I Need Help from SEO Experts ?

[Virtual Seller]

Hi everyone
1/
I built a website back in 2015.
In the beginning, traffic was low — but I stayed consistent, focused on SEO, and from 2018 to 2021, the traffic exploded.
2/
I was getting thousands of organic visitors and solid revenue every month.
The growth was amazing (as shown in the SEMrush graph).
Everything seemed to be working perfectly.
3/
Then came a turning point...

Around 2022, I made a few changes because someone access my cPanel and change payment gateway / accounts: Then

• Switched to a different hosting provider
• Changed my WordPress theme
• Lost a few important SEO plugins/configs during migration

4/
And that's when things collapsed.

Organic traffic started to drop… fast.
Today, it’s nearly at zero.
The domain still has 78 indexed keywords, but they don’t rank anymore.
From hundreds of visitors daily to almost none.
5/
The strange part?
I've spent months trying to recover.

My SEMrush Site Audit now shows:
99% Site Health
0 Errors
HTTPS, Crawlability, Internal Linking, Performance — all excellent



6/
Yet despite all this:
No keyword rankings are coming back
No real organic traffic
No meaningful revenue

I'm stuck in SEO limbo — technically clean but practically invisible.
7/
So now I’m reaching out to the SEO community:

What should I do to regain my keyword positions?
Is there a proven recovery strategy after a theme/hosting switch?
How do I rebuild authority and relevance in Google’s eyes?
8/
If you’re an SEO expert, content strategist, or have recovered from a similar experience —
I’d love your advice, insights, or even hard truths.

Please reply
Your help could make a real difference.

 

[alternatesword]

You have already highlighted the multiple factors affected the rankings. The one thing you need to check is google updates which are released around the hosting change and later, if those updates correlate with the rank drops then you need to fix that as well.

 

[Virtual Seller]

You have already highlighted the multiple factors affected the rankings. The one thing you need to check is google updates which are released around the hosting change and later, if those updates correlate with the rank drops then you need to fix that as well.

Thank you for your insight — much appreciated!
You're absolutely right. I’ve reviewed some of the Google Core Updates around the time I changed hosting and themes, and there does seem to be a correlation with the decline.
Looks like I might’ve been hit by one of the updates focused on content quality and relevance. I’m now reworking my content strategy to align more with E-E-A-T standards and helpful content signals.
If you have any specific suggestions on how to recover from such an update, I’d love to hear them. Thanks again for your valuable input!

 

[Peter Ngo]

I can't give much detailed since I dont have accss to the site, what I would suggest is try changing your theme.

I have seen popular WP themes that just crazy difficult to rank and have seen site that just have their ranking skyrocketing just from changing the theme.

Many themes are super bloated with complicated structure and extremely hard for you to know even if you are technical.

 

[tazarbm]

What should I do to regain my keyword positions?

it's hard to say when there are so many variables involved, but - if you've got nothing to lose - start with switching back to the old theme. If you do this and nothing changes within 1 week you can revert back to the new theme and focus on other stuff. Like google updates, for example. These are the biggest site tanking factors that are not under our control.

So, check which updates google have released during / around the time you've lost rankings and look up for fixes (here on BHW or in google) to those updates.

You might also try running a full site audit using ScreamingFrog or similar software, these tools are great for revealing issues we don't know we might have with our sites, and I'm taking a blind guess that after changing both the host and the theme you're bound to have screwed something up somewhere. So, run the full audit and see if you can find anything (404 pages, broken / looping links, missing important tags, that sort of things...)

Also, google are heavily into trust and structured data nowadays, so it's possible that your site missing one or both of those things. From what I understand, structured data means using schemas on your pages (not sure that it's a good idea to use it on ALL of your pages, but add it on some of the important pages and see if it does anything)

I don't know how google determines trust, though. But it probably has a lot to do with transparency and popularity, so you gotta tick some important checkboxes like continuous social media presence, brand awareness, EEAT, etc... I wish I could tell you how to increase trust as this seems to be one of the top ranking factors nowadays, but I'm clueless about it, sorry! I only know that it matters...

How do I rebuild authority and relevance in Google’s eyes?

authority is simple: backlinks. The more of them you have, and the better they are, the higher your authority score goes. But I feel that authority alone will not suffice if you're not a big, recognize brand at global (or at least national / continental) scale, but it's still an important part of SEO, so keep doing it. Despite of how less important backlinks have become lately, I still don't see how you can outrank some of the tougher competitors that have high authority when your content can only be as good as theirs...

As for relevance.... hmm... this one's... not important?? I mean, if your site has good topical authority I don't think you should worry about increasing relevancy because your site would already be relevant (to the topic it covers) by default, so I'm not sure that you need to do anything specific about this.

If you’re an SEO expert, content strategist, or have recovered from a similar experience —
I’d love your advice, insights, or even hard truths.

I'm not an expert, so take my opinions for what they're worth

 

[Virtual Seller]

it's hard to say when there are so many variables involved, but - if you've got nothing to lose - start with switching back to the old theme. If you do this and nothing changes within 1 week you can revert back to the new theme and focus on other stuff. Like google updates, for example. These are the biggest site tanking factors that are not under our control.

So, check which updates google have released during / around the time you've lost rankings and look up for fixes (here on BHW or in google) to those updates.

You might also try running a full site audit using ScreamingFrog or similar software, these tools are great for revealing issues we don't know we might have with our sites, and I'm taking a blind guess that after changing both the host and the theme you're bound to have screwed something up somewhere. So, run the full audit and see if you can find anything (404 pages, broken / looping links, missing important tags, that sort of things...)

Also, google are heavily into trust and structured data nowadays, so it's possible that your site missing one or both of those things. From what I understand, structured data means using schemas on your pages (not sure that it's a good idea to use it on ALL of your pages, but add it on some of the important pages and see if it does anything)

I don't know how google determines trust, though. But it probably has a lot to do with transparency and popularity, so you gotta tick some important checkboxes like continuous social media presence, brand awareness, EEAT, etc... I wish I could tell you how to increase trust as this seems to be one of the top ranking factors nowadays, but I'm clueless about it, sorry! I only know that it matters...


authority is simple: backlinks. The more of them you have, and the better they are, the higher your authority score goes. But I feel that authority alone will not suffice if you're not a big, recognize brand at global (or at least national / continental) scale, but it's still an important part of SEO, so keep doing it. Despite of how less important backlinks have become lately, I still don't see how you can outrank some of the tougher competitors that have high authority when your content can only be as good as theirs...

As for relevance.... hmm... this one's... not important?? I mean, if your site has good topical authority I don't think you should worry about increasing relevancy because your site would already be relevant (to the topic it covers) by default, so I'm not sure that you need to do anything specific about this.


I'm not an expert, so take my opinions for what they're worth

Thank you for reply, I'll install old them

 

[PBNLegends]

Thanks for sharing your story — a lot of people silently go through this after major site migrations.

Even if your site is technically healthy now, the authority reset after plugin/theme/hosting changes (plus lost SEO configs) can confuse Google.

Here’s what I’d suggest:

Rebuild topical authority by refreshing old content and internally linking with strong silos.

Use Google Search Console → Page Experience + URL Inspection to check if your pages are still being treated the same.

Analyze lost backlinks via Ahrefs or Majestic — you may need to reclaim or replace link equity.

Add new content regularly with updated schema and target long-tail variations of old winners.


Recovery can take time, but a mix of content updates + trust rebuilding + backlink push usually helps.

 

[LiamWalker]

Sure, Tell me what you need help with.