat - it is all the same in the eyes of a Google - if it runs, Google will shot it sooner or later ..."

Google is a large company and it plays dirty - that is why it is such a large company.

There are too many 'white hat' sites that are regularly taken down by their majestic updates - a few of my sites included. Also, some people buy just a few backlinks here and there and have their sites taken down by updates - a few of my sites included. Black hat sites blasted with many more-or-less spammy backlinks featuring outdated content also get taken down by the updates - but few such sites that I follow are still going on strongly in very competitive niches.

Now, imagine having a site with 200-300 or more articles, guides, reviews, with social pages etc. (white as snow), regularly added new content, regularly updated 'old' pages, that is starting to gain in momentum after few years of hard labor, being taken down by some Google's Zoo update for who knows what reasons.

And site(s) in the same niche with 25-30 pages, old outdated content, but each page having at least 30+ spammy backlinks, being on positions 1-3 for many 1k+ keywords with buying intention - dear big G FCK U ... excuse my language

and that is why I said that my biggest mistake was following google's guidelines. I am not saying that we should all make shitty 20-30 pages sites and spam them to death, but ...

 

[Roger Marquez]

Not benchmarketing before implementing changes

 

[Northstarr]

Spending all my time on envato looking at super clunky themes instead of producing content and getting links.