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@Jamesmorgan87
Do not focus on backlinks first focus on quality content then focus on your site layout because now google has limit its crawl budget means google does not go far indepth with crawling
Solution?
Link your important posts to homepage means your important articles must be 1 click away from homepage and your other articles should be maximum 2 clicks away from honepage

@Jamesmorgan87
Brother there has been an update well like there are almost 3 updates in 2022 but your site is affected by google spam update. I have recovered one of my sites the things i do are:
Improve content
Change site layout
disavow spammy backlinks (you can check spammy links from moz pro spam checker)