# SEO Recovery Plan — June 2026

**Status: ACTIVE — started 2026-06-10**
**Owner: آرسام صباغ · Tracking doc for the organic-traffic recovery after the June 3 demotion**

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## Diagnosis (confirmed 2026-06-10)

On **June 3, 2026** we published 36 articles (art38–art73) in a single deploy, doubling the
site overnight, with backdated publish dates. Google's crawl spiked to 166 req/day, the site
was re-evaluated, and a **site-wide algorithmic quality demotion** followed:

- `ai-data-centric-2026` — formerly ranked **#1 above Wikipedia** — has had **zero** Google
  referrals since June 5 (10 days of logs).
- Real organic clicks dropped to ~3–5/day (homepage brand queries only).
- `/profile/@radman-ghelichi` was the #2 organic landing page; the author purge on June 8–10
  deleted it (now 301 → /authors).

**Verified NOT the cause:** canonicals, noindex, sitemap health, crawl errors — all clean.
Googlebot crawl is steady at 80–100/day → **no manual action**. This is algorithmic and
recoverable.

**Data caveat:** ~90% of nginx "views" are scanners/bots (wp-admin probes, spoofed
google.com referrers). The metric that matters is **Search Console impressions/clicks**,
never raw nginx hits.

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## Phase 0 — Stop the bleeding (June 10–14)

| # | Item | Owner | Status |
|---|------|-------|--------|
| 0.1 | **Churn freeze**: after the single consolidated deploy below, no URL changes, no author surgery, no bulk publishes, no sitemap regeneration for 2–3 weeks | both | ☐ in effect after deploy |
| 0.2 | **Google Search Console audit**: check Manual Actions (expect none), Performance → compare 7d vs prior 28d, find exactly which queries/pages lost impressions and the exact drop date | **USER** | ☐ pending |
| 0.3 | **No backdating, ever**: every future article carries its true publish date | both | ☐ policy |

## Phase 1 — Rebuild trust signals (June 10–24) — one consolidated deploy

| # | Item | Status |
|---|------|--------|
| 1.1 | **Author E-E-A-T**: real bios + `sameAs` links (asabbagh.com, arsamsabbagh.ir, verified socials) on author pages and in Person JSON-LD for the 2 remaining authors | ☐ implementing now |
| 1.2 | **Thin-content repair**: expand the weakest old articles (art1–art15 range, 600–900 words) to the proven formula — `<p class="lead">`, numbered H2 sections, `<strong>` entities, bilingual terms, 8+ sections / ~2500+ words, `factCheckedAt`. Content improvement of existing URLs is a recognized recovery tactic and adds no new URLs | ☐ implementing now |
| 1.3 | **Internal linking**: ensure related-article links are real crawlable `<a href>` in the *static* article HTML (not just client-side React), so the 73 articles stop being islands | ☐ implementing now |
| 1.4 | Run `npm run check:seo` → full `npm run build` → reload nginx — **one** deploy containing 1.1–1.3, then freeze (0.1) | ☐ |

## Phase 2 — Earn signals back (June 24 →)

| # | Item | Owner |
|---|------|-------|
| 2.1 | **Cadence, not bulk**: 2–3 new articles per week, real dates, never batch-publish again | USER + Claude |
| 2.2 | **Distribution**: share each article on Virgool, Persian tech Telegram channels, LinkedIn. Target: 2–3 backlinks from Persian tech sites within a month | USER |
| 2.3 | Track recovery weekly in GSC: impressions trend, `ai-data-centric-2026` ranking, new-article indexing speed | USER |
| 2.4 | After freeze lifts: re-evaluate remaining thin articles — expand or prune | both |

## Expectations

Algorithmic demotions lift **weeks to months** after the site stabilizes. The domain has
already proven it can rank #1. The single most dangerous move during recovery is another
bulk change.

## Recovery checkpoints

- **Week 1 (Jun 17):** GSC shows no further impression decline
- **Week 3 (Jul 1):** new weekly articles indexed within 48h
- **Week 6 (Jul 22):** `ai-data-centric-2026` reappears for its core query; impressions trend ↑
- **Month 3 (Sep):** organic clicks exceed pre-drop baseline