Website getting zero impressions on google and is cooked, what steps can be taken or is it a lost cause?

Title. DR 2, DA 42(?), ahrefs site audit score 93 (though previously it was 32), literally no idea why this has happened. I have spent quite some time getting good, high quality backlinks to the site but still it looks dead in the water. The only possible thing this could be from is i was testing out slop fiverr backlinks people and i got one guy to do some backlinks for this site, but it was months and months ago, and there are no manual actions or anything. Maybe the guy added loads of malicious backlinks after i gave him a four star review because all his links were slop lol. Though i don't think it has to do with those links



Is there any way to rescue this or is the site just cooked? Primarily the site was a news site, literally all of the news was organic and not press releases, i was waiting to get higher in search before i start promoting anything.

I've seen cases like this where the metrics look decent but Google traffic stays flat. I'd check the backlink profile first, especially recent links, anchor text, and any low quality patterns. also review indexing, content quality, and wether the site lost trust after algorithm updates. A DR/DA score alone doesn't guarantee rankings. Sometimes rebuilding authority and improving content signals is the better path.

Elowyn said:

I would not assume the site is dead yet. Zero impressions usually means there is a bigger issue than just backlinks. First check Google Search Console for indexing status, coverage issues, manual actions and whether pages are actually being crawled. Also review if the content matches search intent and if there were any major changes before the drop. Bad backlinks are not always the reason but it is worth auditing the link profile.

Click to expand...

I did this at the start, pages are indexed and crawled normally, no manual actions, no changes on the site. After i saw the drop to zero i switched it from beehiiv to wordpress because the site was just awful but that only improved the site

zero impressions with pages indexed usually mean Google is indexing them bt not surfacing for any query, which often happen when content is too thin or not matching any real search demand.for news site specifically check if your articles was targeting keywords with actual search volume or just reporting events nobody was searching for. News content without search volume get indexed but never surface in GSC. Also check if your DA 42 is legitimate or inflated, sometimes link farms inflate DA artificially while actual domain trust with Google remain very low which explain the disconnect between your metrics and real performance