RedCardinal - 8:09 am on Oct 4, 2012 (gmt 0)

This is really what needs to be discussed - how to recover and how to future proof your business.

It's really obvious that Google wants webmasters to stop thinking about themselves and by extension ways to game search to their advantage.

I think your first point (1) is the crux of everything we're seeing from Google. They want webmasters to focus entirely on providing a useful and rewarding user experience. It's somewhat a harking back to Business101 - focus on delivering value and the rest will fall into place. Of course the slight fly in the ointment is getting users to offer all this value to - chicken... egg. Social is going to be a ever-more emerging focus for small webmasters after the dust settles.

Personally I think the days of small SOHO type online businesses are numbered, as what's required is a more holistic and rounded approach to online customer marketing and service. Probably too much for most one-man teams to provide. There'll always be exceptions of course, and those exceptional marketers will reap additional rewards now.

As far as SEO is concerned I think you'll need to have strong technical skills and/or creative marketing skills in order to provide SEO. Link building approaches of old are far too risky, and in future I suspect it will be all about earned link acquisition.

One thing I do wish Google will offer in future is an indication of how toxic a domain has become so that owners wont waste time trying to recover something that will never rank again. Letting webmasters spend time creating value on a new domain would be far better for all parties than wasting resources trying to re-float a sunken ship.