We have a website http://www.arthurspools.com , that for the last 3 years has been in the top ten of our very popular keyword "above ground pools". This weekend Google did one of their famous stirs and we dropped out completely. Gone, vanished like a fart in the wind. A Secondary page was still indexed at 30. But talk about google ire frying one's backside. Being a pool website in the middle of summer dropping into Google hell is pretty inflaming. The reason I am not wiping blood and tears from my monitor, and the purpose to this post is Dualism. Through careful construction and being sure not to repeat content (at least any that google could recognize with it's little spider......yeah I wanna squash that thing back to the main frame days) I have a second site. when Google killed my original site, it elevated my secondary site to the first page. CYA, my boss at k-mart used to call it. Cover your Assets.
The Only other option is to play the age old game....what does google want now? Look at your newly elevated competition and see what they have in common that you don't and OPTIMIZE!