I don't know how many people have seen this, but I came across this page today, I thought it might help some people out. In any case, it's good information to know, whether it helps you out now or not. http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors/
A very interesting article! I'm at #2 for a competitive keyphrase, can I use "Negative Factor #2 - Link Acquisition from Known Link Brokers/Sellers" to drop the guys ahead of me a couple of positions? Or - might they already being doing this to me LOL! Anyone got any experience of this? Either applying negative factors to competition OR having the competition doing this to you? I am a believer that incoming links CANNOT harm your site - but I am open to suggestions.
There was some talk about this a while back. The term was called Google bowling. See http://www.webpronews.com/expertart...n-sabotage-you-what-google-should-do-about-it