Where can I learn modern white hat search marketing and SEO?

• My small business used to rank really well for hundreds of terms. But I've dropped for some major terms and been obliterated for others. How do I fix this? I have a small business and, for about 10 years, I was really, really good at search engine optimization and link building. Over the past year or two, my rankings have fallen. For my most important terms, I've dropped from first position to still be on the front page, but too low. I have been focused on other projects and now I feel completely lost. No matter what I do, I can't seem to regain my position. It's really hurt me financially and I don't have much money to fix things. Where can I learn about SEO and search marketing, given the changes that have taken place? Or where can I find someone who can help me fix things without charging me the earth? I honestly have no idea where to turn. I used to really understand this stuff. But I feel like things have changed substantially in the past 18 months. I keep trying to fix things on my own, but things just keep getting worse and worse. I feel like an idiot, given I was amazing at this for 10 years and I wasn't doing anything scammy. Now I can't figure out how to rank well to save my life. Well, maybe not my life, but my business. My site traffic is down 80%. Once people actually get to my site, they convert well. So getting people to my site is critical. (But the people who come in through ads do not convert nearly as well as those who just find the site in the search engines. This baffles me. And I feel kind of shaken, because one of the take-aways for my career, in terms of my focus on this business, was that I was really good at marketing it. Now I can't really say that!) If you can suggest non-overwhelming places to start, please do. Or if there are some legitimate, non-scammy and affordable companies out there, I'd love to hear it. (I can't afford to be spending $10k a year on SEO, for example.) Thanks.

• Answer:

  I work in SEO. Sites I would recommend are http://moz.com/learn/seo (as stated upthread, they are great), http://www.seroundtable.com/category/seo, http://searchengineland.com/library/how-to/how-to-seo, and http://searchenginewatch.com/seo. The Google guide is also a valuable resource. What was acceptable before might be really hurting you now - in fact, some things that were encouraged then are punishable now. Google is currently waging a war on unnatural links, so just having more links than your competitors means nothing if they aren't relevant, trustworthy links. I'd suggest reading up on as much as you can, and then starting at the bottom and reviewing the landscape of your industry and the keywords you're focusing on. Only then should you move on to your content. It sounds like you were hit by quite a few things - there's been http://moz.com/google-algorithm-change since you said you last looked. There isn't going to be one single solid answer to get your ranking back. It isn't impossible, but it will take time, some learning and effort on your part, and making sure you keep up with it.