They vastly over-estimate Google's abilities to identify patterns ("we use similar wording on other sites, that's a pattern" for wording that everyone uses, like talking about the beach distance on a hotel review, or just using bootstrap) and are like "I don't understand, but I trust you so I'll consider this okay ... for now". If some ranking drops, they're always eager to roll back any changes that were done, even if they didn't affect the frontend ("who knows how Google works").
At the same time, while they want to avoid patterns to connect their sites, they run all their sites in the same search console and analytics account.
Most of them pick up very few technical things and transition from Product Management into SEO by learning how to run reports and what blogs to read for instructions. Introducing the DOM inspector is something I'm often blowing minds with, same with viewing request in the network console ("you mean I don't need the redirect tester 3000 any more?")
I've only once worked for clients that had someone doing SEO who was deep into technical SEO and had all kinds of automation set up and roughly understood how HTTP works, the differences between server and client etc.
Much of it is quasi-religious, I've often jokingly suggested trying to sacrifice a chicken. I'm not sure everybody laughed and never gave it some serious thoughts.
what are some suggestions you make that your clients don't follow?