The OS is recognized as bootable, but is not compatible with that Mac for some reason (wrong OS, or the OS is damaged). For a 2011 Mac, a failing Hard Drive is a very likely possibility.
You can try running the Apple Diagnostics to see if any hardware issues are detected other than the worn out battery. Unfortunately the diagnostics rarely detect issues especially with the drive. There are two other options for checking the health of the Hard Drive. One involves booting from an external full macOS USB drive, and the second involves creating & booting a Knoppix Linux USB stick. Both options allow you to use a special utility to check the health of the internal Hard Drive.
Hopefully you have a good backup & don't need to recover any data from the internal drive since the more you try to fix it or access it the more likely the failure will get worse if the Hard Drive is indeed failing. If you don't need data from that internal drive, then you can try what you like. You can try using Disk Utility First Aid while booted into Recovery Mode (Internet Recovery Mode with Command + Option + R will probably be needed) and/or reinstalling macOS over top of itself. This is the longer way to deciding the drive is bad.
Of course there could be some other issue, but a failing drive is most likely given the symptoms.
The Battery issue is not contributing to the problem since the laptop is powering on & trying to boot.