Sometimes I look at John Mueller's responses on Twitter and think, no no that is too obvious. A recent one the Google Webmaster Trends Analyst posted on Twitter said "when a site is low quality, it doesn't take much to out-rank it." "Aim to create something new, compelling, & awesome," he added.
Simple but in that one tweet, which is still under the original Twitter character limit, he was able to tell the webmaster that his web site was probably a low quality site that he/she needs to improve upon.
He also brought back a topic from a few years ago about sites with penalties can be outranked by scraper sites who copy them.
Here is John's tweet:
When a site is low quality, it doesn't take much to out-rank it. Aim to create something new, compelling, & awesome.
— John ☆.o(≧▽≦)o.☆ (@JohnMu) November 16, 2017
The advice is obvious, but most of you don't see the complaints in the forums from webmasters asking why their sites don't rank well in Google. And most of those sites just copy content from other sites and paste them on templated web site builders.
Forum discussion at Twitter.