Seven SEO Mistakes That Are Killing Your Blog Traffic (And How I Fixed Them)

I'm going to be honest with you. I've made every single one of these mistakes.

Some of them multiple times. On multiple blogs. Even after I should have known better.

The frustrating thing about SEO mistakes is that they're usually invisible. Your site looks fine to you. The posts are published. Everything seems to be working. And then you check your analytics and wonder why you're getting maybe ten visitors a day after six months of work.

That was me a few years back with a blog I launched. I thought I was doing everything right. Turns out I was doing almost everything wrong.

So let me walk you through the seven mistakes that absolutely destroyed my traffic, and more importantly, how I fixed them. Maybe you'll recognize some of these in your own blog.

One. Building for Desktop and Forgetting Mobile Exists

This was probably my biggest mistake early on.

I would design and test everything on my laptop. The site looked beautiful. Clean layout, nice typography, everything perfectly aligned. I'd pat myself on the back and hit publish.

Then I'd check my analytics and see that 60 percent of my traffic was bouncing within seconds.

Want to know why? Because 60 percent of my traffic was coming from mobile devices, and my site looked terrible on phones.

Images weren't responsive, so they'd blow past the screen edges. Text was too small to read. Buttons were too tiny to tap. Navigation was a mess. The mobile experience was awful, and people were leaving immediately.

Google's been doing mobile-first indexing for years now. That means they rank your site based on the mobile version, not the desktop version. If your mobile experience sucks, your rankings suffer.

How I fixed it.. I started designing mobile-first. I test everything on my phone before I even look at it on desktop. I use responsive images that adapt to screen size. I make sure touch targets are big enough. I optimize for thumbs, not mouse cursors.

This template handles a lot of that automatically with mobile-first responsive images and proper viewport settings. But you still need to check your actual content on a real phone.

Pull out your phone right now and look at your blog. If you have to pinch and zoom to read anything, you've got work to do.

Two. Writing Without Knowing What People Actually Search For

Oh man, this one hurts to admit.

I used to just write about whatever I found interesting. Random thoughts. Topics I wanted to explore. Things I learned that week. Just.. stream of consciousness blogging.

And nobody read it. Because nobody was searching for it.

I'd spend three hours writing a post about some nuanced technical concept, and it would get maybe five views. All from people who clicked a link I shared, not from search.

Meanwhile, blogs in my niche with way less depth were getting thousands of visitors because they were writing about what people were actually searching for.

The mistake was thinking that good writing alone was enough. It's not. You need good writing about topics people care about and actively seek out.

How I fixed it.. I started doing keyword research before writing anything. Not after. Before.

I use Google Search Console to see what queries are already sending me impressions. I check Google's autocomplete suggestions. I look at the "People also ask" boxes. I browse Reddit and forums to see what questions keep coming up.

Then I write content that specifically answers those questions and addresses those searches.

Same amount of writing effort. Completely different results.

Three. Treating Internal Links Like an Afterthought

For the longest time, I thought internal linking was just.. nice to have. Something you do if you remember. Not actually important.

I was wrong.

Internal links are how Google discovers your content and understands how your pages relate to each other. They're how you build topical authority. They're how you keep readers on your site longer.

I had posts that were just sitting there alone with no internal links pointing to them. Orphaned pages that Google barely crawled because it didn't know they were important.

How I fixed it.. I now treat internal linking as a core part of my content strategy.

Every time I publish a new post, I immediately go back to 3-4 related older posts and add links to the new one. I make sure every post has 5-10 internal links to other relevant content on my site.

I created topic clusters around my main themes, with pillar pages that link to supporting articles and supporting articles that link back to pillars.

This tells Google "hey, I have a lot of depth on this topic" and helps my content rank for broader terms.

It also keeps readers clicking through to more articles instead of bouncing after one post.

Four. Letting My Site Load Like It's Running on Dial-Up

Page speed is one of those things you don't think about until you actually measure it.

I had a blog that looked great but took 6-7 seconds to load. That sounds like nothing, right? A few seconds?

But think about the last time you clicked on a link and it took more than two seconds to load. You probably hit the back button and tried a different result.

That's what people were doing with my site. And Google noticed. Slow sites get penalized in rankings because Google wants to send people to fast, good experiences.

I was using huge unoptimized images. Loading fonts from external CDNs that took forever. Running scripts that blocked rendering. Just.. destroying performance.

How I fixed it.. I got serious about optimization.

I implemented modern image formats like WebP and AVIF that are 30-50 percent smaller than JPEGs. I set up proper image sizing so mobile users aren't downloading desktop-sized images. I self-hosted fonts instead of loading them from Google Fonts. I deferred non-critical JavaScript.

This template handles a lot of this out of the box. It's built with Astro which ships zero JavaScript by default. It supports modern image formats. It preconnects to third-party resources.

But you still need to be smart about the content you add. One massive unoptimized hero image can tank your page speed.

Use tools like PageSpeed Insights or WebPageTest. If you're scoring below 90 on mobile, you've got optimization work to do.

Five. Ignoring Search Intent and Just Targeting Keywords

Here's a mistake that cost me a lot of wasted effort.

I'd find a keyword with decent search volume and low competition. Perfect, right? Then I'd write what I thought was a great article targeting that keyword.

But I'd completely miss what people actually wanted when they searched for that term.

Example.. I once wrote a detailed philosophical article about why a certain programming practice was important. It was well-written and thoughtful. I targeted the keyword properly.

But people searching for that term wanted a quick tutorial on how to do the thing, not an essay about why it mattered.

Google figured that out. My article never ranked because it didn't match search intent, even though it technically targeted the right keyword.

How I fixed it.. I started looking at what was already ranking before I wrote anything.

If I'm targeting a keyword, I Google it and look at the top five results. What format are they using? How-to guides? Lists? Case studies? How long are they? What angle are they taking?

Then I make sure my content matches that intent while adding my own unique value.

If people want a tutorial, I write a tutorial. If they want a comparison, I write a comparison. I don't write what I want to write. I write what the search intent demands.

This shift alone probably doubled my ranking success rate.

Six. Publishing and Never Looking Back

I used to think of blog posts like books. Once published, they're done. Final. Move on to the next one.

That's not how blogs work anymore.

Old posts just sit there, slowly getting more and more outdated. Information changes. Better practices emerge. Your writing improves. But those old posts are frozen in time, quietly dragging down your site's quality.

I had posts from years ago with broken links, outdated information, and writing that made me cringe. But they were still ranking, so people were finding them and forming opinions about my expertise based on content I'd been embarrassed by for months.

How I fixed it.. I started treating content updates as seriously as creating new content.

Every few months, I go through my older posts and update them. I fix broken links. I add new information. I improve the writing. I update examples. I add internal links to newer related posts.

The data backs this up. Updating existing content can boost traffic by 70 percent or more. That's often a better ROI than writing something completely new.

Plus, Google likes fresh content. When you update a post, you're telling Google "this is still relevant, still accurate, still worth ranking."

Set a recurring reminder to audit and update your top-performing posts every quarter. It's worth it.

Seven. Copying Content Across Multiple Pages

This one is subtle and a lot of people don't realize they're doing it.

I had a blog where I'd write about similar topics multiple times. A post about X from 2019. An updated version from 2021. Another take in 2023. All slightly different, all technically unique, but covering essentially the same ground.

Google saw that as duplicate or near-duplicate content. It didn't know which version to rank, so it split the authority between them. None of them ranked well.

I also made the mistake of having the same intro text across multiple pages, or using identical descriptions for similar posts. Google doesn't like that.

How I fixed it.. I consolidated.

If I had multiple posts about the same topic, I merged them into one comprehensive, up-to-date post and redirected the old URLs. If I had similar content, I made sure each piece had a clearly distinct angle and purpose.

Now before I write something new, I check if I've already covered that topic. If I have, I update the existing post instead of creating a competitor to my own content.

One strong, comprehensive post will always outperform three mediocre ones fighting for the same keyword.

The Pattern I Noticed

Looking back at all these mistakes, I see a common thread.

They all came from either not knowing better, or not taking the time to do things right.

Mobile optimization takes effort. Keyword research takes time. Internal linking requires planning. Speed optimization needs attention. Understanding search intent demands research. Updating content is ongoing work. Avoiding duplication requires strategy.

It's easier to just write and publish and hope for the best.

But that doesn't work. And I wasted months, probably years, learning that the hard way.

The good news is that once you fix these things, they stay fixed. You don't have to keep relearning the same lessons.

Build on a solid technical foundation. Do the research before you write. Pay attention to user experience. Keep your content fresh and relevant. Avoid competing with yourself.

Do that, and you'll be ahead of probably 80 percent of blogs out there.

Because most people are still making these mistakes. I know because I see them everywhere.

Don't be most people.