egomaniac - 6:54 pm on Oct 6, 2006 (gmt 0)

My site got hammered on June 27th.

On August 17th, 95% of my listings came back to "normal".

On September 17th, I lost my heavy competition 2-word phrase that my home page usuaally ranks about #3 or #4.

The past few days I am back for that phrase as well.

In late August, AFTER I recovered, I cleaned up my outbound links, deleting dead links and links to crappy websites. I've added a 2 new pages deep within the site, and that's about it.

From my viewpoint, my site has essentially recovered with little help from me though. The late August changes I made occurred after I recovered. Whether they helped the recent recovery to my home page keyword, I'll never know.

I have taken the attitude the last few years of trying to "Weather the Storm" whenever these hurricanes hit and not do anything drastic. Its generally worked for me as I have held top rankings in a competitive sector by sticking to my strategy of good content, well optimized, with good backlinks.