We’ve been facing a tough time with SEO lately. We thought our new content was doing well, but we were wrong. Since Friday, we’ve lost another 50% of our organic traffic, following a 97% drop after the HCU update. Our content is all human-written and localized for Sweden, focused on recommendations and news. We don’t think we’re penalized by HCU, but it seems like we’re no longer ranking in Sweden. Our CTR is really low, though impressions are stable.
So now, we’re considering starting a new website and pausing the current one since traffic has flatlined. I asked around about changing domains and many said it probably won’t help. What if we start fresh? Can a new website even rank in Google anymore? Or should we just continue trying to breathe life into a site that’s barely getting any traffic?
Starting a new site might seem like a quick fix, but if HCU is the problem, a fresh domain won’t necessarily help. Google looks at content quality and user signals. If your new site follows the same approach, it could end up in the same spot. Before jumping to a new domain, it might be worth trying to fix the current one. Maybe optimize your content for user intent, clean up bad backlinks, and improve technical aspects like site speed. Starting fresh can work, but it’s a long journey with no guarantees, especially with how Google has been dealing with low-quality content.
You should diversify your traffic. Don’t rely only on Google. Look into platforms like Reddit and Pinterest. Try outreach to get featured in listicles.
PostPioneer said:
You should diversify your traffic. Don’t rely only on Google. Look into platforms like Reddit and Pinterest. Try outreach to get featured in listicles.
Sweden is small, and Google is the main search engine here.
@howdyrobert
Got it. In my experience, AI content ranks well. Google doesn’t penalize it. My older posts that were heavily optimized and ranked well were hit by HCU. AI content seems to be ranking better now. Can you DM me your site?
Here’s some advice - start a new site and use content from your old site. Put canonical tags on the old posts pointing to the new ones. It’s a lot of work, but it’ll help. Anyone telling you that you can fully recover from HCU is probably lying. No one fully recovers from it.
howdyrobert said: @Pulse4
Can we move just a few posts from the old site and change the canonical tags to point to the new site?
Yes, you can do that. If you have good content, it will rank on the new site. Just add the canonical tags to the old posts and submit them on Google Search Console for crawling. Googlebot needs to register the canonical tags.
I recommend having some old content on the new domain and making sure it’s removed from the old domain’s Google Search Console. Just modify the content a bit, and it should start ranking. I used this method for a German client whose site got penalized for a casino-related niche, and it worked. If you can arrange an old live domain, that would be perfect. I have a few domains, like gamblingongames.net, that could work for you. I also have some experience with link building, especially in niches like iGaming.