Common SEO mistakes to avoid can significantly affect your website’s visibility and performance. These problems impact search engine optimization efforts by weakening your site’s ability to rank effectively. This article explores these typical website ranking problems and offers practical ways to resolve them.
Technical SEO Issues
Technical aspects of website optimization play a key role in achieving better website visibility. These behind-the-scenes elements, such as site speed, crawlability, and mobile responsiveness, are often overlooked but can cause serious performance issues.
1. Duplicate Content
Duplicate content refers to web pages that contain the same or nearly identical information. This could mean exact copies or pages that are mostly the same with only minor variations. Common examples include templated pages with minimal changes or region-specific versions such as U.S. and U.K. pages with similar text.
This issue can affect website performance in SERPs. If not addressed properly, it may lead to:
- The wrong version of a webpage appearing in SERPs
- Crawling and indexing complications
- Inconsistent or diluted page rankings
These problems can result in significant drops in organic traffic.
How to Fix Duplicate Content
The first step is identifying where duplication exists. Once found, you can resolve the issue using one or more of these methods:
- Add original, valuable material to differentiate the pages
- Implement a rel=”canonical” tag to indicate the preferred version of a page to search engines
- Use a 301 redirect to point the duplicate page to the original
2. Under-Optimized Meta Tags
Meta tags are small pieces of HTML code that provide information about a webpage to users and search engine crawlers. When these tags are missing, duplicated, or poorly written, they limit your website’s ability to perform well in SERPs and may cause confusion for both search engines and users.
Two of the most important meta tags are:
- Title Tags: Define how a page title appears in SERPs and on browser tabs. They influence both ranking and click-through rates.
- Meta Description Tags: Provide a short summary that may appear under the title in SERPs. While not always used by Google, a well-crafted description can still encourage users to visit your page.
These tags help search engines understand what your page is about and assist users in deciding whether to click.
Other important elements include:
- H1 Tags: The main heading on a page, which gives both visitors and search engines context about the material.
- Alt Text: Describes images for accessibility and helps search engines interpret visual element.
Meta tag under-optimization often results from:
- Missing tags
- Tags that are too short, too long, or poorly written
- Duplicate tags across multiple pages
How to Fix Under-Optimized Meta Tags
To improve your meta tags:
- Ensure each page has a unique title tag and meta description
- Include the page’s target keyword in both, naturally
- Make sure tags clearly communicate the page’s purpose
- Keep titles under 60 characters and descriptions under 160 characters to avoid truncation
By addressing these elements early in the content creation process, you increase the chances of your pages being correctly indexed and clicked on by users.
3. Image Issues
Well-optimized images improve your website’s accessibility, user experience, and visibility in Google Images. But common image problems can do the opposite—slowing your site down, reducing accessibility, and negatively affecting search rankings.
Common image optimization issues:
- Missing Alt Text: Alt text describes the content of an image. It’s essential for screen readers used by visually impaired users and helps search engines understand image context.
- Oversized Files: Large image files can significantly slow down page load times, which hurts user experience and is a known ranking factor.
- Broken Images: When an image fails to load due to a bad URL or missing file, it signals poor site maintenance and frustrates users.
How to Fix Image-Related Problems
a. Add Alt Text:
Use tools like a site audit to identify images missing alt attributes. Then, add relevant alt text to each image. Keep the following in mind:
- Describe the image clearly and briefly
- Avoid keyword stuffing
- Make each alt text unique to the image
b. Compress Images:
Reduce file sizes without sacrificing quality. You can use tools like TinyPNG, Squoosh, or built-in options in image editors to compress before uploading. Smaller files load faster, improving page speed and SEO performance.
c. Fix or Remove Broken Images:
Locate broken images with a crawl tool or site audit. Then, take action:
- Update the image URL if it’s incorrect
- Replace the missing image with a working version
- Remove the broken image if it’s no longer needed
4. Slow Load Speed
Page speed, or load speed, refers to how quickly your webpage copy becomes visible and usable to visitors. Google has confirmed it as a ranking factor, but its impact goes beyond just SEO.
A slow-loading page frustrates users, increases bounce rates, and lowers engagement. Even if users stay on the page, sluggish performance creates a poor experience that can affect your site’s credibility and conversions.
How to Improve Load Speed
Some effective ways to fix slow load speed include:
- Compressing images to reduce file size without losing quality
- Cleaning up and optimizing your HTML code to remove unnecessary elements
- Switching to a more reliable hosting provider if server performance is the issue
- Minifying CSS, JavaScript, and HTML files to speed up load times
- Enabling browser caching so returning visitors can load pages faster
5. Poor Crawlability
Before your webpages can appear in search results, Google must crawl and index them. If search engine bots can’t access your pages, they won’t be indexed, and your site will miss out on potential traffic.
Common issues that hurt crawlability include:
- Pages blocked by the robots.txt file
- Broken, nofollow, or missing internal links
- Unindexed pages due to technical errors or tags
- Redirect loops that trap crawlers in a cycle
- 4xx errors indicating a page can’t be accessed
- 5xx server errors that stop requests from completing
- Poor site structure that confuses crawlers
How to Fix Crawlability Problems
Crawlability issues are often overlooked but can have a major impact. Fortunately, many are simple to fix. Start by:
- Creating and regularly updating your XML sitemap
- Cleaning up your robots.txt file to avoid blocking important pages
- Improving site architecture for logical navigation
- Implementing a strong internal linking strategy to guide crawlers
- Monitoring and fixing errors and redirects using tools like Google Search Console
6. Lack of Mobile Optimization
With most Google searches happening on mobile devices, ensuring your site works well on smaller screens is essential. Google also prioritizes mobile usability when determining rankings, making mobile optimization a key factor in website performance.
There are three main approaches to creating a mobile-friendly website:
- Responsive design: The same URL and content are served, but the layout adjusts based on the device’s screen size
- Dynamic serving: The URL remains the same, but the server delivers different HTML depending on the device
- Separate URLs: Different versions of your site are served to mobile and desktop users (this method is generally discouraged due to added complexity)
How to Fix Mobile Optimization Issues
Start by selecting one of the mobile-friendly site setups listed above—responsive design is typically the most efficient and widely recommended. But beyond that, improving the mobile experience involves thoughtful material and layout adjustments, such as:
- Writing shorter paragraphs for easier reading on small screens
- Incorporating ample white space to prevent clutter
- Avoiding intrusive pop-ups that disrupt the user experience
- Tailoring title tags and meta descriptions to display properly in mobile search results
On-Page SEO Mistakes
User-facing elements are essential in whether your material ranks and performs well. Common issues in this area often revolve around content quality, keyword use, and site structure.
7. Low-Quality Content
Search engines are built to prioritize valuable and relevant material. Pages with low-quality material often struggle to rank, drive little engagement, and can negatively affect your brand’s credibility and conversion rates.
Sometimes low-quality material is the result of shortcuts—such as publishing AI-generated text without human editing or fact-checking. In other cases, it happens unintentionally, through outdated information, weak grammar, or material that fails to align with what users are actually looking for.
Content can also degrade over time. What was once effective may now fall short of Google’s E-E-A-T standards: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. This is especially important for YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) topics, which cover areas that impact a person’s well-being, finances, or health.
As search algorithms evolve, so do expectations for what makes material valuable.
To identify and improve underperforming material, you can:
- Manually review and update existing pages
- Use tools to scan for quality gaps or optimization opportunities
- Connect platforms like Google Search Console to automatically find top-performing pages that may benefit from updates
- Generate detailed reports to guide on-page improvements, including adjustments to structure, keywords, and supporting links
How to Fix Low-Quality Content
The solution is to create content that aligns with current quality standards. Strong content should be:
- Accurate and up to date
- Clear and easy to read
- Directly relevant to the search query
- Well-written and free of errors
- Credible and backed by trusted sources
- Aligned with E-E-A-T principles
Most importantly, your content should satisfy user intent—delivering the answers or insights that searchers are looking for.
8. Keyword Stuffing
Keyword stuffing involves overusing target keywords in an unnatural way in an attempt to improve rankings. While the goal might be to rank higher for those terms, this practice makes content difficult to read and can negatively impact your SEO efforts. In fact, excessive keyword use can trigger penalties from Google, potentially removing your pages from search results.
This technique is seen by search engines as an attempt to manipulate rankings, and overloading a page with a target keyword will not improve your position—instead, it can harm your performance.
How to Fix Keyword Stuffing
To avoid keyword stuffing, prioritize natural keyword integration. The goal of SEO is to make content both user-friendly and optimized, without forcing keywords in at every opportunity. Here’s how you can do it properly:
Ensure the target keyword is included in:
- The title
- The meta description
- The opening paragraph
- The body (where it fits naturally)
- Alt text for images
- Headers (some, not all)
If using the exact keyword disrupts the flow of the content, try incorporating variations or related terms. This keeps the content engaging while also making it easier to read.
9. Keyword Cannibalization
Keyword cannibalization occurs when multiple pages on your website target the same keyword, causing them to compete against each other. As a result, both pages end up with lower rankings than they would if only one page were targeting the keyword.
This issue can arise due to duplicate content, overlapping content over time, or subcategory pages that aren’t sufficiently differentiated from their parent pages.
How to Fix Keyword Cannibalization
To resolve keyword cannibalization, start by thoroughly researching the search intent behind the keywords you want to target. Then, create unique, purposeful content for each page.
If duplicate content is the cause, follow best practices for handling it, such as consolidating or redirecting duplicate pages. This approach will help ensure that each page serves its distinct purpose and improves overall SEO performance.
10. Over-Optimized Anchor Text
Anchor text refers to the clickable words or phrases that link to other webpages. Properly optimized anchor text can enhance your SEO and improve user experience. However, over-optimized anchor text, which is excessively targeted to rank for specific keywords, can have the opposite effect.
When you over-optimize anchor text, it can seem like an attempt to manipulate Google’s search algorithm. This type of anchor text often lacks clarity, leaving users unsure about the material of the linked page, and Google may penalize the page for poor user experience.
How to Fix Over-Optimized Anchor Text
To avoid over-optimization, follow the best practices:
- Keep it natural
- Make it descriptive
- Keep it concise
By focusing on the user experience and ensuring that your anchor text is clear and meaningful, you can improve both your SEO rankings and user satisfaction. Always prioritize how your audience will interpret the link rather than how a search engine will crawl it.
Summary
Many common SEO mistakes stem from overlooked technical issues or on-page content flaws. By addressing these problems, you can remove obstacles that impact better rankings. Staying proactive with these elements is essential for maintaining a strong online presence.