In this post, we will show you 8 SEO roadblocks to avoid in the year 2023. That way, you can quickly guarantee your SEO success.
It is a well-known fact that the top five websites on Google’s Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) receive more than a 67 percent click rate.
For this reason, most companies are willing to spend quite a fortune in securing a position among the top websites on SERPs.
Although this is quite a humongous challenge to overcome, given the ever-changing SEO landscape and massive competition, it is an achievable feat only when you give proper attention to details that can cause you a significant SEO setback.
For SEO enthusiasts, securing a position on SERPs depends entirely on how you can adapt your website to search engines’ ever-changing SEO algorithm.
Hence, we will take you through the SEO roadblocks you should avoid to rank well on SERPs.
Here are the SEO Roadblocks you should avoid in 2023:
1. Text-Only Content
Having quality blog posts is one of the essential ways for ranking on search engines. But, ignoring videos might be one of your SEO undoings.
Videos are the future of SEO. Videos are receiving way more popularity in this era of social networks. In fact, Google is not willing to ignore videos in its move to satisfy users’ search intent. For this reason, Google shows videos in users’ top five search results.
Additionally, videos are heavily prioritized over text content in terms of ranking on Google’s SERPs because they provide more engaging content compared with text-only content. A combination of high-quality text content and video is sure to improve your website’s ranking on Google’s result page.
Likewise, podcasts are not left out as Google also includes podcasts on its result page. This is a relatively new move from Google you cannot afford to ignore.
Considering that both videos and podcasts attract relatively less competition and better SEO ranking, your website should rank well SERPs. Hence, it would help if you started using a combination of videos and/or podcasts with text on your web pages.
2. Slow Loading Speed
A slow-loading website is a significant SEO roadblock you should avoid because it is one of the criteria several search engines utilize for ranking search results.
According to Google’s criteria, a website should load in three seconds or less. This can be a difficult feat to achieve if you have loaded your site with plugins that are not relevant to your needs.
Besides, websites that take more than three seconds to load have a 38 percent bounce rate.
Considering that search engine users are increasingly becoming impatient, it will be unnecessary if a website that ranks on the first SERPs takes more than three seconds to load.
Crossing this hurdle is no big deal if you’re able to figure out the cause of your website’s slow loading speed.
Apart from removing irrelevant plugins from your websites, you can use Google’s Page Speed tools to diagnose and boost your website loading speed.
Also, you should invest in a good web hosting space, content delivery network (CDN),and minify your website’s CSS, HTML, and JS content.
3. Duplicate Content
Decades ago, plagiarism wasn’t an issue on search engines, but now search engines will only rank unique and well-written pages devoid of plagiarism.
Hence, you should avoid using plagiarized content from other websites.
Additionally, your website can be penalized if you have multiple pages with similar content.
It gets confusing for web crawlers to decide what URL to channel the traffic when related pages have the same keywords.
Fortunately, you can quickly solve this problem by using the preferred URL known as a canonical URL to identify what web page to display.
For instance, if you have a post with two categories and two separate URLs like:
You can select any of your preferred URL as the canonical version for search engines to rank on their SERPs.
Also, you can use web crawler tools such as Siteliner, Plagspotter, or Copy scape to identify duplicate URLs.
To fix duplicate content issues, use Rel=canonical tags and non-index tags to identify your preferred and unwanted post, respectively.
4. Spammy Backlinks
Another SEO roadblock you should avoid is spam backlinks. Backlink still plays a vital role in getting ranked SERPs despite its abusive usage.
Since good backlinks can improve your ranking, it is imperative to know that bad or spammy backlinks can bring down your SE ranking and also increase your site’s bounce rate.
Backlinks are bad or spammy if they are inappropriate, or unrelated to your website.
Likewise, a backlink from a website with poor-quality content is considered a bad backlink.
Although ridding your website of spammy backlinks can be quite a daunting task almost impossible to achieve, having fewer spammy backlinks will help you stay atop of the SEO rush.
Even though you can reduce the number of spammy backlinks with backlink audit tools such as SEMrush, Ahrefs, and Backlinks Monitor, it would be best if you strived to get more credible, authoritative, and informative backlinks that will improve your ranking.
Another bold step to take against bad backlinks is to disavow such wrong links by using the Google Search Console Help.
5. Page Title Without Keywords
The page title is one of the many ranking factors that Google considers ranking websites.
Moreover, your page title should inform the user about what the web page is all about in a few words.
The critical factor to consider when choosing a title for your webpage is the inclusion of relevant keyword phrases, to sum up, your web
content in as little words as possible.
By using the keyword phrase in your page title, it will help for ranking on search engines and also increase your click-through rate.
6. Scanty, Low-Quality Content
Another SEO roadblock you should steer away from is the inclusion of low-quality content on your websites.
So, it would help if you were cautious about using keyword-stuffed or poorly written content on your website.
Typically, search engines Google no longer rank websites based on the number of keywords in the main content, but by the quality of information available on the web page.
To prevent your website from being rated as low-quality,you must engage the services of SEO experts to create high-quality content that can improve your website ranking on SERPs.
7. Poor Mobile Optimization
A higher percentage of organic traffic comes from mobile devices. This is also true for e-commerce sites and other websites due to the increasing usage of mobile device usage.
Likewise, websites that are not optimized for mobile devices are ranked as “unfriendly,”which results in negative SEO ranking.
Your website is mobile-friendly if it satisfies the following criteria:
Responsive display optimized for all screen sizes.
Accelerated Mobile Page (AMP) design to improve loading speed on mobile devices.
User-friendly interface with quick navigation features
It would be best if you worked on making your website ‘mobile-friendly’ to improve your ranking on SERPs.
That way, your website will adapt to the shift in mobile device usage.
Also Read: Can Google Analytics Goals Track All Data?
8. Bad User Experience (UX)
Your website can lose its ranking due to an increased bounce rate if new users cannot spend more time on your website.
To avert this situation, you need to provide users with fantastic user experience (UX) by applying the following:
Responsive display for all devices whether desktop or mobile
Include calls to action (CTA)
An accessible FAQs page
A good UX not only improves your web ranking but also ensures you enjoy a steady flow of organic traffic, which can help you to increase your ‘click-through rate.’
Bottom Line on SEO Roadblocks
There you go! SEO roadblocks you should avoid in the year 2021.
These SEO roadblocks are not out of the blue, but are undoings you ignore mostly in your quest for a better website ranking.
By applying the appropriate solutions, you will be able to retrace your steps and improve your ranking position on search engines.
Although they won’t jump your website to the number one position on SERPs overnight; however, you should continuously work on resolving the challenges over time for your desired SEO ranking.
At Growth Generators we hold your hand when doing SEO. We help you navigate all these SEO roadblocks.
We have a team with decades of combined experience and the right tools to take your website to the top of search results. Contact us today and let us optimize your website for target customers.