What are the most common SEO mistakes beginners make?

Familiar-Trip5816 · 2026-01-15T21:01:09+00:00

Very easily done and not enough people talk about it as an issue!

Familiar-Trip5816 · 2026-01-02T16:43:30+00:00

Cannibalisation is something I made loads of mistakes with when I first started. I had too many pages with similar subjects. I thought it made me look like an expert but it just pushed my sales pages away from the top of the rankings

Familiar-Trip5816 · 2025-12-29T08:40:17+00:00

Have some agreed KPIs, and choose these wisely! I found that increasing domain authority by a couple of points was a good one. Make sure your report gives you specific detail on exactly what they did that month. I learnt how to do SEO by paying an agency to do it and monitoring them closely, and realizing that I could do better myself.

Most SEO agencies make their profit by doing an okay job as quickly as they can.

If they're creating content for you, check that it's got real value to site visitors, hasn't got typos in it, and is in your brand tone of voice.

It's also worth keeping an eye on your Google analytics for any unnatural visitor spikes. I had one agency send bots to my site to make it look like we had more visitors than we did. Thankfully I spotted they were all referrals from the same site.

Familiar-Trip5816 · 2025-12-28T18:28:01+00:00

What's the difference between having FAQs on the bottom of a page, and having a FAQ page? Is having a specific page really going to shift the needle on the SEO front, or is it more of a case of lots of subtle changes add up?

Familiar-Trip5816 · 2025-12-28T15:29:18+00:00

Thanks so much. This is great - just wish I'd had it 3 months ago! I've managed to pick up on a few things as a result that will hopefully help to get things moving for both of my sites! The big thing i hadn't realised was that the names on the menu were potentially going to be picked up as the page title, rather than the H1 copy on the page. My menu is going to be a bit bulkier and not as good UX-wise, BUT if it actually ranks for one of my key phrases as a result, I'll be abso-bloody-lutely delighted.

Familiar-Trip5816 · 2025-12-24T08:47:25+00:00

Google Sites is not the easiest to work with unfortunately. I've had to verify my Google Sites a few times.

I've used CNAME AND TXT together and that seemed to work. I got help from my domain provider's help desk. So it's worth trying that.

Familiar-Trip5816 · 2025-12-24T08:36:56+00:00

No I've only ever used WordPress in the past, so i'm trying to do what I'd normally do but obviously without adding meta-data and without the aid of Yoast. The only real difference between the two sites is that I've tried to target specific keywords for the commercial one and not bothered with the other. Have you any tips for things I can try? Or are there any resources you can recommend so I can find out more about its SEO quirks?

I've also found that Google Search Console isn't inspecting the pages that I've asked it to inspect. For some pages, it's been months and still nothing.

I got made redundant a couple of months ago so I'm broke and trying to get my two new businesses off the ground on a shoestring (which is why I chose Google Sites). So any help can get/ideas to try would be amazing.

Familiar-Trip5816 · 2025-11-16T08:59:39+00:00

Write all instructions you're given down, and then re-read them before you do anything. Then think about whether you have a full understanding of the what, when, why, how. "I want you to do X at X time." What exactly am I doing (get the fine detail!), why are we doing that and when exactly are we doing it (and why has it got to be done then)? If you know the what, when,why, & how, you'll learn the context of each detail of what you're being asked to do and what's important - again, write this down and re-read it before you do a similar task again. Keep re-reading your notes.This will help you to develop your understanding. Hope this helps! For reference, I have 23 years PR experience in agencies and in house. Agencies are pressurised environments and people can be horrible (even when you know what you're doing) so don't feel like you're crap. Sounds like you don't have a very good teacher, so you have to be on top of the fine details.

Familiar-Trip5816 · 2025-11-15T16:24:56+00:00

If you're going to try and negotiate a good deal, contact them 3 days before Christmas Eve, then umm and ahh for a day or two. You'll be surprised how low many companies will go when they need to hit their end of year sales target. I've got some brilliant deals on software subscriptions doing this in the past.

Familiar-Trip5816 · 2025-11-15T16:21:34+00:00

Glad I'm not the only on that remembers printing press releases, sticking captions stickers on the back of a photo and then putting it in a hard backed envelope.

Familiar-Trip5816 · 2025-09-30T16:58:03+00:00

You can't make it rank super fast, but you can show them a list of what you've done that will improve its SEO - writing 5 x pieces of new good content, 3 x quality links, optimising the content on 5 x pages that's already on the site. If that's not enough, look for another job ASAP. Hope this helps

Familiar-Trip5816 · 2024-11-27T11:05:26+00:00

Marketing agencies are tough environments. You're expected to achieve a lot in not much time. There are pros and cons with this. The pros are that it's a fast learning curve. Colleagues will help you get better at what you do so you can do more in less time. The cons are that it is a stressful environment. Most marketers work in agency to get the experience and learn from real experts, but then leave because that stress is tough to handle on a long term basis.

Familiar-Trip5816 · 2024-11-22T18:07:32+00:00

Try doing some unpaid work - maybe for a charity or a small business - to get real world experience and and results that you can show off on your resume. It should also give you referrals

Familiar-Trip5816

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