Edit: Everything below turned out to be false. It turns out that you can improve/change the focus keywords and SEO titles of gigs. For some reason, my two gigs decided to go AWOL for a few days.
I’m going to start this with a disclaimer. This is my opinion, based on experiments which I have personally carried out while creating and editing gigs. If you disagree, that is fine.
In short, my sales have been falling off a cliff for a while. All of my old best-selling gigs have become my poorest selling. Lately, they haven’t been selling at all.
Now, though, I think I understand why gigs die. The only problem is that when gigs die, it looks like sellers might have to let them go and just create new gigs. - Even if that means essentially starting out as a new seller. (i.e. Losing all of your existing gig reviews.)
In short, it all (seems) to come down to the original URL created when you create a gig for the first time.
As a case in point, back in 2017, I created my cryptocurrency content gig. This quickly became my best seller and I think I am still the best selling in terms of overall reviews and ratings. However, when I created my crypto gig back in 2017, I crafted the original gig title and description in accordance with then trending search terms on Fiverr and Google.
These search terms were ’cryptocurrency content, Bitcoin content,' and ’cryptocurrency writing.' Immediately, my gig appeared in top trending searches and I received what was then a very welcome influx of orders.
Then, last year, something changed. Suddenly, I had no new buyers, just regulars. I assumed that this was because so-called ‘crypto winter’ was in full-force. However, now that crypto winter is over. It has started to annoy me how my orders are still very lackluster. So, I started doing some digging…
As is completely natural, the current best-selling crypto writing gigs are ranking for different keywords for my own. Times change and cryptocurrency is a good example of this.
In 2017, a lot of people thought that the term ‘Bitcoin’ was a kind of abbreviation for cryptocurrency. Now times have changed and very few people search for “Bitcoin content,” which is a search term I originally ranked well for. In this case, I decided to update my gig title, description, everything.
Sadly, my crypto gig is just as lost in the search as ever. It seems that I cannot rank, however much I try for different keyword terms. The original terms seem to stay hardcoded into the gig and gigs you try to update either fall out of the search completely or appear in obscure areas where no one is ever going to find them.
To test this, I recently created three new gigs, all targeting different niches and all designed to rank for different keyword phrases. Immediately after creating these new gigs, I was able to find them in the search (as I expected) quite easily.
- I used the same keyword placement strategy in gig titles and descriptions
- I used the same strategy of targeting a specific category and keyword phrase to rank for
- I presented all my gigs the same way with fully fleshed out FAQ sections and nice new images.
However, no matter what I do, I can not get an old gig to rank for new keywords and/or gig subcategories, no matter how much I try. - An old gig is essentially a dead gig.
Naturally, one solution to this problem (though it is a bit late for me) is to NEVER update gigs. However, this isn’t really a long-term solution. At least, not unless you offer a very niche service.
- Keywords people use to search for services do change over time
- Fiverr adds and removes categories and subcategories, which forces sellers to update gigs
In the end, many older sellers are going to find themselves in the position where new buyers become scarce and they need to update gigs. Then, like me, they are going to have to face a certain dilemma. Do they keep on swinging a dead cat trying to kick new life into an old gig, or do they just delete/pause an old gig and create a new one which is guaranteed to get far better search exposure?
Personally, feel quite put out by the idea of having to surrender hundreds of reviews. In this case, has anyone else ever found a solution to this problem? One idea I have is to create a new version of two existing gigs, before linking in new gig descriptions to old gigs to say, “look, here, I have reviews, I’m not new!” (Just not using that exact choice of words.) However, Fiverr doesn’t like duplicate gigs. In this case, could I link to a paused gig?
Any practical advice would be appreciated! 
