I have been Search Engine Marketing for at least 10 years now and I have had the privilege of seeing the evolution of search engines, as well as learning to be patient and make decisions that will effect the overall campaign on a long-term basis as opposed to quick tricks that never seem to last.

Something that I have noticed over the last year in particular is the way that Google responds to content updates.

About 12 months ago I noticed that after a major change to our home page we were pretty much dropped from Google for a term that ranked very high previously. The weird thing was that we didn't get rid of any content we just made it "better" by optimizing it using proven techniques that had proven successful in the past.

Before the major change to the homepage we were making small consistent changes over a long period of time that proved to be moving us up the Google ranking ladder ever so slightly but it was steady. We got to a point, and I guess got greedy and decided to do the major optimization change, which pretty much did us in. So, needless to say we got scared and changed everything back.

Fast forward to the present, we desperately needed to make some major changes to our site no matter what the cost, so we did it again, but this time when Google dropped us we waited patiently.

After about 30-45 days we were back on top and even better ranked than before. The moral of the story is that you have to be patient. I believe that Google does this on purpose just to see if we are trying to get something past them. If they see honest consistent effort they will always reward it.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this subject.

Great point made there.

I agree that honesty is the best policy in SEO. If you really want to succeed you have to be willing to be in it for the long haul and provide quality with your efforts.

Sure, someone could use blackhat seo vs whitehat seo and gain in the ranks, but in the long term I think anyone would do better with quality and honesty.

I mean, really... unless you are a fly-by-night, here-today-gone-tomorrow site, I think you should have a long term plan and set of goals.

I think the points you make are valid to anyone that is building a long term plan... and that's why google does what it does. (of course, their policies could change tomorrow)