I have been waiting and making changes here and there
that's not how you do SEO! What if you've changed stuff on pages that ranked? This could have easily screwed the rankings.
Next time when you make changes do it on stuff that you know for sure is not ranking, or that does need change (update content that's dated, with new updated info, for example)
page speed insights look fine
if the Performance and Accessibility metrics in your 2nd and 3rd screenshots are the speed of your site then NO, it doesn't look fine. You want
at least 90 scores on speed and optimization...
Also check the CWV scores on GTMetrix. Just plop your main URL into that site and let it scan, then fix what it recommends fixing...
For transparency, my blogs have been AI-generated with slight modification to sound more engaging and personable.
I was about to say "this is your problem", because of my hatred for AI, I will try to blame everyone that uses AI
But then I remembered how some people swear that 100% AI blogs still rank fine, so I don't think that AI is the full problem. I think it may have to do with poor AI content rather than the AI itself being the problem.
More specifically, your AI does not address the intent of the topics it covers, perfectly. And this is why your stats are so bad and which is why you're not ranking, although I have a feeling it's more than the poor AI content, because....
I launched in November of 2024, and originally it was growing at a steady rate.
from your screenshot I am not seeing any "originally" growing. You launched the site in November, but until January you've only gotten a few impressions here and there and no clicks. That's not steady growing, it's just lingering about, barely surviving
Which means that even since the beginning of the site you've not done something right, namely one of these:
- no content at all (which would be justified as you said you've started publishing content in February)
- bad content (poor grammar, too much fluff, not meeting intent of the keyword(s) / the topic covered)
- no internal links detected... or poorly optimized internal links (random anchors that don't make sense, internal links inserted in bad places just for the sake of linking and they don't attract clicks, etc)
- sluggish site (poor speed generally)
- no mobile version of the site
- other technical errors (indexation / crawlability issues, broken links, missing tags, etc)
- speaking of missing tags, I think your meta tags are either missing or are bad, because your CTR is very low, and this is usually due to bad / missing meta tags (meta title + meta description usually)
- poor content optimization (no short, clear, concise sentences, no image optimization, etc)
For more context I do not have much backlinks most of them are on listing/directory sites.
this can be good or bad.
If your site is a business type of site (constructions, industrial electronics manufacturing, pets food producing / delivery, web design portfolio, etc... stuff like this) having links from listing / directory sites is good and even recommended (although, you still need to make sure that the directories are of high quality, otherwise it might work against you).
But if it's a blog / content / affiliate site then these sites should have no business getting links from directories.
So, these backlinks could actually be part of why your site performs poorly. Next time, if you want / need backlinks only get the high quality ones. Yes, it might cost you a fortune, but they're worth every penny if they're the right backlinks. Either this, or don't get any links at all and focus on keyword research, proper siloing and on-site optimization, and topical authority. Many times, these 3 combined can help you rank initially and get a good run in the SERPs before you need backlinks to survive...
is this something where I may need to restart or get a new domain or anything?
I don't think it's that drastic. I think you can still salvage this website, you just need to do the right changes (as opposed to changing stuff "here and there" randomly without knowing what you're doing), when they're warranted...
In your case, I would do the following things (in THIS EXACT order):
a) first of all, pre-plan and structure your site properly. Site siloing goes a long way towards increasing your changes to rank (even without backlinks if everything's done properly), so take the time to re-do the site structure in case it's been done poorly. If the structure is fine, you can skip this step. But if it's a mess you need to re-do it before going further.
Have a look at this guide for inspiration on how to structure a site:
https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/seo-siloing-2023-the-last-siloing-guide-youll-ever-need.1502244/
b) use a software like Screaming Frog to run a full audit of your entire site in order to detect any potential errors / inconsistencies that your GSC might not have detected, and when the report from SF comes in go point by point through it and fix what needs to be fixed, so that you can have a clean, fast loading, intuitive site.
c) after you've done those fixes (if any were needed), run your site through GTMetrix and fix what GTMetrix says it needs to be fixed...
d) time to revise / improve the content now, so do these...
d1) install a plugin like RankMath pro, or use software like Frase.io, SurferSEO, NeuronWriter, etc to analyze your content and recommend you improvements, and implement the things that these tools recommend! It might get expensive, yes, but if you're a newbie you kind of need these tools before you understand how to craft and optimize quality content, so get busy with this!
If you can't afford these tools / services, you can try to find cheaper alternatives, or hot deals in one of these forums:
https://www.blackhatworld.com/forums/account-selling-renting-services.310/
https://www.blackhatworld.com/forums/hot-deals.197/
https://www.blackhatworld.com/forums/misc.18/
You can probably optimize your content with Yoast and other SEO plugins too, but I've heard that (Yoast for example) is dated, so I wouldn't trust Yoast on content optimization too much. On SEO-related stuff it's a good plugin, but not on content optimization, so try the other tools / services...
d2) when the content improvement and optimization (including image SEO) are done, it's time to create internal links between ALL of the RELEVANT articles within EACH silo.
So, for example, if you have a website about pets, and the site's main categories are (snakes, dogs, parakeets, cats, fish) then all articles within the
snakes category should be interlinked with each other in some (non-intrusive, non-spammy, very relevant) way, then all of the articles in the
dogs category should be interlinked with each other too, and so on... Do not link articles from the snakes and parakeet category, for example,
unless it's absolutely and totally relevant, like for example, you are writing an article about a certain snake and its favorite food are small birds and parakeets then yeah, there is a link between this particular snake and the parakeets so it makes sense to interlink the 2 articles.
Yes, as you keep publishing more content your job of making internal links will become more challenging and tedious, as each new article might be potentially interlinked with dozens or 100s of other articles (which you'll obviously NOT do when there are so many articles because you will end up spamming internal links and that's not good).
So, in this case, you keep interlinking all articles that are the most relevant / related to each other until you have a lot of them, and at that point you make internal links from the articles that are ranked and get google traffic, to the ones that are not even indexed yet. This will help the googlebot find the new content organically, which will help your site rank organically.
But anyway, this is for the mid-long run, for now just focus on the few articles that you have and interlink those ones, but only if they're relevant to each other...
e) after the site structure, technical SEO, content and internal links are all done and in good standing you can (re)generate your site's XML sitemap with the SEO plugin you're using (or with a dedicated sitemap generator plugin, it doesn't matter) and re-submit it to your GSC to let google find the new, improved site and content and hopefully update their index with your much better site.
Give it a week or so for the new site to at least get some boost in the SERPs. If you've done your keyword research and optimized your site and content well it shouldn't take more than a week to see changes... unless there's a google update going on in the meantime, which apparently there is one, according to this post:
https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/new-may-2025-update-google-weirdly-deindexing-ai-content.1713970/
in which case you might want to wait 2-3 weeks (that's what it usually takes for google updates to complete) before you start panicking or making changes again..
If the google update (that we don't yet know it exists) does not impact your site (in either way, good or bad, it doesn't matter and you should still wait for the update to finish), then you can start building links (but quality ones only, otherwise you will have worked for nothing if you start buying SEO packages and throwing 1000s of useless backlinks at the same page, with the same anchor texts, all at once)... even if you don't get backlinks, keep working on your site as usual and the rankings will come eventually. SEO is a long term (and
ongoing) process, so plan for the long run and keep going! Make a habit of publishing 1 article a day (or 2-3 articles a week, or whatever schedule you're comfortable with), but stick with it for months, even years if you need to! Sites that don't get updated in a while (the words "a while" depend on google's whims and probably on the niche too, some niches need more frequent updates than others, so I don't know what "a while" means in this context, but the point is that you should keep your site updated regularly, once a week I would say is fine for most sites in most niches)
So, whether or not you're getting backlinks depends on you, and on how well you've nailed the keyword research + site pre-planning and structuring + the speed and technical SEO of the site + mobile friendliness and content quality in order to rank. But if you've done these things well you should see ranking and traffic. It might not happen today or this week, but it will happen eventually because periodically google shuffles the rankings and sites that were considered dead tend to get their turn at delicious rankings and traffic eventually. But it could take years for your turn to be, so be prepared for anything
And, if you want to learn more on how to approach link building I highly recommend that you read this guide. It's very eye opening for newbies that have no clue how to build links that matter and where to point them, how often, with what anchors, etc. So give this a read:
https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/guide-how-many-links-per-day-week-or-month-should-i-build.1502403/
And that's pretty much it... I think.... If I've missed something let me know! Even if I don't know the answer someone else will....
I'm still new to SEO, so I do not know the nuances.
If it makes you feel better then know that I'm not new to SEO, but I still don't know the nuances. Google loves keeping us in the dark and confusing us (to prevent us from gaming their algos), so yeah, you're not alone in this ambiguous thing called SEO
