John Mueller, a Google Search Analyst at Google, wrote a response to a site owner who saw their site tank in September 2023 and hired SEO, and there has been no improvement. John’s response was that it was likely not one thing but many things and that even possibly the site had a good run and it is time to move on to something new.

John wrote on Reddit the following points:

Server issues were likely not the issue
Removing a few ads won’t solve the issue
Disavowing links won’t solve the issue
Buying links won’t solve the issue
Switching to a new SEO plugin won’t solve the issue

He goes on to explain that sometimes maybe “consider that you’ve possibly had a good run already” and that you should apply what you’ve learned to “another project.”

Here is what he wrote:

This reminds me of Glenn Gabe’s kitchen sink approach – where you simply cannot point to one issue anymore with a site and it’s Google positioning.

I mean, this site seems to have been hit by the September 2023 helpful content update and there were not recoveries yet for that update.

Forum discussion at Reddit.