Top 10 SEO Mistakes and How to Resolve or Prevent Them

SEO mistakes are like termites in your walls. They stay silent, hidden, and slowly sabotage your SEO campaign from the inside while everything seems fine on the surface.

At least, that’s what I thought they were. 

But many websites do not share the same viewpoint. In fact, many SEO mistakes lists I’ve seen kept pointing out the obvious: Keyword stuffing, slow site speed, lack of mobile optimization, etc.

DUH! Are there even any websites in 2025 still not optimized for mobile? I don’t think so. 

The real SEO mistakes are not the glaring errors but the subtle ones. Those that feel right but quietly derail your efforts behind the scenes. 

In this article, we’re skipping the obvious and diving deep into the 10 most destructive SEO mistakes that often fly under the radar. Stay tuned!

1. Writing for the keyword, not the intent

One of the most persistent SEO mistakes that is still practiced in 2025? Obsessing over keywords while completely missing the intent behind them.

Ever since the Hummingbird update, Google’s algorithm has transcended from simply looking at keyword density and actually analyzing the context behind searches.

As such, it isn’t enough to sprinkle your target phrase 5 times in your blog post or use it in every H2. It must answer the actual question or need behind that search—that’s called search intent.

Otherwise, you’re just making noise that wouldn’t make it past SERP page 27.

Search intent falls into four buckets:

• Informational intent → the user wants to learn something (e.g., “is it okay to buy refurbished smartphones”)
• Navigational intent → the user wants to visit a specific website (e.g., “apple website” or “samsung website” or “gsmarena”)
• Commercial intent → the user wants to buy but is still comparing options (e.g., “best smartphones under $500” or “refurbished iphone 13 vs refurbished galaxy s23” )
• Transactional intent → the user is ready to take action (e.g., “buy refurbished samsung galaxy s24 ultra”)

If you’re targeting a keyword, it’s important to know two things:

1. The search intent of the query
2. The context behind the query

Let me explain:

Here’s an example of search intent mismatch: Say, you want to write an article for the keyword “buy refurbished iphone 13.” From the wording itself, you can easily see that the search intent is transactional, meaning the searcher is ready to buy the item. 

The SERP itself will be filled with websites selling the product and satisfying the transactional intent behind the query. 

You’re talking Apple, Amazon, CompAsia, and other phone recycling companies found on the web or local pack, as shown below:

Unless you also sell a refurbished iPhone 13 yourself, creating a post for this is pretty useless. 

But let’s just say you’re stubborn and wrote a blog post entitled “How to Buy a Refurbished iPhone 13?” Then, you filled it with a list of actionable tips on what aspects to look for in refurbished iPhones, complete with an introduction and conclusion.

Will it rank for the same query? Nope.

You wrote an informational-intent article to compete for a transactional-intent keyword. It was never going to work. 

Next, in addition to understanding the search intent, it’s also important to consider the context behind the keyword.

Here is an actual example of a context mismatch. 

There’s this company I used to write content for in 2021 that sells STEM toys for children. Take note, at the time, someone else handled the on-page SEO, and I only wrote the content (until she was let go, and I replaced her).

She asked me to write a blog post for the keyword “best investment gifts for kids.” 

Naturally, I had my complaints since we sell toys, not investments. But she had this idea to angle the article from the perspective that the STEM toys we were selling were an “investment” for the science-oriented future of the children. Okay.

So I wrote it:

Did it rank? It hardly got indexed.

If you look at SERP for the same keyword, all results talk about literal financial gifts that grandparents can bestow to their grandkids—college funds, Roth IRA, stock certificates.

No page talks about some toy they can buy that will magically instill scientific principles:

In other words, context matters. 

You can go all metaphorical or subliminal about your content, but Google will always treat it literally, just like every other result.

So, how do you avoid this SEO mistake? Just Google the target keyword and analyze the results. 

This will give you a well-rounded understanding about what type of content ranks and what insights to include. Then, just write a blog post in the same context as the results, but make yours better.

2. Neglecting ‘Experience’ in E-E-A-T

It’s no secret that AI has taken over content marketing, and Google hates it.

For the past years, Google has had a love-hate relationship with AI. 

They have initially voiced out that Google prioritizes content that’s written by people, for people. Some time later, Google changed its stance, expressing a more “inclusive” embrace of AI content.

But actions speak louder than words, right? If Google truly accepted artificial intelligence, it wouldn’t be recalibrating its algorithm to devalue content made using AI.

Case in point? Google started doubling down on what machines can’t fake: experience.

The new search rater’s guidelines, E-E-A-T, stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. While all four matter, experience is the one many websites overlook, especially in niches like product reviews, tutorials, or service comparisons. And that’s a problem.

Google’s evolving algorithm is now tuned to detect whether a real human has actually used the product or lived through the topic. 

Why? 

Because AI can summarize features, specs, or benefits pulled from the web. It can also rehash existing online reviews and create content using your own words, so it doesn’t feel regurgitated.

But it can’t really share what it feels like to unbox a gadget, troubleshoot an online tool, or taste a meal kit. 

One of the biggest SEO mistakes is asking AI to write an experiential content on a product you have never tried or a service you have never experienced.

Take a look at this really good makeup review:

Everything was detailed, from the unboxing to the materials used, even the dispense operation and faint smell were included. The screenshot doesn’t have it, but the author even included selfies showing how the makeup held up throughout the day.

AI can never replicate that kind of review, and that’s what Google wants.

Let’s say you’re writing a review on a standing desk. A generic, recycled piece might list out its dimensions, materials used, and motor speed. But content that ranks? It sounds more like:

• “After two weeks of use, I noticed less pain in my lower lumbar and had better posture. It is definitely a stark contrast from my old desk and monobloc.”
• “The motor is quiet enough that I don’t startle my cat, who’s used to sleeping on top of my desk while I’m working.”
• “Assembly took about 20 minutes since I did it alone, but if you had a friend with you, it would have been quicker and easier.”

These little details scream real experience, and Google eats that up. 

Without experience, your AI-generated “product review” will fall in Google’s bucket of lies, a.k.a. anywhere else except page 1 of SERPs.

So, how do you create content that demonstrates real experience? Experience it for real. Using AI is okay, as long as the insights, prompts, and experiences are all authentic. 

3. Thinking organic traffic is the end-all, be-all

Organic traffic is one of the most deceptive KPI that many SEOs fall into. Many marketers celebrate a spike in organic traffic, but overly fixating on it is one of the biggest SEO mistakes.

Here’s the hard truth: traffic without action is just a vanity metric.

If no one’s subscribing, buying, or signing up, what’s the point?

Organic traffic is only one part of the puzzle. It gets people in the door. But what happens after they land on your page is just as important, if not more. That’s where conversion optimization comes in.

Let’s break this down:

• High organic traffic + low conversions → wasted opportunity
• Moderate traffic + high conversions → efficient, ROI-driven SEO
• High traffic + high conversions → the ✨dream✨

The problem is, many sites spend months chasing rankings without thinking about how they’ll turn those clicks into customers. 

To avoid falling into the “traffic trap,” here’s what you can do:

• Know your goal. Each page should have a dedicated purpose, whether that’s email sign-up, purchase, download, etc. Even informational-intent articles can have a CTA since there’s no rule against it.
• Optimize your CTAs. Clear, value-driven calls-to-action guide users toward the next step. Try doing some A/B tests to see which CTA works best for encouraging visitors to take your desired action. 
• Simplify the journey. Make forms short, checkout easy, and navigation intuitive.

Don’t let big traffic numbers become the end goal of your SEO campaign. SEO is a means to an end, not the end itself. If you’re not converting, you’re just creating a busy website, not a successful one.

4. Inadvertently or intentionally duplicating content

Duplicate content is one of those silent SEO killers that often goes unnoticed until your page drops in Google Search Console rankings.

Content duplication can happen accidentally or deliberately. The latter often happens when you intentionally replace stale content by publishing a newer piece without placing a 301 redirect, or simply just updating the old page.

Whichever the case may be, Google dislikes duplicate content because it is a clear indicator of content mismanagement or neglect. 

Plus, duplicate pages create keyword cannibalization—a case when two or more pages target the same keyword and satisfy the same search intent, creating a tug-of-war between your content. This confuses web crawlers about which page to canonicalize and prioritize for relevant queries.

So, how do you prevent or resolve this SEO mistake? Here are several ways:

First, establish a comprehensive content plan. Assign unique angles or keyword clusters to every blog post to avoid repetition.

Secondly, perform regular audits. Tools like Screaming Frog and Semrush can help you detect pages with overlapping content, which suggests possible duplication. 

Moreover, Keyword cannibalization tools, such as FeedMyRank, visually show which pages are cannibalizing for what keyword:

This makes it easier to track cannibalizing pages.

Finally, vet guest posts properly. Some authors don’t bother to check whether you’ve already covered the submitted guest post on your website. This can create near-identical blogs if you’re not careful. 

To prevent this, clearly indicate in your guest post guidelines that topics shouldn’t already be covered on your site, and, just to be safe, run submissions using Google search operators and plagiarism checkers to ensure authenticity.

Once cannibal pages are identified, consolidate the content into one stronger, updated piece, and set 301 redirects.

5. Forgetting to update older pieces of content

Piggybacking off #4, it’s easy to get caught up in publishing fresh content on the same topic, but it isn’t always necessary. You can revive stale posts gathering dust in your archives by simply updating the content, data, and insights to keep up with the times.

Another big SEO mistake is treating older content like they are set in stone. 

While it’s true—outdated pages slowly lose relevance, fall in rankings, and experience a decline in traffic over time, especially if competitors are publishing fresher, more up-to-date alternatives.

However, many site owners mistakenly create a brand new article covering the same topic as an older post, thinking that newer content equals better rankings. Not necessarily.

Moz once made this mistake, as shown in the screenshot below:

Moz published a blog post in 2019 that tackled “keyword cannibalization” and then recreated the same some time later.

And as we’ve pointed out earlier, re-publishing the same topic on a different page only leads to content cannibalization, which hurts your SEO further. 

The quickest fix to breathe new life into a stale page? Give it a well-needed update.

Updating older content can be just as powerful, if not more, than publishing something new.

Why it works:

• It signals freshness to Google
• It keeps previously built backlinks and established page authority intact
• It helps maintain your position in the rankings without having to reinvent the wheel

So, what are some actionable steps to update content?

• Cite more recent statistics. Avoid citing resources that are more than 3 years old unless you have to. Fresh statistics make your content appear more recent than it actually is.
• Update outbound links. If your post has several external links, make sure those destinations are still active. Almost half of all links lead to broken pages after 7 years due to link decay. By refreshing your external links, you ensure a good user experience for site visitors.
• Include more current examples. Using the COVID-19 pandemic as an example today wouldn’t be as relevant as it once was in 2020-2021. The same principle applies. Make sure your example aligns with the current events to make it look updated. 
• Build fresh internal links and backlinks. Links are access points for search engines to crawl a page. By adding more internal links and backlinks to a stale page, you’re urging web crawlers to revisit and re-index the updated page.

Updating content is a good habit to practice, but you know what’s better? Creating evergreen content from the start. These pieces of content stay relevant regardless of trends, staying valuable from year to year.

SEO is time-consuming as it is. To win the SEO race, you must be efficient. That means ensuring the longevity of old content, so it keeps working for you.

6. Having poor internal linking practices

Internal links are often the most neglected in the link-building family, with backlinks getting the most attention. However, while internal links seem like a minor detail, they are one of the most underrated SEO levers you can pull on your website.

As mentioned earlier, internal links are not just about connecting pages, but also serve as passageways for web crawlers. 

When Googlebot lands on a page, it follows the links to discover and index new content. So, if you published a new article but didn’t link to it from existing pages, it might remain invisible for weeks. Worse, never get indexed at all.

Here is a diagram showing how the Google indexing process works:

But that’s just the technical side.

Contextually relevant internal links also strengthen your website’s topical authority. 

When you link related content together, you’re building a “web of meaning” that helps search engines understand the depth and breadth of your knowledge in a given niche. These groups of interrelated content are called “topic clusters.”

Here is a hypothetical example:

And don’t forget about link juice. Internal links, much like backlinks, pass authority from the referring to the target page. 

So if you’ve got a high-performing blog post, you can use it to funnel ranking power toward newer or underperforming pages.

While manually building internal links is doable for a smaller website, this isn’t scalable when you start growing your business and publishing more content. 

This is where automated contextual linking tools, such as LinkStorm, come in.

Using AI and semantic analysis, LinkStorm automatically finds internal linking opportunities across your website on your behalf. All you have to do is accept (or reject) the suggestions, and they’ll instantly embed in your content.

Here is a screenshot of LinkStorm’s interface:

7. Not optimizing images

Image optimization often gets brushed aside as an afterthought, and this is a huge SEO mistake. Neglecting image optimization can undermine your SEO efforts and user experience.

Take note: optimizing images is not limited to shrinking file sizes to make your page load faster (though that’s part of it). True image optimization goes much deeper.

Let’s discuss them one by one:

Let’s start with the basics. Yes, your images should be compressed and in the right format (like WebP or JPEG) to keep load times snappy. Slow-loading pages can frustrate users and drag down your Core Web Vitals score, which Google considers a ranking factor.

There are plenty of free online tools for shrinking image sizes without sacrificing quality, like TinyPNG:

But technical tweaks aren’t enough. Many websites still make the mistake of including generic stock photos that add no real value to the content.

Look at this image:

What does it even mean? It’s a few people looking at some BS graphs that their production manager told them to hold. 

Many stock photos serve no other purpose than being visual fillers. Readers (and Google!) are getting better at recognizing when an image actually supports the content versus when it’s just… there.

Say, for instance, you are writing a product review. The real gold lies in experiential images:

• Photos of the product in your space
• Screenshots showing setup, usage, or results
• Side-by-side comparisons
• Annotated visuals to guide users through a process

These types of images build trust, enhance engagement, and signal authenticity, something stock photos can’t do. Use descriptive file names and alt text for additional SEO value. 

But what if you don’t have access to actual, authentic, original images?

Then grab images from external pages. It’s fine. Just make sure to properly attribute the original source. Just take a look at some of the images used in this article.

8. Mismanaging backlinks

Even after over 2 decades, backlinks still remain as SEO’s strongest signals. And if you aren’t actively building backlinks to your website, then you’re already committing an atrocity.

While backlinks are essential, they can also be one of the biggest liabilities if left unmanaged. 

Why?

Because not all backlinks are good backlinks.

Some backlinks can be toxic, which hurts your SEO more than helping it.

Here are the types of backlinks you want to avoid:

• Links from spammy directories
• Links from low-quality websites
• Links from irrelevant sources
• Links from websites with a high spam score

Worse, your website can fall to negative SEO attacks, where bad actors flood your site with spammy backlinks to tank your rankings.

There isn’t an easy way to monitor backlinks without an actual tool. Sure, plenty of free backlink checkers exist, but none of them provide you with a big picture of your backlink profile. The only option is to use paid tools. 

Thankfully, there’s a tool that helps you do just that without breaking the bank: Linkody. 

Linkody is a reliable backlink monitoring tool that gives you all the backlink information you need to take appropriate actions. Aside from listing your existing backlinks, Linkody also includes the following:

• Anchor text used
• Referring page URL
• Domain authority
• Follow attribute
• Spam Score
• Top-Level Domain

Here is an example screenshot of Linkody’s interface:

These insights give you headroom to decide whether to maintain or disavow a backlink from your profile.

9. Primarily focusing on SEO 

Let’s be very clear: SEO isn’t dead. But primarily relying on SEO as your only growth engine is a risky move in 2025.

While optimizing for search is still a smart, long-term strategy, don’t put all your eggs in this unpredictable basket. Google is shifting. With the rise of zero-click searches, especially in the advent of AI Overviews, fewer users are clicking through to websites.

In a podcast with Lex Fridman, Sundar Pichai, Google CEO, said AI Mode is the future of search, where Google will comprehensively answer the query, pretty much nullfying the purpose of the 10 blue links.

AI Mode is basically AI Overviews on steroids:

In many cases, Google provides tailored, comprehensive answers directly at the top of SERPs. This leaves high-ranking blog posts with a shiny #1 spot and a bunch of crickets. 

That’s why modern marketers are embracing omnichannel marketing strategies that go beyond SEO, such as:

• Email marketing → Build direct, reliable connections with your audience by landing straight in their inbox, which is perfect for nurturing leads and driving repeat visits without relying on algorithms. You can also do email marketing even with a tight budget.
• Social media marketing → Engage with your audience in real time, spark conversations, and amplify your content where your community already spends their time. 
• Video and podcast content → Tap into high-consumption formats that build trust, showcase expertise, and reach audiences beyond traditional search engines. 
• Pay-per-click advertising → Get instant visibility and drive targeted traffic by placing your message in front of the right people at the right time, no waiting for rankings.  

10. Not investing in the right SEO tools 

In 2025, SEO is no longer a guessing game. It’s a data-driven discipline that requires the right insights at the right time. And not having the right toolkit at your disposal is one of the biggest SEO mistakes you can commit.

Can you still succeed? Sure.

But it’s like trying to build a house with your bare hands—painful, unbearably slow, and likely to collapse (without you even realizing it because you have no tools).

Stop trying to wing it using free trials, outdated methods, or relying solely on gut instinct. SEO success hinges on precision. Precision ranges from knowing which keywords to target to spotting technical issues, and tracking what’s working and what’s not.

We’ve mentioned Linkody, LinkStorm, FeedMyRank, Screaming Frog, Semrush, and Ahrefs earlier, but they’re hardly the only tools out there that can support your SEO efforts. Here are a few others to consider:

• Google Search Console for sitewide metrics analysis
• Google Analytics for tracking the behavior of site visitor on your site
• Google PageSpeed Insights for optimizing website speed
• KWFinder for keyword research and more
• GMB Everywhere for local SEO

Aside from SaaS, you can also opt to download browser extension for SEO if you’re a little frugal in the budget department.

The Real SEO Threats are the Ones You Don’t See

So, there you have it—the 10 biggest SEO mistakes and how you can work around them. 

If you notice, many SEO issues don’t come from what you don’t do, but from what you think you’re doing right. Get it?

For example, writing for keywords instead of intent, or ignoring internal links to prioritize backlinks. 

These subtle missteps can quietly drag down your performance. Next thing you know, you’re left wondering why you fell 10 positions in search engine results.

The good news is you can fix, if not prevent them from happening. It starts with this list.

And SEO tools like Linkody make it easier, especially for managing your backlinks and keeping your backlink profile spam-free.

Try Linkody now for 30 days FREE—no credit card required, no strings attached.