Traffic disappeared for a year, looking for advice

[ShannLi]

Hello everyone, I have a Chinese B2B export product website. After the algorithm update in 2024, the traffic disappeared. You can see in the screenshot that the monthly clicks on Google search console went from 10 thousand to only a few dozen. SEMrush keywords disappeared from 3k, and now there are only 80 keywords. Because I made a small language page, the index page used to have 20-30 thousand, and now there are 6000 pages indexed.







Basic situation
I am in a very niche product market. Although I do wholesale business, I also accept retail customers, and the traffic after adding product words such as wholesale is almost unsearchable. The website is mainly based on product pages. There are 400 articles, which are generated by AI. The source of article titles is semrush search, 5W1H product related, PAA, guide, etc.

I have purchased guest post external links in general niche. To be honest, the quality is very low, almost irrelevant, and it can't even be called Guest post. There are about 100 from Facebook and BHW and I stupidly used a lot of exact match anchor text. Of course, there are also brand words and naked links.

I used to be a reddit parasite. I created my own subreddit, managed my own posts, selected articles from the website and posted them in the subreddit and added links to the website articles. Later, my subreddit was banned and my reddit account was blocked.

Social media situation: everything is normal, there are ins, Facebook, tiktok, youtube, pinterst.

These are some of the situations I can think of about the website. Maybe I am a bit long-winded, but I hope to provide more important information.

Attempted solutions (after the traffic disappeared for 9 months)

1. I submitted the external links to Google disavow

2. Deleted 400 articles and re-wrote 16 high-quality articles. I have been engaged in this product for 3 years. I believe that the articles written from my perspective are of high quality.
3. Redesigned the website to look more professional
4. Deleted some product categories that were not selling well. This is from a business perspective and may not be related to SEO
5. No longer care about subreddit
6. Tried google ads, facebook ads, youtube ads, and the effect was very poor. It may be related to my low investment

Three months have passed, and there seems to be no change. SEMrush can hardly see any growth. I am confused at the moment. I still have the ability to create high-quality articles and more product-related pages, but I am considering whether to continue publishing on this website.
My question is
1. Buy an old domain name that matches the product word exactly, but it no longer ends with .com. It may be .net .us etc. This is the current situation of my product industry. I have done a search for this, and old domain names with strong external links are almost non-existent. So it will just be an old domain name. Migrate the current website content, submit 410 to the original website, or delete it, or I am not sure
2. Use a brand new domain name, 0 history, 0 external links, start all over again, and migrate the website
3. Continue to use the original domain name, there are some suggestions for restoring traffic, or website audit methods

My website is "my brand".com, I really don't want to give it up, but I hope to get more traffic
So friends, thank you for reading this, I hope to get your valuable suggestions

 

[GlobalProxy4g]

Hello everyone, I have a Chinese B2B export product website. After the algorithm update in 2024, the traffic disappeared. You can see in the screenshot that the monthly clicks on Google search console went from 10 thousand to only a few dozen. SEMrush keywords disappeared from 3k, and now there are only 80 keywords. Because I made a small language page, the index page used to have 20-30 thousand, and now there are 6000 pages indexed.

View attachment 420047
View attachment 420048

View attachment 420049
View attachment 420050

Basic situation
I am in a very niche product market. Although I do wholesale business, I also accept retail customers, and the traffic after adding product words such as wholesale is almost unsearchable. The website is mainly based on product pages. There are 400 articles, which are generated by AI. The source of article titles is semrush search, 5W1H product related, PAA, guide, etc.

I have purchased guest post external links in general niche. To be honest, the quality is very low, almost irrelevant, and it can't even be called Guest post. There are about 100 from Facebook and BHW and I stupidly used a lot of exact match anchor text. Of course, there are also brand words and naked links.

I used to be a reddit parasite. I created my own subreddit, managed my own posts, selected articles from the website and posted them in the subreddit and added links to the website articles. Later, my subreddit was banned and my reddit account was blocked.

Social media situation: everything is normal, there are ins, Facebook, tiktok, youtube, pinterst.

These are some of the situations I can think of about the website. Maybe I am a bit long-winded, but I hope to provide more important information.

Attempted solutions (after the traffic disappeared for 9 months)

1. I submitted the external links to Google disavow

2. Deleted 400 articles and re-wrote 16 high-quality articles. I have been engaged in this product for 3 years. I believe that the articles written from my perspective are of high quality.
3. Redesigned the website to look more professional
4. Deleted some product categories that were not selling well. This is from a business perspective and may not be related to SEO
5. No longer care about subreddit
6. Tried google ads, facebook ads, youtube ads, and the effect was very poor. It may be related to my low investment

Three months have passed, and there seems to be no change. SEMrush can hardly see any growth. I am confused at the moment. I still have the ability to create high-quality articles and more product-related pages, but I am considering whether to continue publishing on this website.
My question is
1. Buy an old domain name that matches the product word exactly, but it no longer ends with .com. It may be .net .us etc. This is the current situation of my product industry. I have done a search for this, and old domain names with strong external links are almost non-existent. So it will just be an old domain name. Migrate the current website content, submit 410 to the original website, or delete it, or I am not sure
2. Use a brand new domain name, 0 history, 0 external links, start all over again, and migrate the website
3. Continue to use the original domain name, there are some suggestions for restoring traffic, or website audit methods

My website is "my brand".com, I really don't want to give it up, but I hope to get more traffic
So friends, thank you for reading this, I hope to get your valuable suggestions

yeah looks like google put a big filter on your site after their update probably cause of too many forced backlinks and aggressive optimization you did a lot to fix it but if nothing is changing maybe switching to a new domain could be an option also did you try using 4g/5g mobile proxies to check if google flagged your access ??? sometimes just changing how you connect can help avoid getting flagged again

 

[hideath]

The website is penalized, and it will take a long period to get it back on track in most cases (1 year+-), all after setting up a new version,
But the spammy link profile & anchors, make it much less worthwhile, they're not worth investing in any longer,
Consider it as a churn-and-burn project that hopefully paid its investment, and move on

 

[ShannLi]

The website is penalized, and it will take a long period to get it back on track in most cases (1 year+-), all after setting up a new version,
But the spammy link profile & anchors, make it much less worthwhile, they're not worth investing in any longer,
Consider it as a churn-and-burn project that hopefully paid its investment, and move on

Thank you. I will use a new domain. Do you think I shall do 301 redirection to new site. I want to imgrate all the content to new site because the new repair content is really good. by the way. if it is good to use an expired domain or exactly match domain.

 

[ShannLi]

yeah looks like google put a big filter on your site after their update probably cause of too many forced backlinks and aggressive optimization you did a lot to fix it but if nothing is changing maybe switching to a new domain could be an option also did you try using 4g/5g mobile proxies to check if google flagged your access ??? sometimes just changing how you connect can help avoid getting flagged again

Thank you and I have no idea about 4g proxies. what is it

 

[hideath]

Thank you. I will use a new domain. Do you think I shall do 301 redirection to new site. I want to imgrate all the content to new site because the new repair content is really good.

Don't 301, it will forward the spammy links to the new domain, which could easily get penalized as a result as well,
You have to invest in new content if the current website pages are indexed, as you're not making a redirect, it's basically seen as copied,

by the way. if it is good to use an expired domain or exactly match domain.

Mostly, auction domains will do better than EMDs, depending on the authority of the domain in question here, there's no strict rule,
Both should work for easy niches, with no competition,
If there's any, you have the option to get an auction domain with a relatively better authority than competitors,
You'll be limited by domains that match the old niche here, don't use off-niche domains, you'll have much fewer chances to make things work

 

[ShannLi]

Don't 301, it will forward the spammy links to the new domain, which could easily get penalized as a result as well,
You have to invest in new content if the current website pages are indexed, as you're not making a redirect, it's basically seen as copied,


Mostly, auction domains will do better than EMDs, depending on the authority of the domain in question here, there's no strict rule,
Both should work for easy niches, with no competition,
If there's any, you have the option to get an auction domain with a relatively better authority than competitors,
You'll be limited by domains that match the old niche here, don't use off-niche domains, you'll have much fewer chances to make things work

Thanks for replying again, I won't be using 301 jumps. And I won't use mybrand.net or mybrand.anything.

I will try to find the auction domain, although I think I may not be able to because the niche is too small. Where are you used to buying auction domains from?

If there are no suitable auction domains, I have 2 other domains, an exact match .us, and a partial match .com. they both have the same history in the past as my product!
Partial match .com I usually write some articles into it and have indexed over 100 pages now. The fullmatch.us is a new purchase.
Do you have suggestions on which one I should start with

Much much thanks for your advice and valuable time

 

[GlobalProxy4g]

hard to say but looks like a heavy google filter after their update possibly due to some backlinks or optimizations that went a bit too far you already made a lot of adjustments but if nothing moves maybe try another approach on the connection side sometimes just tweaking certain network parameters can help see if it’s an access or fingerprint issue

 

[hideath]

I will try to find the auction domain, although I think I may not be able to because the niche is too small. Where are you used to buying auction domains from?

You can use tools like spamzilla for that,
You have to make sure the domain is clean (usage, links, anchors), has a decent link profile, matches your niche (close enough at least), etc...
Then participate in the bid without paying a greater price than the estimated value (approx links value/prices & time to build them),
Most people with no experience will fail to make sure that the domain is clean, and to estimate the value and how good the link profile is,
If you're new, with a limited budget, it would be better to get it from someone trusted who can do the work properly, @Nargil have a good list you can check,

If there are no suitable auction domains, I have 2 other domains, an exact match .us, and a partial match .com. they both have the same history in the past as my product!

Same history?
If the domain/website is spammed (content or/and links) and penalized as the 1st domain/website, you might want to skip it as well,
If the website(s) is clean, has most of the pages indexed, ranking in the top 100 for dozens of keywords, then it's less likely to be penalized,
It would be better to use it instead of a new one for sure, as percentage of the work is already done

 

[Bratt57]

Here how you can remove the penalization read it https://darkseo.net/threads/escape-from-google-ban.40/#post-46.

 

[ShannLi]

You can use tools like spamzilla for that,
You have to make sure the domain is clean (usage, links, anchors), has a decent link profile, matches your niche (close enough at least), etc...
Then participate in the bid without paying a greater price than the estimated value (approx links value/prices & time to build them),
Most people with no experience will fail to make sure that the domain is clean, and to estimate the value and how good the link profile is,
If you're new, with a limited budget, it would be better to get it from someone trusted who can do the work properly, @Nargil have a good list you can check,


Same history?
If the domain/website is spammed (content or/and links) and penalized as the 1st domain/website, you might want to skip it as well,
If the website(s) is clean, has most of the pages indexed, ranking in the top 100 for dozens of keywords, then it's less likely to be penalized,
It would be better to use it instead of a new one for sure, as percentage of the work is already done

Thanks, I will check Spamzilla, etc. I have obtained Nargil's list before, I will check again.

Those two domains are the same products, the same as my business, but they are retail, and they are 90% related to my business. It's just that the original webmaster abandoned the domain name and business in 2018 and 2024 respectively. One of the websites has been rebuilt by me (2 months ago), and currently has 168 pages indexed, and only 3 of the top 100 keywords are keywords. It's just a pity that I once 301 redirected some of its pages to my brand site.

 

[ShannLi]

Thanks, I will check Spamzilla, etc. I have obtained Nargil's list before, I will check again.

Those two domains are the same products, the same as my business, but they are retail, and they are 90% related to my business. It's just that the original webmaster abandoned the domain name and business in 2018 and 2024 respectively. One of the websites has been rebuilt by me (2 months ago), and currently has 168 pages indexed, and only 3 of the top 100 keywords are keywords. It's just a pity that I once 301 redirected some of its pages to my brand site.

Sorry, I didn't do a 301 redirect.
This is the correction

One of the websites (2024) has been rebuilt by me (2 months ago), and currently has 168 pages indexed, and only 3 of the top 100 keywords are keywords. There are 78 backlinks, and the do-follow backlinks have brand words and about 10 long-tail keywords.

The other one (2018) has expired for many years. I bought it a few days ago. It has 38 backlinks, but the do-follow ones are almost useless, just some list-like ones. I bought it just because it is an exact match domain. With the suffix us, there is no more highlights.

I personally tend to use the 2 02 4 domain name as the main site, because it was interrupted for a short time, only about half a year. And it has been tested and indexed and ranked. At the same time, I will not give up the 2 0 1 8 site and my brand site. They can be used as supplementary options. After this lesson, I know not to put all eggs in the same basket.

Thank you again for your patience and valuable advice.

 

[mn1977]

Hello everyone, I have a Chinese B2B export product website. After the algorithm update in 2024, the traffic disappeared. You can see in the screenshot that the monthly clicks on Google search console went from 10 thousand to only a few dozen. SEMrush keywords disappeared from 3k, and now there are only 80 keywords. Because I made a small language page, the index page used to have 20-30 thousand, and now there are 6000 pages indexed.

View attachment 420047
View attachment 420048

View attachment 420049
View attachment 420050

Basic situation
I am in a very niche product market. Although I do wholesale business, I also accept retail customers, and the traffic after adding product words such as wholesale is almost unsearchable. The website is mainly based on product pages. There are 400 articles, which are generated by AI. The source of article titles is semrush search, 5W1H product related, PAA, guide, etc.

I have purchased guest post external links in general niche. To be honest, the quality is very low, almost irrelevant, and it can't even be called Guest post. There are about 100 from Facebook and BHW and I stupidly used a lot of exact match anchor text. Of course, there are also brand words and naked links.

I used to be a reddit parasite. I created my own subreddit, managed my own posts, selected articles from the website and posted them in the subreddit and added links to the website articles. Later, my subreddit was banned and my reddit account was blocked.

Social media situation: everything is normal, there are ins, Facebook, tiktok, youtube, pinterst.

These are some of the situations I can think of about the website. Maybe I am a bit long-winded, but I hope to provide more important information.

Attempted solutions (after the traffic disappeared for 9 months)

1. I submitted the external links to Google disavow

2. Deleted 400 articles and re-wrote 16 high-quality articles. I have been engaged in this product for 3 years. I believe that the articles written from my perspective are of high quality.
3. Redesigned the website to look more professional
4. Deleted some product categories that were not selling well. This is from a business perspective and may not be related to SEO
5. No longer care about subreddit
6. Tried google ads, facebook ads, youtube ads, and the effect was very poor. It may be related to my low investment

Three months have passed, and there seems to be no change. SEMrush can hardly see any growth. I am confused at the moment. I still have the ability to create high-quality articles and more product-related pages, but I am considering whether to continue publishing on this website.
My question is
1. Buy an old domain name that matches the product word exactly, but it no longer ends with .com. It may be .net .us etc. This is the current situation of my product industry. I have done a search for this, and old domain names with strong external links are almost non-existent. So it will just be an old domain name. Migrate the current website content, submit 410 to the original website, or delete it, or I am not sure
2. Use a brand new domain name, 0 history, 0 external links, start all over again, and migrate the website
3. Continue to use the original domain name, there are some suggestions for restoring traffic, or website audit methods

My website is "my brand".com, I really don't want to give it up, but I hope to get more traffic
So friends, thank you for reading this, I hope to get your valuable suggestions

100% penalized, disavow and buy some niche edits that are relevant and leave it alone for 3 months