My Website Content Is Better Than Most Competitors, but It Doesn’t Outrank Them Yet in a SERP

Jawad
I am either hit by negative SEO or something else. After the 7th November update, hundreds of keywords where I was ranking 1 to 5 were dropped to 70 to 90. My search traffic reduced down from 500k per month to 100k.
I have disavowed all suspicious domain – no effect
I have updated, improved around 30 articles on my website, with no effect on ranking. Although the content is far better than my competitors. They are still ranking at 70 odd.
Now I am thinking to dump this site and move my entire content to another site without any redirect. I have a couple of questions;
Should I dump the website at once and move its content to the new one? or
I should improve, update one article and when it is ready, delete it from the current website and copy-paste it on the new one. In this way, the new website will be built gradually and the current one will die slowly.
Looking for the expert's opinion.
[filtered from 35 💬🗨]

👈📰

my website content is better than most competitors but it doesnt outrank them yet in a serp

🔗🏹

💬🗨

Faisal
have you went through any algo checker tool to determine why such a high ranking site getting so massive rank drop?

Jawad ^✍️
Can you suggest one?
Faisal » Jawad
SEMrush has one.
Check your site on semrush sensor and there are bunch of other free google penalty checker. run your site in all of them.
_👍1

Lees
It hasn't been that long at all. Just be patient and see what happens. Check for manual actions in Google Search Console (GSC). Make sure you're not over optimized. Dump any guest posts if you published any. Sometimes sites with lots of affiliate links have this happen. Also, make sure you SEO plugin is set up right, if you are using one.
_👍2

Jawad ^✍️
1. There is no manual penalty in GSC
2. How can I check if I am not over-optimized? I have been using Yoast Premium and none of my articles is using the keyword more than the recommended by Yoast. Is there any other way?
3. Yes, I do have some guest posts. I will delete them.
4. I have been using Yoast for a long time, didn't make any change in settings. I guess, there is no issue with that.
Really appreciate your response.
For how long should I wait? by the way before taking this extreme step?
Lees
I don't use yoast anymore. I prefer all in one seo pack pro. Dump the guest posts. Over optimization: just check your keyword density metrics against the ranking sites. I would work with the site for another 6 months before getting desperate.
Is it an affiliate website? Travel niche? Food? Health?
Jawad ^✍️ » Lees
No, I am running a website which mainly discusses visa procedures, guidelines for driving license, birth certificate, residence permit etc. All of it is related to Saudi Arabia.

Batra
Same thing happened to me in June 3rd update. From 600$ a month to 30$ a month. But My website recovered in Nov 7th update. Just be patient and keep posting few informative articles, increase interlinking, keep updating old articles, check for over optimization. It will eventually recover in upcoming google updates.
_👍4

Jawad ^✍️
Thank you for the comment. How to check for over-optimization? I have been using Yoast Premium and I don't exceed their threshold for optimization. Is there a tool or way to check it apart from that?
Batra
I don't know any tool but make sure you're not stuffing keywords or using high percentage of exact match anchors both on backlinks and interlinks.
_👍1

Lee
Don't make drastic changes without understanding why your rankings went down. Send me a message with the domain and I'll take a look for you and offer some suggestions.
_👍2

Jawad ^✍️ » Lee
can you please check your inbox?
Lee » Jawad
will do right now

Ryan
Should be patient. Depend on your previous strategy, if your strategy is ‘good', you might get your traffic back.
The challenge is you don't know when you can have the traffic back.
_👍1
Grant
Be patient.
For assessment. Crawl your site to make certain there's nothing big breaking the user experience or the bot crawl efficiency. Yoast can add some internal linking in-code I'm not a fan of. Check schema. Be patient.
_👍1

👈📰

🔗🏹

Bryan
Is it expired domain
Used PBN sites?

Jawad ^✍️ » Bryan
no, not expired.
Never used PBN
_👍1

Ryan
it may not be negative SEO. who is else ranking for those keywords? what type of content do they have? is it the same intent of your site? are they actual comeptitors or did the search results shift? Are they informational results and you're transactional? or vice versa?

Jawad ^✍️ » Ryan
[not important image]
Ryan
I never trust those tools. many of them told me a link from cnn and readers digest was toxic.
Jawad ^✍️
This is my backlink profile from semrush due to which I think it is a negative SEO attack
Daniel » Jawad
I saw something very similar where a ton of my backlinks was considered toxic from Hotlinked images, these were toxic sites leaching my images linking back to my site, but I was told in other SEO forums to ignore them as they don't show up in my GSC. Also, I was don't that you can't believe all these tools sometimes as they only show the negative so you end up paying for additional access. ?
_👍1

👈📰