8 common SEO mistakes to avoid

We’re all looking to improve our organic performance. 

We want the latest news, tips, and thought leadership to help push our website past the competition. That’s why we’re here!

However, the less glamorous side of staying current in SEO is learning from others’ mistakes. 

This article looks at eight common mistakes you can easily avoid.

1. Treating organic traffic as the end goal

It makes sense to use organic traffic as a key metric to measure SEO success. It’s one of the easiest to define. 

However, it’s not the reason your company employs you.

Traffic doesn’t pay the bills. In reality, it costs money when you factor in hosting and tools.

Growing organic traffic isn’t necessarily a bad goal, but it needs to be more defined. 

You could be ranking for keywords that will never convert or attracting visitors who leave immediately. That’s not helping your business grow.

Instead of viewing increased organic traffic as proof your SEO efforts are working, treat it as an indicator – one that matters only if the traffic is well-qualified.

Ask key stakeholders what they report on each month.

If you’re speaking to the board of directors, they care about the company’s financial health. 

Consider SEO’s impact on revenue as a better measure of success than simply saying, “Organic traffic is increasing.”

Dig deeper: Why SEO often fails before it even begins

2. Forgetting about the user

Focusing more on traffic volume than the users behind it is a mistake. 

If you create content only to generate traffic without a plan to meet visitors’ needs once they arrive, you’re wasting your energy.

It’s easy to see traffic as the end of an SEO’s responsibility, but that’s not the case. 

A high-ranking page is only valuable if it attracts and engages the right audience. 

Whether targeting users at the top or bottom of the funnel, have a clear plan for their next step and craft your copy to guide them there.

Too often, I’ve seen SEO strategies that begin and end with “get more users to the site” – with little thought about what happens next.

3. Implementing short-term strategies

When developing an SEO strategy, it’s important to consider how far ahead you should plan. 

A common mistake – one I’ve made myself – is limiting an SEO strategy to just a few months due to uncertainty about the future of SEO.

While it’s wise to stay adaptable as new SERP features emerge or a new search engine gains popularity, planning less than a year ahead is likely neither ambitious nor realistic for long-term growth.

Algorithm updates can affect progress and require adjustments to your approach. 

However, if your strategy spans 12 months, your overarching goals will likely remain the same, even if specific tactics need to change. 

For example, if your SEO strategy is designed to increase revenue through organic search for a new product launch, a Google algorithm update won’t make that goal obsolete. 

You may need to adjust certain activities, but the strategy itself will remain intact.

The risk of short-term planning is that you’re constantly shifting from one project to another, requiring frequent buy-in. 

This approach can prevent genuine growth, making SEO more reactive than strategic. 

You’ll also be more susceptible to chasing trends instead of implementing sustainable tactics that drive long-term success.

Dig deeper: 5 SEO mistakes sacrificing quantity and quality (and how to fix them)

4. Blaming the algorithms without reason

It’s all too easy to blame traffic drops on algorithm updates. 

We’ve all been in meetings where an SEO confidently tells a stakeholder:

• “Google makes hundreds of algorithm changes each year, and we don’t always know what’s changed.” 

While true, this can also become a scapegoat. 

Instead of investigating the actual cause, it’s convenient to attribute the drop to a Google update – especially when stakeholders have no way to prove otherwise.

Before jumping to “algorithm update” as the reason for a traffic drop, rule out other possibilities. 

• Check if the decline is happening across multiple search engines. If it is, an algorithm update is less likely to be the cause. 
• Look for technical issues affecting crawling and indexing. 
• Consider whether shifts in user behavior or industry trends are impacting search demand.

And remember: If you blame algorithms for traffic drops without proper investigation, you should also credit them when traffic goes up. 

That probably won’t sit well with your boss when they ask what impact your SEO efforts have had lately.

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5. Basing decisions on flawed data

Another major mistake is making other SEO decisions without solid data. 

Most SEOs understand that data is key to a successful strategy, yet errors in data handling are all too common.

For example, poorly designed tests can lead to misleading conclusions. 

Running a test on meta descriptions to measure their impact on click-through rates is pointless if you don’t verify which descriptions were actually displayed in the SERPs. 

Similarly, evaluating sitewide performance metrics instead of analyzing specific pages, topics, or templates can obscure important insights.

These issues often stem from:

• Using the wrong metrics.
• Relying on mislabeled data.
• Failing to segment data properly. 

A common error is pulling a Google Search Console report without accounting for variations in traffic by country or device. 

Averages can smooth out meaningful peaks and troughs, leading to flawed conclusions.

Dig deeper: SEO shortcuts gone wrong: How one site tanked – and what you can learn

6. Assuming Google lies

This mistake is surprisingly common in the SEO industry – the assumption that “Google lies.” 

But when you really think about it, that idea doesn’t make much sense. 

It would require a coordinated effort from every Google representative we hear from to deliberately mislead SEOs. 

For what purpose, exactly?

I don’t believe Google lies about SEO. 

What would Google employees gain from misleading us about things like whether Googlebot respects robots.txt or if there’s a way to encourage Googlebot to crawl a site? 

More often than not, what people perceive as “Google lying” is actually a misunderstanding of extremely complex topics.

Google Search is powered by intricate algorithms involving machine learning, information retrieval, and technical systems that most of us will never fully grasp. 

Naturally, some details get lost in communication. 

Google’s representatives try to simplify, explain, and troubleshoot an incredibly advanced system, which can sometimes lead to confusion.

That’s why we should test everything Google tells us – not because they’re trying to deceive us, but because testing helps us better understand how to optimize our sites so Googlebot can find and serve our content effectively.

7. Using the robots.txt to control indexing

Since we’re on the topic of helping Googlebot find and serve content, let’s talk about a common mistake – misusing robots.txt.

Robots.txt is meant to guide bots on what they can and cannot crawl, not what they can index. 

A common misconception is that blocking a page in robots.txt prevents it from appearing in search results. That’s not how it works.

If a search engine bot has never crawled a page, it won’t see its content and likely won’t rank it well. 

But that doesn’t mean it won’t index the page at all. 

If a search engine finds links to the page and the context of those links provides enough information, the page can still appear in relevant search results.

If a page was previously crawled and indexed, and then a disallow rule was added to robots.txt, it can still rank based on the last version Google saw. 

Essentially, you’ve given search engines a snapshot of the page before blocking it, and that’s what they will continue to rank.

A related mistake is adding a noindex tag to a page while also blocking it in robots.txt. 

If the page is blocked, Googlebot can’t crawl it to see the noindex tag – so the page may stay in search results despite your efforts to remove it.

Dig deeper: 5 SEO content pitfalls that could be hurting your traffic

8. Using conflicting signals

Sending search engines mixed signals can lead to indexing and ranking issues. This happens in several ways:

• Adding a noindex tag to a page while also canonicalizing it to another page.
• Linking to the non-canonical version of a page, making it unclear which URL should be indexed.
• Combining hreflang tags with noindex, preventing localized versions from being properly indexed.
• Pointing a canonical tag to a page that has a noindex tag, sending contradictory instructions.

Learn from others’ mistakes

These are just a few common SEO pitfalls, but there are many more. 

Experienced SEOs have often learned these lessons the hard way – by making mistakes. You don’t have to. 

By recognizing these issues early, you can avoid them and refine your SEO strategy for better results.

Dig deeper: The top 5 strategic SEO mistakes enterprises make (and how to avoid them)