Help save my website, please!!

Hello everyone, I hope you guys are doing well and banking hard.

So, I will try to keep things short and simple. I have a one year + 3 months old blog. It's my first one, and I've chosen a niche that I'm passionate about. After the sandbox, my site was doing well, but things have changed after the December Google update. At that time, I took a big slap from Google, where I've lost around 70% of my traffic. In January, things started coming back again, and I got my traffic back then. However, and sadly, the traffic growth was temporary, and I've again lost it. I used to get around 130 daily traffic when my blog was around 8 months old, but now sadly, I'm getting barely 30 traffic daily.

PS: The reason behind the traffic loss is due to ranking drop.

I-So, what I've done until now.

1-According to Ahrefs, my site audit was scoring 19, so I've fixed all the issues that Ahrefs reported until I've reached a 99 Score.
2-I've deleted all low-quality content (Around 20-30 blog posts) (I consider blog posts as low quality when I see that they do not offer any value to the readers).
3-I've optimized my Google page speed from 50 Mobile - 70 Desktop up to 90 (Mobile) / 96 (Desktop)
4-I've purchased some Backlinks Package that had good reviews here in BHW.
5-I've started focusing on quality rather than quantity.

II-Regarding keywords. I always build my articles targeting low competition keywords that got around 100(±) monthly search. I consider a keyword as a low competition based on my competitors':

1-DR of my competitors
2-Domain Age
3-Quality of their content

PS: I use Keyword Everywhere to generate the monthly search

III-Things that are making me confused...for real lol

1-I've checked most of my competitors, and I've noticed that they all lost traffic the same way as me (Except one mysterious Blog that has managed to multiply his traffic number). This blog is like 6 months older than mine and got low DR, around 10 informative articles paired with 85-90 buying guides. However, I've noticed one thing, which is the length of his blog posts. This guy always publishes long format blog posts (3K-4K words). However, sometimes, he just talks to talk without providing any real value.
2-Even though I focus on low competition keywords, I've noticed that Google put Quora and Reddit ahead of me sometimes despite the low-quality answer (I think I'm impatient here).
3-I don't think that I got penalized because new articles are ranking normally.

IV-Now things that i "Think" are affecting my website. Still, I'm not sure yet.

1-Since it's my first website, I've focused on buying guides articles only (100 blog posts published right now (almost 10 informative articles only)).
2-My blog age
3-Low DR (poor backlink profile) what I mean by poor is the fact that I preferred going after low competition keywords since I got a tight budget that doesn't allow me to purchase Backlinks.

V-My questions are:

1-Did some of you guys faced the same issue as me? If yes, did you recover? And how, please? If you don't mind sharing your tips, of course.
2-What do you guys suggest that I should do based on your experience?
3-Is investing money on the blog still a smart move despite its low performance?

I wish you all an amazing day, and thanks in advance for your answers.

Also, do you guys think that my site can recover after the next Google Core Update?

Speaking as a random passerby, you need to find out exactly what that one successful competitor is doing and copy it for yourself.
You can use Bing webmaster to examine their backlinks by adding them as a competitor I think.
If you need to write 3-4k articles to rank then that's what you need to do. Sounds painful to write all that but...

True Damage said:

Speaking as a random passerby, you need to find out exactly what that one successful competitor is doing and copy it for yourself.
You can use Bing webmaster to examine their backlinks by adding them as a competitor I think.
If you need to write 3-4k articles to rank then that's what you need to do. Sounds painful to write all that but...

Click to expand...

Yeah, I will try writing long form articles and see how Google will rank them

These buying guide articles - how many words are you writing for each blog? How many products are you writing about?
I'm assuming they're things like "10 best widgets to buy" etc. Review your content and make sure your providing very in-depth, reliable and informative content. It seems like to me you recovered your traffic from the original loss and then you were most likely hit by the product reviews update, which targets your type of content specifically. (you can read more about that here: https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2021/04/product-reviews-update)

Another thing I'll say is don't rush to building links as a way to fix your ranking issues. You say you don't have the budget for link building and that's fine given the keywords you're trying to target - don't be tempted to buy cheap links for the sake of it, they'll only ruin your website sooner or later (or at best they just won't be counted by Google)

chipsie1102 said:

These buying guide articles - how many words are you writing for each blog? How many products are you writing about?
I'm assuming they're things like "10 best widgets to buy" etc. Review your content and make sure your providing very in-depth, reliable and informative content. It seems like to me you recovered your traffic from the original loss and then you were most likely hit by the product reviews update, which targets your type of content specifically. (you can read more about that here: https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2021/04/product-reviews-update)

Another thing I'll say is don't rush to building links as a way to fix your ranking issues. You say you don't have the budget for link building and that's fine given the keywords you're trying to target - don't be tempted to buy cheap links for the sake of it, they'll only ruin your website sooner or later (or at best they just won't be counted by Google)

Click to expand...

Most of my articles are around 1500-2k words where I review 5 products mostly. I lost my traffic a while before Product reviews update. If I'm not mistaken, I was hit in the beginning of February.

What's your page loading times like and UX?

As mentioned above, don't buy cheap crappy links.

Add some more informational content onto the site.

MisterF said:

What's your page loading times like and UX?

As mentioned above, don't buy cheap crappy links.

Add some more informational content onto the site.

Click to expand...

Based on GT Metrix, my blog takes 1.3sec to be fully loaded
Yeah, I think I need more informational articles.
Btw, if you don't mind me asking, is it safe to build do-follow backlinks to my money site from high DR sites in an irrelevant niche? I've seen some BHW members publishing guides about how to create Do-Follow backlinks from several high authority websites.