How to fix an SEO Nightmare

It's probably not your fault, many people are experiencing this. My twitter has recently been full of people that have been killed by recent algo updates.

• https://retrododo.com/google-is-killing-retro-dodo/
• https://twitter.com/lr_jordan/status/1775466716652269713
• https://twitter.com/NicheSiteLady/status/1775118272276402235
• https://twitter.com/iannuttall/status/1775238536981323787

You're the third person I've seen just today complaining about how Google killed their SEO efforts for no obvious reasons...

I can't help explain why, but it would make me think twice before relying solely on SEO for growth in the future.

Have you checked core web vitals. Maybe layout shift due to that banner on top

Indeed, it may not be your fault. Google has been giving more and more weight to big publishers at the expense of small bloggers or niche publications.
There were a lot of complaints and examples on FB SEO Groups; I don't remember exactly, but something like how the Economist is ranking 1st for "best potato peeler." You get the idea.

Here are some suggestions for improvement:

• On your homepage, an H1 tag is missing.
• In each blog post, all titles are marked as H1.
• -Your keyword strategy isn't clear. Although your blog seems to focus on note-taking and knowledge bases, the titles don't reflect the search terms users might employ.

Consider structuring your titles as follows:
"[Keyword]: [Goal/Question/Pain]"
"How to [Goal] with [Tool]"

Examples:

"Open Loops: How to Finally Complete Your Tasks."
"Obsidian Journaling: How to Get Started"
"Starting a Journal with Obsidian: A Guide."

According to SimilarWeb, here's what I noticed about your website.

Currently, you have bounce rate of 43%, which is somewhat high. However, most vistors
are staying on your webpages for about 2.3 minutes. Content stickiness is a good thing!

Going forward, if you're concerned about dipping general traffic, then I consider doing some YouTube shorts involving your trending news and reposting it on Twitter. More importantly, you might want to include a corresponding link back to your article. Overtime, this creates residual traffic and will allow Google to see that your content is either fresh and/or trending and should be included to a cohort of trending videoes on YT.

FYI: Ping me if you want to see my analysis of your webite from a crawler POV.

Good luck on your optimization!

That's a bummer, sorry to hear it. A site of mine was also affected at the beginning of HCU. I did more to make it personable - like adding a welcome video and my name linked to LinkedIn, and to my surprise, the traffic came back.

Prior to checking your site out, I thought it was going to be a generic content site, but yours is already very personal, and you link to X, so I'm surprised. One thing I notice that might help is adding more information to your footer that document information like URL, location, social links, Privacy Policy, Terms of Service, and GDPR. Good luck!

Without having access to your analytics and site data, it's hard to say anything specific. That grain of salt aside, here's how I'd go about it:

• Did you make any site/structural changes to your site? I saw a recent post on your blog that cites an "SEO failure" after you changed your site design, so I'd dig in there. From comparing your current site to a version last year in Wayback Machine nothing immediately jumps out, but it's worth digging into first.
• Chances are, 20% of your content brought in 80% of the results (or a similarly weighted ratio) - what content brought in the most impressions/clicks previously? What dropped the most?
• What are your crawl stats for the site? What does the Coverage report show?
• Who are you competing against in search results? Any new competitors?

If Position isn't dropping but impressions/clicks are, it could be:

• People just aren't searching for things now that led to your site before
• Google is de-indexing pages (either Google is having a harder time finding them, or decided they shouldn't rank)

One thing I'll add - the time frame you gave crosses over a few major algorithm updates on Google's end. You're not alone in seeing some major upheaval but with a bit of sleuthing into what worked/what stopped working for your site, you can narrow down the possible causes.

Warning: Self-promotion

I've been in SEO quite a while, and have been fortunate to work across industries, business types, and website formats. If you'd like to chat about having an audit with specifics for your site, let me know :)

I'm sorry to hear that you're experiencing a decline in your website's SEO performance. There could be several reasons for this, and it's important to analyse various aspects of your website to identify potential issues and opportunities for improvement.