I’m going to say something that might get me in trouble with the growth hacking gurus. Most founders are terrible at SEO. There, I said it. It’s not entirely their fault. You’re busy trying to build a product people love and hire a team that doesn’t implode, all while figuring out how to pay the bills. I get it. SEO feels like this dark art, a black box of algorithms and jargon.
But here’s the thing. Ignoring SEO is like trying to sail a ship with a giant hole in the hull. You can have the best product in the world, but if nobody can find you, you’re dead in the water. I’ve seen it happen more times than I can count. And honestly, I’ve made most of these mistakes myself.
At RemoteTeam, my first real venture, we burned through a six-figure marketing budget on SEO strategies that went absolutely nowhere. I’m talking $100,000+ vanished into the ether of Google’s algorithm with almost nothing to show for it. At MovieLaLa, we got lucky with a few things, but we also made some boneheaded moves that set us back months. And now, as an angel investor in over 200 companies—including some you might have heard of like Anthropic and Scale AI—I see the same patterns, the same heartbreaking and avoidable mistakes, over and over again.
So, I’m pulling back the curtain. No fluff, no BS. This is the real, unfiltered truth from someone who’s been in the trenches, lost money, and learned the hard way. Here are the seven most common SEO mistakes I see founders make, and how you can avoid them.
1. Chasing Vanity Keywords
When we first started RemoteTeam, we thought we had it all figured out. We were a remote team management platform, so obviously, we should go after keywords like “remote work” and “distributed teams,” right? Wrong. We were obsessed with the idea of seeing our name at the top of the search results for these huge, sexy keywords. It was pure ego.
We spent months and a small fortune trying to rank for them. We were a tiny, bootstrapped startup going up against giants like Google, Microsoft, and Atlassian. It was like bringing a knife to a gunfight. We were creating content, building links, doing everything the “experts” told us to do. The result? We barely cracked the 5th page of Google. Our traffic was a flatline. I remember looking at our analytics and feeling this pit in my stomach. We were burning through cash with nothing to show for it.
The turning point came when I was talking to one of our first customers. I asked him how he found us. He said, “I wasn’t searching for ‘remote work.’ I was searching for ‘how to track my remote team’s vacation days.’” It was a lightbulb moment. We weren’t thinking about our customers’ actual pain points. We were so focused on the vanity metrics that we completely missed the plot.
We shifted our entire strategy. We started going after long-tail keywords like “how to manage remote employees effectively” and “best tools for remote team collaboration.” These keywords had much lower search volume, but they were also much more specific to our product. The people searching for these terms were in pain, and we had the solution. The impact was almost immediate. Our traffic started to climb, and more importantly, our sign-ups exploded.
2. Ignoring the Gremlins in Your Technical SEO
I’m not a technical founder. I’ll be the first to admit it. When I was starting out, I honestly had no idea what a sitemap was, what a robots.txt file did, or why site speed mattered. I figured that if I just wrote good content, Google would figure it out. I was wrong. Dead wrong.
I’ll never forget this one week at MovieLaLa. Our organic traffic fell off a cliff. I’m talking a 70% drop overnight. We were panicking. We thought a competitor had launched a negative SEO attack. We thought Google had penalized us. We spent days trying to figure out what was going on. I was barely sleeping. The whole team was on edge.
Finally, after hours of digging through our code, one of our engineers found the problem. A developer had been working on a new feature and had accidentally left a single line of code in our main template: a “noindex” tag. For those of you who don’t know, that’s a tiny piece of code that tells Google’s crawlers to completely ignore your site. We were literally invisible to Google. It was a stupid, tiny, avoidable mistake that cost us tens of thousands of dollars in lost revenue and a lot of sleepless nights. Don’t be like me. Get a technical SEO audit. It’s worth every penny.
3. Treating SEO Like a One-Night Stand
I get it. As a founder, you’re wired for quick wins. You want to see results yesterday. But SEO doesn’t work that way. It’s a long-term relationship. It’s like planting a tree. You don’t get a giant oak overnight. You have to plant the seed, water it every day, and give it time to grow.
I’ve seen so many founders give up on SEO after a few months because they’re not seeing the explosive growth they were promised. They’ll write a few blog posts, build a few links, and then get discouraged when they’re not on the first page of Google. The truth is, it can take six months to a year to start seeing real, meaningful results from SEO. But if you’re patient and you’re consistent, the payoff is huge. It’s a compounding asset that will pay dividends for years to come. For more on this, check out my post on startup growth strategies.
4. Forgetting You’re Building a Brand, Not Just a Website
In the early days of the internet, you could get away with being a faceless, nameless entity. You could stuff your website with keywords, build a bunch of spammy links from shady directories, and rank on the first page of Google. Those days are long, long gone. Today, Google wants to rank brands. They want to rank companies that are authorities in their space, companies that people trust.
At MovieLaLa, we were lucky enough to build a strong brand early on. We were a social network for movie lovers, and we were genuinely passionate about what we did. We were active on Twitter, we ran contests, we engaged with our users in forums, and we built a real community around our product. That brand equity was a massive asset for us when it came to SEO. It helped us build natural, high-quality links from movie blogs and publications. It helped us rank for our target keywords. And it made our users our biggest advocates.
5. Writing for Robots, Not for Humans
This is the biggest mistake of all, and I see it all the time. People get so obsessed with keywords and optimization that they forget they’re writing for actual human beings. They create content that is so stuffed with keywords that it’s completely unreadable. It’s clunky and awkward, providing zero value to the reader.
I remember a time at RemoteTeam when we were so focused on optimizing a landing page for the keyword “best remote team software” that we completely forgot about the user experience. The page was a disaster. The keyword was repeated in every other sentence. The copy was robotic. It was impossible to understand what our product actually did. Our conversion rate was in the toilet.
We finally took a step back and asked ourselves, “What does a user who lands on this page actually want to know?” We redesigned the page from the ground up, with the user in mind. We focused on a clear, compelling value proposition. We added customer testimonials. We made it easy to sign up for a free trial. We barely even thought about the keyword. And you know what happened? Our conversion rate tripled overnight. And, ironically, our ranking for “best remote team software” actually went up. Because Google is smart enough to know when you’re providing a good user experience.
6. The Trap of the One-Page Website
This one is a pet peeve of mine. I see so many startups with these beautiful, slick, well-designed single-page websites. They look great in a design portfolio, but they’re an absolute nightmare for SEO. Why? Because you can only rank for a handful of keywords with a single page. It’s like trying to fish with a single hook. You might get lucky and catch a fish, but you’re not going to catch a lot of them.
If you want to rank for a variety of keywords, you need to have a variety of pages on your site. Each page should be a dedicated resource, optimized for a specific keyword or topic. Think of your website as a library. Each page is a book on a different subject. The more books you have, the more likely people are to find what they’re looking for. If you're serious about growth, you need to move beyond the digital business card. For more on this, see my post on product-led growth.
7. Content Without a Compass
This is the glue that holds everything together. You can’t just write a bunch of random blog posts and hope for the best. That’s called content marketing, not a content strategy. You need to have a plan. You need a compass.
Your content strategy should be your north star. It should be based on your keyword research and your deep understanding of your customer personas. It should outline the topics you’re going to write about, the formats you’re going to use (blog posts, videos, podcasts, etc.), and the channels you’re going to use to promote your content. It’s your roadmap to success.
At RemoteTeam, we developed a content strategy that was focused on creating in-depth, long-form guides on topics related to the challenges of remote work. We knew that our target audience was looking for practical, actionable advice, so we created content that delivered on that promise. It was a ton of work, but it paid off. Our blog became a go-to resource for remote teams, and it drove a massive amount of traffic and leads for our business.
The Real Secret
Look, I get it. SEO can feel overwhelming. There are a million different things you could be doing. But if you avoid these seven common mistakes, you’ll be miles ahead of most founders. But if you really want to win, if you’re serious about growth, you need to focus on one thing above all else: user intent.
Stop wasting time on vanity metrics. Stop trying to trick the algorithm. Start obsessing over your users. What are they searching for? What are their deepest pain points? What are their hopes and dreams? If you can answer those questions and create content that truly serves them, you’ll win. It’s that simple. And it’s the one thing that most of your competitors are too lazy to do.
If you’re looking for more advice on how to grow your startup, check out my book, “Becoming Top 1%.” It’s everything I’ve learned about building and scaling companies, with no fluff and no BS. Just real, actionable advice from someone who’s been there and done it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are these recommendations still relevant in 2026?
Absolutely. While specific tools and tactics change, the underlying principles remain consistent. I update my thinking regularly based on what I'm seeing in the market and across my portfolio companies.
Can I implement all of these at once?
I'd strongly recommend against it. Pick the 2-3 items that resonate most with your current situation and focus there. Trying to do everything simultaneously is a recipe for doing nothing well.
Which item on this list has the highest impact?
It depends on your stage and context, but in my experience, the items near the top of the list tend to have the broadest applicability. That said, sometimes the less obvious items create the biggest breakthroughs for specific situations.
How do I know which items apply to my situation?
Start by honestly assessing where your biggest bottleneck is right now. The items that address that specific constraint will give you the highest return on your time and energy.