One of the most prevalent SEO mistakes made by B2B sites, according to a recent article in Search Engine Land, is the use of homepage carousels (like HDI). However, this worst practice has also been employed by a number of B2C sites (like Hulu), particularly subscription content sites that want to highlight various feature stories.The problem with the carousel (or sliders) is that it requires you to break a lot of basic SEO best practices. For example, many carousels use multiple h1 headings — usually one for each slide in the carousel. But SEO 101 states that there should only be one h1 tag on each page. A page with five sliders and five h1 tags devalues every keyword used in the h1 tags.Moreover, carousels often use Flash, but Flash content cannot be crawled by search bots. And the use of Flash and carousels usually impeded download time, a critical usability and conversion factor.Lastly, carousels draw the eye in. Usually that would be a good thing, but with its rotating factor, carousels are basically distracting visitors from taking an action on a homepage, whether that’s clicking on a story, signing up for a newsletter or becoming a paying subscriber.Therefore, subscription content sites should abandon carousel design. It would be better to employ behavioral targeting, serve content according to user’s self-described needs and interests (like WritersMarket.com), or design a homepage that highlights feature/top stories in a static manner (like the New York Times).