Overoptimisation
Keyword stuffing: Overusing keywords, or keyword stuffing, can hurt a website's organic traffic. Search engines have become sophisticated enough to recognise when a website is using too many keywords in an attempt to manipulate its ranking. This can result in a lower ranking or even a penalty from the search engine.
Confusing layout, disorganised website
Poor website structure: A poorly structured website can also hurt organic traffic. This includes having a confusing or hard-to-navigate website, as well as having a slow-loading website. Both of these factors can cause users to leave the website quickly, which can lead to a lower ranking in search results.
Plagiarised content, repetitive content
Duplicate content: Search engines also penalise websites with duplicate content. This means that having multiple pages on a website with the same content can hurt its ranking in search results. It is important to ensure that all content on a website is unique and valuable to users.
Non-responsive design
Lack of mobile optimisation: As more and more users access the internet through their mobile devices, it is important to ensure that a website is mobile-friendly. A website that is not optimised for mobile devices can have a lower ranking in search results, as well as a higher bounce rate (the percentage of users who leave the website after only viewing one page).
Insufficient inbound links
Lack of backlinks: Backlinks, or links from other websites to a website, are an important factor in determining a website's ranking in search results. A lack of backlinks can hurt a website's organic traffic, as search engines view websites with a high number of backlinks as more authoritative and trustworthy.
In conclusion, avoiding these mistakes is essential for maintaining and improving a website's organic traffic. By paying attention to keyword usage, website structure, content uniqueness, mobile optimisation, and backlinks, businesses can ensure that their website is optimised for search engines and is able to drive more organic traffic.
However, it's worth noting that not every case of repetitive-looking content is actually a penalty risk — there are real examples, on live websites, where near-duplicate content performs perfectly well. The rule of thumb still holds: make sure what looks similar is genuinely serving a different purpose for the reader, not just padding out the sitemap.
Before you act on any fix from this list (or from anywhere else), it's worth checking whether the advice actually fits your site. I wrote about how to tell the difference in SEO advice: why most of it doesn't apply to your site.