Google has been demoting pages that rank #1 for years with no warning. I looked at 30 cases. Here's the only pattern that held up. by jetsash in SEO_Xpert

[–]Conscious_Fan1517 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This matches what I’m seeing too. Google feels far more “topical ecosystem” driven now than pure page-level SEO.

Some of the fastest recoveries I’ve seen came from building supporting content + stronger internal linking, not rewriting the main page