Why is this site sinking?

I have this site that I created in 2018, it was doing so well averaging about 9k daily not until the 2020 January update which saw it loose about 70% traffic.

Then some months later I decided to rebrand the site by deleting many unnecessary pages. But as a novice I didn't do proper 301. Then 2 weeks later after I deleted the pages, the site plugged further with a 59% loss in traffic.

I moved on but then at some point, I decided to add a forum to the site. Then I started receiving spam mostly from the sex enhancer niche meanwhile my niche is tech. These spams were using bot to comment and also drop a backlink to their site. I didn't realize what was happening until I saw another 40% decline

I deleted the forum plugin but traffic never returned.

Soon after I started to get a huge chunk of spam comments. I had to installed Akismet to stop spam. With akismet I saw I was getting 50-60 spam comments daily.

Now with the latest core update, this site lost another 50% traffic. It barely gets up to 100 daily visitors now.

This site has a domain rating of 10 according to ahref.

I'm just wondering what's actually wrong. Why is this particular site failing even when other of my sites with same domain rating are doing well.

What can I do to revive this site? I'm really tight on budget so I really want to do this myself.

Any reply?

Betboss said:

I have this site that I created in 2018, it was doing so well averaging about 9k daily not until the 2020 January update which saw it loose about 70% traffic.

Then some months later I decided to rebrand the site by deleting many unnecessary pages. But as a novice I didn't do proper 301. Then 2 weeks later after I deleted the pages, the site plugged further with a 59% loss in traffic.

I moved on but then at some point, I decided to add a forum to the site. Then I started receiving spam mostly from the sex enhancer niche meanwhile my niche is tech. These spams were using bot to comment and also drop a backlink to their site. I didn't realize what was happening until I saw another 40% decline

I deleted the forum plugin but traffic never returned.

Soon after I started to get a huge chunk of spam comments. I had to installed Akismet to stop spam. With akismet I saw I was getting 50-60 spam comments daily.

Now with the latest core update, this site lost another 50% traffic. It barely gets up to 100 daily visitors now.

This site has a domain rating of 10 according to ahref.

I'm just wondering what's actually wrong. Why is this particular site failing even when other of my sites with same domain rating are doing well.

What can I do to revive this site? I'm really tight on budget so I really want to do this myself.

Click to expand...

spam comments can be blocked by setting or wordpress plugin bro .

they appear to when the links been index the spam comments hit automatically .

Please can you explain more, I have Akismet installed but that's not stopping them. In fact I have disabled comment on the site.

Betboss said:

Why is this particular site failing even when other of my sites with same domain rating are doing well

Click to expand...

DR doesn't mean anything. You can rank both a DR 0 site, and a DR 99 one... although, of course, it will depends on certain things (niche, keywords, competition, google's idiotic algorithm that's full of segments and rules that not even they understand sometimes, etc). But anyway...

Betboss said:

I'm just wondering what's actually wrong

Click to expand...

a few things that spring to mind while reading your post..

First of all, you yourself said that there's been an update in January 2020 and - as you probably know - when google rolls updates out (especially core updates like the one that seems to have affected you) they affect sites, both negatively and positively. That is, your site had probably been negatively impacted by this update (last link in the list):
https://status.search.google.com/products/rGHU1u87FJnkP6W2GwMi/history
Unfortunately, there's no info about this particular update on google's official page, but this link by SEL might clue you into what could have affected your site:
https://searchengineland.com/the-latest-data-on-the-january-2020-google-core-update-327683
Secondly - and, again, you've said this yourself - you've deleted pages (that probably ranked) without 301-ing them to other pages and google have re-crawled your site after detecting activity on it and they've updated their index with your new URLs (which probably return 404 pages, and which google deranks or deindexes, I've seen both cases)

So, if you manage to bring those pages back to life google might re-rank them after the next crawl. It's not a guarantee, though... but it's something you can try if you have a backup somewhere... or you can try using WBM to find the pages and restore them from there...

Betboss said:

it was doing so well averaging about 9k daily

Click to expand...

That's probably why LOL. You were doing well organically and not making google any $$$ so they change the rules to force you to buy ads

That's how it works ever since they began to sell ads

How do you reverse it? Black Hat

Your site probably got blacklisted after the spam backlinks dropped in your forum. Though there's no penalty message your site has definitely been blacklisted which is why you can't seem to get the rankings back.

I had a similar issue as yours only that my site was blasted with adult backlinks from some salty competitor. Then a google update happened and it killed the site. Despite disavowing and doing whatever I can it has never returned to its former self. Google claims negative SEO doesn't work and their algo can detect it but I bet to differ.

Your recent drop is also faced by many others because the recent HCU favours QnA sites, news site, and so on... pushing us down further. You can read the discussion at seroundtable comment section.

Sorry to hear about your situation but do remember many others are also affected by the recent updates.

bartosimpsonio said:

That's probably why LOL. You were doing well organically and not making google any $$$ so they change the rules to force you to buy ads

That's how it works ever since they began to sell ads

How do you reverse it? Black Hat

Click to expand...

I will consider investing in backlink but then to actually get a good link is very expensive.

AliceInSEOLand said:

Your site probably got blacklisted after the spam backlinks dropped in your forum. Though there's no penalty message your site has definitely been blacklisted which is why you can't seem to get the rankings back.

I had a similar issue as yours only that my site was blasted with adult backlinks from some salty competitor. Then a google update happened and it killed the site. Despite disavowing and doing whatever I can it has never returned to its former self. Google claims negative SEO doesn't work and their algo can detect it but I bet to differ.

Your recent drop is also faced by many others because the recent HCU favours QnA sites, news site, and so on... pushing us down further. You can read the discussion at seroundtable comment section.

Sorry to hear about your situation but do remember many others are also affected by the recent updates.

Click to expand...

I'm just confused. I want to rewrite all 295 pages, then invest $1000 on backlinks. Do you think it's a worthwhile move?

AliceInSEOLand said:

I had a similar issue as yours only that my site was blasted with adult backlinks from some salty competitor. Then a google update happened and it killed the site. Despite disavowing and doing whatever I can it has never returned to its former self. Google claims negative SEO doesn't work and their algo can detect it but I bet to differ.

Click to expand...

This is exactly what happened to the site. I received loads of adult backlinks and that was it. The site kept going down despite all my effort.

This is pretty much happening to a lot of sites. Believe me, I had very good metrics for my main site but once you start getting hit with algorithms, the derank train just starts.

My site went from 3000 visitors per day to 800 visits per day. And another 50% reduction in just 10 days after the September update.

Damn, that's a rough journey. Several factors could've affected your site's performance.
Incorrect 301s:
Spammy Backlinks:
Content Quality:
Technical SEO:
Engagement Metrics:
Quick personal experience - had a client's site almost tank because of toxic backlinks. Cleaning those up and focusing on quality content turned things around in a couple of months.

maxmayer said:

Damn, that's a rough journey. Several factors could've affected your site's performance.
Incorrect 301s:
Spammy Backlinks:
Content Quality:
Technical SEO:
Engagement Metrics:
Quick personal experience - had a client's site almost tank because of toxic backlinks. Cleaning those up and focusing on quality content turned things around in a couple of months.

Click to expand...

Please can you give me a hint no matter how small on how you cleaned the toxic backlinks

Betboss said:

I'm just confused. I want to rewrite all 295 pages, then invest $1000 on backlinks. Do you think it's a worthwhile move?

Click to expand...

Sorry but no.

Because I did just that (rewrite content) and it never fully recovered. I did get some positions back but it is like only 20%.

Then this year the site started behaving weird... like it would be ranking normal suddenly it loses all its position for a few days then it returns. Then few months ago it happened again - all the rankings positions totally disappeared (not even in the top 1000s) for nearly 1 month. Then it returned. This issue kept recurring like 4-5 times.

Till this day it still happens and right now it disappeared again. I'm thinking of abandoning this site...

So yeah, my opinion is don't do it... don't waste your time and money. Just start a new project. Again, it is up to you and I wouldn't put high hopes on it anymore.

AliceInSEOLand said:

Sorry but no.

Because I did just that (rewrite content) and it never fully recovered. I did get some positions back but it is like only 20%.

Then this year the site started behaving weird... like it would be ranking normal suddenly it loses all its position for a few days then it returns. Then few months ago it happened again - all the rankings positions totally disappeared (not even in the top 1000s) for nearly 1 month. Then it returned. This issue kept recurring like 4-5 times.

Till this day it still happens and right now it disappeared again. I'm thinking of abandoning this site...

So yeah, my opinion is don't do it... don't waste your time and money. Just start a new project. Again, it is up to you and I wouldn't put high hopes on it anymore.

Click to expand...

Thank you so much for your reply. I think I will just let it slide.

These spam backlinks was the thing that decreased your traffic

ugh.. this is painful to read lol..
i think what happened was, that you rank for that niche that seems low competition, good quality content, good user engaggement rate, hence google put you in rank 1 / 2 /3

but competitor saw a chance to compete in that market, did better SEO than you, optimize their keyword, and then they take over your place, hence reduction in traffic, means you rank lower than them
then after seeing it all burn, you panic and did clear up pages, that are actually ranking in google, 404 not found, quality decreased, too many plugins, hence slow website, low user engagement rate, bounce rate was very high, competitor was very optimized, with mobile pages friendly / AMP

Google rate you lower in the ranks, dropped more traffic...
now you are invisible in google, hence 100 traffic

Suggest : start over fresh, 301 the old domain, to your new site, start with good quality content, share in social media, learn link building, try to aim 500 daily, then upscale

It's possible that your website was penalized by the update, or that it simply wasn't able to keep up with the changes to Google's algorithm.