Top 7 SEO Mistakes Brisbane Businesses Make (and How to Fix Them)

SEO can be the holy grail your site has been looking for, but only if it’s done right. These days, in the digital business world, investing in SEO is a conversation starter. It’s everywhere and hard to ignore, but even after spending a fortune on it, a good handful are famously left wondering, “Why on earth isn’t my site ranking?”

If you’re one of the few, we hear you. The bitter bit is that even with all that money and effort, you can still make mistakes in SEO. Working on it by yourself or with a strapped agency, learning what to avoid in SEO is just as important as knowing what works best.

This article will take you through the top 7 SEO mistakes Brisbane businesses make, and that’s just not it—we’ll also tell you how to fix them. These helpful tips are based on real-world brand stories we’ve helped solve for our clients here at Digital8.

Still interested in getting to know what to avoid in SEO, along with some results-driven SEO tips in Brisbane? Awesome, you’re in the right place.

Let’s get to it!

 If you’re looking for more face-to-face support, check out our SEO Brisbane services and get personalised and expert advice from one of our local teams that knows the market like the back of their hand.

1.      Ignoring Local SEO opportunities

Local SEO is an untapped mine for high-intent traffic. But unfortunately, many Brisbane businesses do not take full advantage of local SEO.  It’s all about making yourself seen, because if Google cannot tell where you are and who you are serving, you’re going to lose conversions.

Most of the time, local SEO is overseen because businesses forget to:

• Optimise their Google Business Profile
• Make use of suburb-based keywords (e.g., “electrician South Brisbane”  or “designer Capalaba”)
• Add location pages for service areas
• Maintain consistency when listing businesses across local directories

Any signs of your locality mean a lot in local SEO than you think, especially when customers search for terms like “near me” or “open now”.

How to Fix It :

• Create a Google Business Profile and optimise it for your local audience (with categories, photos, business hours, and service areas)
• Include your suburb or city name in your page titles, meta descriptions, and titles/headings.
• Add a local schema markup so Google can identify your business location
• Build pages and plan content that target crucial locations (e.g., “Home Renovations Brisbane Southside”)
• See to it that your NAP (Name, Address, Phone) is consistent across your site and local listings

👉  Need any help with the above? Talk to a team that is specialised in Local SEO Brisbane strategies to help you get noticed by local buyers, not just browsers.

2. Keyword Stuffing or Targeting the Wrong Terms

Keyword stuffing is a big no, because it can cause severe damage to your rankings. If you’re not inserting specific words into a sentence a few dozen times when speaking to a friend in real life, then you shouldn’t do it on your website content.

Always remember, Google is a lot smarter than you think it is.

The other issue is targeting the wrong keywords—this happens when you chase after the crazy competitive national terms your site will probably never rank for, or go after low-intent keywords that attract the wrong audience.

Common mistakes :

• Overusing keywords
• Going for high search volume keywords that have zero local relevance
• Ignoring what your customers are looking for

How to Fix It :

• With tools like Google Search Console or SEMrush, keep tabs on what your audience is searching for
• Set your sights on intent-based, localised keywords such as “SEO services Brisbane”, “digital marketing agency Brisbane”, or “affordable SEO packages Brisbane”
• Your content needs to sound authentic and relatable—remember your writing for humans first, then Google.
• Cluster related keywords and dish them out across headings, paragraphs, and metadata. 

👉 On the fence about which keywords to chase? Come chat with our SEO Brisbane specialists who can put together a strategic keyword plan that is just right for your business and audience.

3. Poor Technical SEO and Site Speed

Even if you have the best-looking site in the industry, if it’s a site that has slow loading speeds, tech issues, or works poorly on mobile, Google will sweep your site under the carpet.

There are many websites across Brisbane that look amazing, but struggle to be seen due to a few technical scratches. 

Technical SEO and site speed are pretty serious, so much so that they are now a fundamental requirement that defines your search rankings and user experience. 

Common issues we find :

• Sluggish pages
• Broken links or 404 errors
• Lack of SSL certificate (HTTP instead of HTTPS)
• Unoptimised images
• Flawed mobile experience
• Lost XML sitemaps or robots.txt files

How to Fix It :

• Conduct a site audit with tools like Google Page Speed Insights, SEMrush, or Screaming Frog
• Compress heavy and large images, go for a lazy loading strategy, and take down unused scripts
• See to it that your site is mobile responsive and qualifies for Google’s Core Web Vitals
• Make use of a structured schema for better levels of visibility and indexing
• A proper URL structure, fully functioning sitemaps, and secured HTTPS are a must 
• Don’t delay fixing technical mistakes like crawl issues, duplicate content, and broken links

👉 At Digital8 we seamlessly blend technical SEO services with smart design and dev support–the result? A sure shot spike in your site’s performance. Curious to see how it all works? Call us and let’s review your site’s health!

4. Missing or Duplicate Meta Titles & Descriptions

First impressions matter a lot, so consider your meta titles and description as a first impression of your site on Google SERP. But unfortunately, many Brisbane businesses tend to leave it blank or reuse the same title/description on multiple pages.

If there is no relevancy or a wow factor in these titles and descriptions, it may end up confusing search engines and even damage your click-through rates (CTR). Think: why would anyone want to click something irrelevant, unhelpful, and boring?

Common metadata issues :

• Lack of customised meta title or description
• Duplicate titles are scattered all over several service or blog pages
• Lengthy titles (that get cut off in search) or snappy titles (that lack context).
• Forget to add local keywords such as “Brisbane” or a specific suburb.s

How to Fix It :

• Include a unique meta title and description on every page of your site
• Combine your primary keyword with the location ( e.g, “SEO Services Brisbane – Digital8”)
• Limit your meta titles to 60 characters, and for descriptions to 160 characters
• Prioritise clarity, relevance, and click-worthiness – think of it as ad copy
• Use stress-free tools like Yoast (WordPress), Rank Math, or your CMS SEO to manage metadata easily

👉 Need support to review your metadata? Talk to our Brisbane SEO experts, and they will ensure that each page is optimised for high visibility.

5. Not Tracking or Reporting SEO Performance

If you don’t measure your progress, you cannot improve your campaign success rate, but as with most Brisbane Businesses, investing in SEO without knowing what to expect is quite common.

Poor tracking can lead you to spend wads of cash on tactics that aren’t contributing to your ROI or helping you find growth opportunities.

Common SEO tracking mistakes :

• Lack of a Google Analytics 4 (GA4) or Google Search Console set up
• Not tracking phone calls, form submissions, and conversion actions
• Depending on keyword rankings instead of complete performance metrics
• No monthly reporting or straightforward explanation from your SEO agency

How to Fix It :

• If you haven’t already done it, set up Google Analytics 4 and Google Search Console
• Set down clear and SMART goals: traffic growth, keyword rankings, lead volume, and conversions
• Monitor actions such as calls, forms filled, downloads, and online purchases
• Maintain dashboards for better insights with tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, or Google Looker Studio
• Ask for in-depth monthly reporting from your SEO agency detailing rich insights and zero fluff

👉 Our work at Digital8 provides clear, no-nonsense SEO reporting to our Brisbane clients. It’s hard not to wonder what your SEO investment is doing, but don’t worry, because we can show you.

6. Forgetting to Optimise for Mobile Users

It can be easy to overlook the things right under our noses, such as the several thousand mobile users we see every day, so it’s no surprise that a lot of Brisbane businesses look at mobile as an afterthought.

But it’s time to give it the spotlight. If your site is built for only a desktop, then it’s clunky, slow, and hard to use on a mobile, which ends up frustrating your customers and also causing a dent in your Google rankings.

Introducing Google’s mobile-first indexing method, which means it now prioritises compatibility of your site with mobiles when determining your rank.

Common mobile SEO mistakes :

• Desktop-only designs and layouts that lag on smaller screens
• Buttons that are too small for your fingers or menus that do not work on mobile
• Slow mobile site loading times (especially over 4G or public Wi-Fi)
• Overlooking core web vitals and mobile usability reports in Search Console

How to Fix It

• Go for a responsive website design that works on all screen sizes
• Test your site with Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test
• Navigation must be simple- from easy menus, clear buttons, and calls-to-action
• Optimise page speed by compressing images, reducing scripts, and enabling caching
• Use Search Console’s Mobile Usability Report to check mobile performance.

👉 Wracking your brain on how mobile experience stacks up? Our teams can help sort out your UX issues and fuel up your site in no time! Chat with our SEO + Web Dev team in Brisbane.

7. Inconsistent Content & Weak Internal Linking

SEO is more than just one page on a site—it’s a cohesive process that brings together a network of relevant, high-quality content to increase your visibility levels. One of the most common and missed opportunities we’ve noticed in Brisbane business websites is the lack of consistency in their content game and internal linking.  

Some signs of an inconsistent and uncommitted site are one that rarely publishes blogs, fails to update the services pages, and links key pages. After all, you do need to (regularly) water the garden you wish to see. If your site has a habit of doing the above bad deeds, it confuses Google about what you have to offer and gives it enough reason to drop your rankings.

Common issues :

• Irrelevant, outdated, and flimsy content on service pages. This type of content lacks taste and fails to hold your customers’ attention
• A lack of a blog or knowledge centre to support expertise in that niche
• Internal links are missing between services, blog posts, and landing pages
• Broken or outdated links that are left unattended

How to Fix it?

• Put together a well-thought-out content calendar – 1 blog per month should work
• Create topical clusters for your main services (e.g., various blogs supporting your SEO Brisbane page)
• No one likes choppy and awkward transitions, so ensure smooth flow between pages by linking them naturally – e.g,. From blog posts to service pages and vice versa
• Go for optimised keywords and detailed anchor text (e.g., “our team of Brisbane SEO experts” instead of “click here”)
• Practice regular audits to pick up broken links and outdated content

👉 Looking to build a killer interlinked SEO strategy? Let our SEO teams in Brisbane lay it down for you – trust us to keep your site smart and in sync!