1. Letting Dead Content Linger
Old, outdated, low quality pages that bring in no traffic and add no value are basically SEO zombies. They drag down your site's overall perceived quality for both users and search engines.
- Refresh content that's close to performing
- Merge similar or competing pages
- Unpublish or redirect genuinely useless pages (for example, "company updates" from 2019 that no one reads)
Essentially, get rid of the SEO rot so your stronger content can rank.
2. When Keywords Go From Helpful To Horrifying
"I must repeat 'best plumber in Colchester' 37 times or Google won't know I'm a plumber in Colchester."
That mindset used to work. Now it just sounds robotic, hurts conversions, and can damage your rankings.
Write for humans first, use natural language and answer the real intent behind the search. Google is getting increasingly good at understanding context and topic coverage, not just exact phrases.
Ask yourself, would you stay on that page if you were the customer?
3. Technical SEO Nightmares Lurking Behind Your Site
Think about Crawl errors, Broken links, Redirect loops, Noindex tags where they shouldn't be & Duplicate pages. These are just a small number of the horrifying technical SEO problems that are like trap doors under your site. You can't always see them from the front end, but Google can.
Remember: search engines send crawlers to explore your site. If those crawlers keep hitting 404s and blocked pages, they leave. No crawl means no index, and no index means no traffic.
To resolve:
- Make sure key pages are indexable
- Fix broken internal links
- Use proper canonical tags on duplicate or similar pages
- Submit and maintain an up to date XML sitemap in Search Console
If Google’s content spiders can’t crawl your web(site) cleanly, your rankings will be taking a big hit.
4. Scarily Slow Page Speeds
A slow site doesn't just annoy users, It's a ranking factor. When your page takes forever to load, people bounce, engagement drops, and Google will see that.
It's basically like leaving trick or treaters shivering on the doorstep while you hunt for the keys.
How to fix slow site speed:
- Compress images (your hero banner does not need to be 5 MB)
- Use next gen formats like WebP
- Minify scripts and CSS
- Cut unnecessary plugins and tracking scripts
5. Content So Thin It’s Practically a Ghost
If your page could be swapped with a competitor's and nobody would notice, that's a problem.
Google wants depth, originality, and usefulness. Rewriting the same "Top 5 Benefits of X" that's already on 200 other sites will not cut it.
- Add proof: data, examples, screenshots, process detail
- Answer real questions customers actually ask (look at Search Console queries, sales call FAQs, and "People Also Ask")
- Show expertise. Be specific, not vague.
6. Casting the Wrong Spell for the Search
Search Intent is the reason why someone is searching. Are they researching, comparing, or ready to buy?
If your page doesn't match that intent, even great content won't rank. For example, trying to rank a "Buy Now" landing page for a "What is..." query.
How to Fix Search Intent:
- Map keywords to intent: informational vs commercial vs transactional vs navigational
- Build the right type of page for each intent
- Stop trying to make one page do everything
7. Terrifying Mobile Experience
You might think your site is fine because it looks decent on a big desktop monitor in the office. Meanwhile, your actual users might be on their phones.
Google tends to index mobile first. This means that if mobile UX is bad, SEO performance will suffer as a result.
How to fix your mobile UX:
- Test layouts on mobile, not just desktop
- Check tap targets.
- Make sure fonts are readable without pinch zoom
- Avoid intrusive pop ups that block content
Essentially - If it annoys you on mobile, Google will penalise you in the rankings.
8. No Internal Linking Strategy
Internal links tell Google which pages matter most. They also guide users deeper into your site instead of letting them bounce.
Without internal links, your content sits in isolation. Picture a spider trying to cross your site but there are no threads connecting any section. No paths means no crawl depth, which means important pages stay undiscovered.
Fix your internal linking strategy by:
- Linking from blogs to service pages using natural anchor text
- Linking from high authority pages to pages that need a boost
- Create logical clusters around topics
Internal links are how you build a strong web, not just a bunch of loose strands.
9. Neglecting Local SEO (and Then Wondering Why the Phone Is Quiet)
If you're a local business and you're not showing in local or maps results, you're invisible to a huge part of your market.
To fix:
- Keep your Google Business Profile fully up to date (name, address, phone, hours)
- Use location signals on key pages (service areas, city pages, testimonials from local clients)
- Collect real reviews consistently, not once a year all in one go.
10. Working in the Dark With No Tracking
The scariest SEO mistake of them all - Guessing your website’s performance.
No Analytics goals, no Search Console insight and no conversion tracking means you can't prove ROI of your SEO efforts, and you don't know what to improve next.
You should be:
- Tracking leads, not just traffic
- Using Search Console to see actual queries you're showing for
- Watch which pages assist conversions, not just last click
Feeling spooked by numbers and graphs? There’s no need to be scared, as our SEO team here at FUZE agency are here to help you understand your website’s performance.
How to Make Sure Your SEO Isn't Cursed
Here's the good news. Most of these problems are fixable once you can actually see them.
That's exactly why FUZE offers a free SEO audit. We'll review your site's technical health, content quality, keyword targeting, and the opportunities you're currently missing, then show you what's costing you traffic right now.
You don't need jargon or guesswork. You need a clear plan that improves rankings, brings in the right traffic, and turns that traffic into leads before the year ends. We'll show you exactly where you're losing visibility right now and what to fix first, so you're the one being found and not the one disappearing into the dark shadows of Google.
