It's taken you 6-months of hard work, constant changes, reading every shred of information on search engine optimization strategy not to mention thousands of dollars trying out web optimization tools and services.

Finally, you have a page rank of 5, you are listed in the top 10 on your major keywords, and you are seeing the benefit - some decent traffic from Google and other search engines.

Then, as quickly as your search engine optimization strategy begines working, it suddenly, and without notice, disappears!

You frantically look for evidence of dropped links, pages not working, it HAS to be something you've done!

Well, the truth is, it may not have been anything you did - turns out Google updates their algorithms every few months in an attempt to improve it's search engine optimization strategy.

In fact, Google has shown that they are not afraid to make major changes impacting tens of thousands of sites, businesses and corresponding sales and profits.

Even more concerning, everything points to the fact they will continue to make changes.

So what can you do to protect your search engine optimization strategy and the resulting traffic critical to the success of your online marketing?

There are some things you can do.

1. BUILD CONTENT WITH REAL, RELEVANT VALUE

Do you develop content just for search engines or just for your visitors and customers?

The answer is both.

Truth is, your customers search for information based on keywords. Use tools like Wordtracker (http://www.highertrustmarketing.com/part/wordtracker) to find those keywords.

Plan your articles around answering questions associated with each keyword. Over time, you will build highly relevant content that will be irrisistable to the search engines - no matter how they change them.

2. LINK FOR QUALITY, NOT QUANTITY

One single link with a Pagerank (Google's term for ranking sites) of 5 is worth 10 or more sites with a Pagerank of 3.

In addtion, as an important part of your search engine optimization strategy, make sure your links include a brief description (a URL only inbound link may be ignored), includes important keyword and appears on a relevant partner site.

Avoid FFA's and most link farms, they may actually do you more harm than good.

3. AVOID KNOWN MISTAKES

Common mistakes people make with their search engine optimization strategy are:

• Cross linking unrelated sites, recent discussion with master Affiliate Marketing pro James Martell recently brought this issue to light

• Submitting to link farms, in many cases this will eventually get your site penalized or even banned from the SE's

• Duplicate content. Many people feel the need to duplicate their pages and make small changes for each search engine (also called doorway pages) - however if this is not done properly, you will get penalized

• Trying to load your content with too many keywords. Focus on 1-3 keywords only

4. USE GOOGLE ADS

While still unproven, it certainly has been found by many in the search engine watch community that sites who use Google Adwords or Google Adsense tend to appear higher in listings.

5. VARY YOUR TRAFFIC GENERATION TECHNIQUES

Too many people rely on Google traffic for 99% of their traffic. It's true, search engine traffic is the most economical way to advertise online, but there are many other ways to vary your traffic generation strategy.

Add these traffic generation techniques to your search engine optimization strategy:

• Writing articles

• Running affiliate program

• Joint Ventures

• Viral "sticky" tools

• Press Releases

Yes - you need to dance with Google. By following these techniques, you can actually lead your traffic generation strategy rather than follow the Google dance.