Planet13 - 7:36 pm on Jul 29, 2010 (gmt 0)

Hi there, Everyone:

Thanks so much for your suggestions and thoughts.

if you can't or won't do any of that, why do you think you deserve better rankings?

That is a good question. Since we aren't allowed to link to our sites here for everyone to look at, I would hope that you would allow me the benefit of the doubt that since it is a ten-year-old site, and I have concentrated on making the content over the years very focused and informative and UNIQUE (wikipedia links to several of our pages as resources, for example), that the content is pretty good.

However, most of the content covers historical items or religious concepts, and the information doesn't change on a regular basis, so I haven't been updating the information as much as I would like. If anyone has any suggestions on how to update content on ancient artifacts / religious concepts, I would love to hear it, because I am at wits end...

maybe he'd already done all that before mayday, and was ranking well with it. and then mayday came along.

Thank you for mentioning that. Although traffic and rankings were slipping a bit before MayDay, the mayday update really knocked us on our behinds.

It seems like we are facing the same dilemma as other sites where google is turning the traffic on and off on certain days - one day we will get lots of orders (we are an ecommerce site) and the other days it will be dead quiet. The faucet is either on or off...

As for updating content, the other problem is that our resources as a business overall have fallen as the recession has deepened (we have a few brick and mortar stores) and I am having to work 7 days a week in our shops as well. so, while not trying to take shortcuts, I guess I am asking that if the content is authoritative and well focused (and I think the on page SEO is quite good - optimizing it any more would, IMHO, look quite spammy), where might you look first? Soliciting links? Adding new content? Updating older content?

Again, thank you for taking a look at this thread and sharing your thoughts.