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Ah, all very helpful, thanks! Some interesting bits to pull apart here, I think: hreflang tagging is unlikely to improve your rankings for any given language/territory/page/keyword; rather, it's more likely to prevent the wrong content from showing up in the wrong territory. Make sense? I'd try to manage expectations around "restoring" rankings. What if your performance dropped because of strong competitor activity, changing consumer behaviour, or other factors? Whilst your international setup is part of that picture, the reality is much more complex. I'd try to shift the conversation away from working out ways to / waiting for your rankings to "restore" from a magic bullet fix, and start talking about the many strategies and tactics you might deploy to improve rankings gradually moving forwards. I'd be _really _nervous of outsourced link building. If you're handing money to a third party to get you links, you're only a small amounts of semantics away from buying links outright. What are the doing, exactly? Are you producing exceptionally high quality, useful information and resources, which they're helping to shine a spotlight on - or are you paying them a fee for them to magically acquire links? It feels like, of all the possible risks and causes of your problems, this is the area I'd want to scrutinise the most; and in the meantime, start looking into ways in which your pages can earn links without having to pay a mysterious third party!