Worst SEO advice you ever heard?

[GrowMore]

I’ve been around long enough to hear some pretty wild SEO “advice,” but lately it feels like the bad tips are getting even worse.

So I thought it would be fun (and maybe helpful for a few newbies) to ask everyone here:

What’s the absolute worst SEO advice you’ve ever heard?

A few of my personal favorites:

• “Just create one article and backlink it with 1,000 spam comments — Google loves that.”
• “Keyword stuffing still works in 2025, trust me bro.”
• “Buy expired domains and Google will automatically rank you #1.”
• “You don’t need content… AI can replace your entire site.”

I’m sure the community has seen WAY crazier ones.
Drop yours below — let’s laugh a little and maybe save someone from destroying their site.

Looking forward to your stories!

 

[Deleted member 731332]

Blog comments are good
Social bookmarking is good
SAPE is good
Spun content is good
Footer links will rank you
Sidebar links don’t bring manual penalty in tier 1 search
Repurposed expired domains are good.

Yada yada

 

[Ben Arthur]

I’ve been around long enough to hear some pretty wild SEO “advice,” but lately it feels like the bad tips are getting even worse.

So I thought it would be fun (and maybe helpful for a few newbies) to ask everyone here:

What’s the absolute worst SEO advice you’ve ever heard?

A few of my personal favorites:

• “Just create one article and backlink it with 1,000 spam comments — Google loves that.”
• “Keyword stuffing still works in 2025, trust me bro.”
• “Buy expired domains and Google will automatically rank you #1.”
• “You don’t need content… AI can replace your entire site.”

I’m sure the community has seen WAY crazier ones.
Drop yours below — let’s laugh a little and maybe save someone from destroying their site.

Looking forward to your stories!

Haha, I’ve heard some real doozies too:

• “Just use exact-match keywords everywhere. Google loves it.”
• “Backlinks? Nah, just post your URL in every forum.”
• “Content doesn’t matter, just AI-generate a ton of pages.”
• “SEO is dead, just pay for ads and pray.”

Some of these make me wonder if people are trolling or just… creative. What’s the wildest one you’ve come across?

 

[knightm]

The worst SEO advice is “just build spammy links and Google will rank you fast” because it never works long term.

 

[Jack-Thomas]

Honestly, the worst SEO advice I ever heard was:

“Don’t worry, Google doesn’t read your site… it just vibes with it.”

Also had someone tell me:

“Bro, just change the font to Arial. Rankings go up instantly.”

At this point I’m convinced half of SEO is fixing what “trust-me-bro experts” break.

 

[awesomewebsites]

I’ve been around long enough to hear some pretty wild SEO “advice,” but lately it feels like the bad tips are getting even worse.

So I thought it would be fun (and maybe helpful for a few newbies) to ask everyone here:

What’s the absolute worst SEO advice you’ve ever heard?

A few of my personal favorites:

• “Just create one article and backlink it with 1,000 spam comments — Google loves that.”
• “Keyword stuffing still works in 2025, trust me bro.”
• “Buy expired domains and Google will automatically rank you #1.”
• “You don’t need content… AI can replace your entire site.”

I’m sure the community has seen WAY crazier ones.
Drop yours below — let’s laugh a little and maybe save someone from destroying their site.

Looking forward to your stories!

Buy expired domains and you will rank 1. That still works just that the budget for that expired domain is too much. There is blind money to be made with good expired domains. And it still holds true.

 

[seothatranks]

I’ve been around long enough to hear some pretty wild SEO “advice,” but lately it feels like the bad tips are getting even worse.

So I thought it would be fun (and maybe helpful for a few newbies) to ask everyone here:

What’s the absolute worst SEO advice you’ve ever heard?

A few of my personal favorites:

• “Just create one article and backlink it with 1,000 spam comments — Google loves that.”
• “Keyword stuffing still works in 2025, trust me bro.”
• “Buy expired domains and Google will automatically rank you #1.”
• “You don’t need content… AI can replace your entire site.”

I’m sure the community has seen WAY crazier ones.
Drop yours below — let’s laugh a little and maybe save someone from destroying their site.

Looking forward to your stories!

I agree that AI content is bad for your website. You should always use manual content of you want to make money with website in long term.

 

[laur.laurix]

Content is king....

 

[1SEOWarrior]

to rank higher get rankmath or yoast SEO score to more than 90%.

Funny but it worked once.

 

[Steptoe]

Content is king....

Beat me to it!

 

[badhabitsdestroyer]

Worst SEO advice you ever heard:​

"Do this before doing SEO"

Because you will end up watching / reading thousands hours of advice instead of trying anything yourself.

But at the same time you learn on other's mistake and save yourself time.

So I don't know, lol. Go figure.

 

[learnandearnwithseo]

Content is king. Just browse Google for most searched keywords and see the results to understand how false this is.

 

[ads studio]

I’ve been around long enough to hear some pretty wild SEO “advice,” but lately it feels like the bad tips are getting even worse.

So I thought it would be fun (and maybe helpful for a few newbies) to ask everyone here:

What’s the absolute worst SEO advice you’ve ever heard?

A few of my personal favorites:

• “Just create one article and backlink it with 1,000 spam comments — Google loves that.”
• “Keyword stuffing still works in 2025, trust me bro.”
• “Buy expired domains and Google will automatically rank you #1.”
• “You don’t need content… AI can replace your entire site.”

I’m sure the community has seen WAY crazier ones.
Drop yours below — let’s laugh a little and maybe save someone from destroying their site.

Looking forward to your stories!

Honestly, the worst SEO advice I ever heard was:

“Don’t index your sitemap, Google will just magically find it.”

Yeah, sure, and my lost keys will find me too, right? At this point, I think half of SEO is just cleaning up after people who think Google is psychic.

 

[nvlus]

• “Buy expired domains and Google will automatically rank you #1.”

I don't know how people expected this to work without access to the original backlinks, complete with the original HTML posts those links were on. In other words, a copy of the old website.

I mean you could just scrape it from Archive.org perhaps, but for anything more than a few dozen urls this becomes quickly impractical.

 

[Post Power House]

Worst advice I got was: SEO is dead, don’t waste time on it.

 

[seolab407]

Best SEO tip ever: change your site’s font to Comic Sans .Google loves confidence.

 

[ALLSMMNET]

"Bro, I have the best website where you can buy a Guest Post.
You'll get a strong DA from my website. It's only $300"

At the same time, the price of a guest post on a popular guest post exchange is $30 (for the same website)

 

[jimbobo2779]

I don't know how people expected this to work without access to the original backlinks, complete with the original HTML posts those links were on. In other words, a copy of the old website.

I mean you could just scrape it from Archive.org perhaps, but for anything more than a few dozen urls this becomes quickly impractical.

Erm. There have been apps that do this for over a decade.

 

[SpawneR]

"Bro, I have the best website where you can buy a Guest Post.
You'll get a strong DA from my website. It's only $300"

At the same time, the price of a guest post on a popular guest post exchange is $30 (for the same website)

We talking iCopify?

 

[Spark Point]

I’ve heard many bad tips too. The worst ones usually promise fast rankings with spammy links or zero content. Good SEO still takes work and patience.