I read your thread: "I have lost my rankings, Google has dropped me PLEASE READ BEFORE STARTING A THREAD!!"

Good information. I have had ups and downs over the past years, and just recently (last Sunday) nearly all of our SERPS fell off in one day again.

I know everyone is going to say that inbound links probably play the most important role in SERP results, but over the past few weeks I noticed a couple things that were interesting.

Strange occurrence 1:

Back when my SERPS were riding high, I wrote an article and bolded some keywords. I forget what the keywords were; maybe something like "Pimples on the forehead".

After about a half hour I went to Google and typed the bolded words into the search box, without quotes. That article ranked number two in the SERPS. LOL Obviously there was no time for inbound links.

Strange occurrence 2:

For the past week we fell from the SERPS and I decided to put up a couple articles on some ezine sites (articlesbase and ezine.com). I wanted to pump my article back up to the top of the SERPS.

I wrote the articles and submitted them to the ezines. Within a half an hour of them getting accepted by the ezine sites, those articles were at the top. Not the one on my site, but the ones on the ezine sites.

There was no time for backlinks to those articles, plus they linked to my article that used to be in that position. I think they were ranked 4 and 5 in the SERPS.

My point or conclusion or whatever...

In both instances those articles had zero inbound links but ranked at the top within minutes.

I am sure the number of inbound links for articles are still important, but overall link popularity of a site must be important too.

My problem specific

After reading tons of posts about falling from the SERPS, I would guess that the problem with my site is related to my server. We have fallen in and out of the SERPS for years (I have heard the term "dancing" in and out). Even with our other host we would get spikes in traffic and our server would be overwhelmed. And then we would be dropped from the SERPS and the server would be back to normal. Google would pick us up again and... The cycle continued.

I don't see this problem with Yahoo or MSN. We still ranked in the first page with them. We dance around a lot more with Google.

We will probably be looking for a new host for our main site again. My wife and I are talking about waiting until the SERPS move back up and then right when they go down - switch.

Any comments?

The site that gets the content is the clear winner.

The problem... you're intrepreting a boost because the content is fresh (with no immediate external links to the page) as a reason to think "links" are less valuable or not needed...

That's why you drop - because you got a bump for being fresh... but after days or weeks... you ain't fresh any more so you depreciate to the spot you should have been.

...also you linked to the page... so their are links to it e.g. normally to your mainpage and by proxy of your link to the article... it has what links offer... "juice".

...but "more links" of better quality will do alot for your SERPs...

Instead of submitting article to ezines... try bookmarks in social networks... you don't need to give the content away - just the title.