What was your biggest time waste in SEO?

Looking back what is one thing you spent way too much time on that barely moved the needle? For me it was obsessing over tiny on page tweaks instead of fixing internal linking and content structure.

Link building, keyword research, technical SEO, chasing updates or something completely different?

I spent far too much time refreshing rankings every day. Looking at weekly or monthly trends ended up being much more useful.

Chasing perfect SEO plugin scores. I spent way too much time fixing tiny warnings that made zero difference, while stronger content and internal links moved rankings much faster.

For me it was over focusing on small on page adjustents. Things like tweaking keywords repeatedly did not move the needle much but improving internal linking and overall content structure made a bigger difference. I have learned that broader site improvements usually pay off more than micro optimizations.

I used to think that cheap and lots of links from comments works and wasted lots of money in there. Also I used to buy cheap 15$ links from websites where you yourself can create accounts and do it yourself. What a fool I was

I've been wasting time on everything that is related to SEO, the first website that I have I was doing everything by the rules, make everything good, special, invested time to be brutally SEO optimised, got good backlinks, website is old almost 3 years and website looks dead... Then, I've created a new website only in HTML via DeepSeek, told him to make it SEO optimised and all that crap, the website can be found on the first page of Google, website is old 5 months, no backlinks created. On my first website I invested a lot of time and all that shit, not even ranking, other websites are about SAME things and it is ranking very good... I'm selling something where I don't need some complicated website, that's why I can ask DeepSeek to code me only in HTML and the website looks more modern that the first one, by the way the first one is made via WordPress, having plugins for SEO and other stuff... Now this with HTML no time wasting on plugins and other crap.

One question: HOW?!?!?!

First website is older than the second one, having good backlinks, focused to make it very good SEO optimised, high SEO score, no warnings for a website that there is something wrong, added on Google Search Console from day one, everything done right... Sometimes I can find it on google search by scrolling down a lot and sometimes can't find it.

Second website that is made via DeepSeek, only in HTML, told him to make it SEO optimised, created zero backlinks, no advertising, no SEO plugins, website is 5 months old, same content like on first website and can be found on first page of google, also ranking better than my competition.

(I've also asked ChatGPT about this and got an answer, idk if it's true or not).

Spending too much time to improve your webpage loading speed is big mistake. In ideal case, you should optimise your site and setup cache & minification through a plugin and never look back. If you have shared hosting with a slow server, no amount of tweaking will fix it.

I kept tweaking title tags every week with almost no impact. Fixing site architecture and internal linking delivered much bigger gains.

I probably wasted the most time chasing every google update.Looking back ,focusing on useful content and site sructure would have been a better investment.

CashPhantom said:

Looking back what is one thing you spent way too much time on that barely moved the needle? For me it was obsessing over tiny on page tweaks instead of fixing internal linking and content structure.

Link building, keyword research, technical SEO, chasing updates or something completely different?

Click to expand...

One of my biggest time sucks was chasing every Gogle update and changing things fast. Hindsight, a strong content plan and better internal linking and allowing changes to mature would have saves a lot time and yielded better results.

For me it was chasing every google update i used to make changes after every fluctuation but most of the time the rankings settled on their own a few days later

For me, it was waste of time chasing high DA backlinks while neglecting topical relevance and content quality. Once I focused more on content structure and user intent, I saw much better results.

SEO works better when you stay focused, test slowly, and avoid kind of promotions. what i believe is biggest time waste in SEO was overthinking and trying too many small startegies at the same time.

i spent too much time chasing high SEO metrics like DA and DR once i focused on relevance and real traffic the results improved much more consistently

My biggest time waste was constantly checking rankings and making tiny page edits. I saw much better results after improving content quality, internal links, and publishing useful articles consistently.

i Probably waste time of chasing google new updates

I may have wasted most of my time chasing every Google update and checking rankings

CashPhantom said:

Looking back what is one thing you spent way too much time on that barely moved the needle? For me it was obsessing over tiny on page tweaks instead of fixing internal linking and content structure.

Link building, keyword research, technical SEO, chasing updates or something completely different?

Click to expand...

Link building. I have always believed that links carry the highest share on ranking.

For me it was spending too much time chasing high DA backlinks I saw much better results once
I focused on creating better content improving internal linking and getting relevant links instead of just looking at metrics

For me, it was spending too much time on keyword research and chasing perfect keyword variations. In the end, improving content structure and strengthening internal linking had a much bigger impact on rankings than finding one more keyword.