I have been trying to get one of my websites on first page of google for three years and i made it as far as page five so i finley gave up on it for awhile and did nothing with it for about five months. I started getting good sales all of a sudden and when i checked my google rank i was in the #8 spot on first page after the major update in Nov. I decided to start promoting it again with article submission and social networks and then i fell back to page 5 and now I'm on page 2.I don't know why not promoting it for so long would make it jump up like that and then drop back when i do.I enjoyed first page for about a month. I don't want to give my details but the keyword is a very competitive one.I'm thinking of not touching it for awhile and see what happens. Has anyone else seen anything like this in there sites?
I would focus back on, what made the website go down. It maybe because the person has more content to share, checking your competitors and do a side by side comparison. But, dont give up. You can only move up, if you keep going. 3 years, may be a long time for anyone, but you might be farther ahead then most people already.
Every once in a while google will do their panda/ penguin updates this is probably why. I would just concentrate on good content for your reader that visits your site.
Analysis your competitor website and links. Analysis link will help you definitely. I also faced this kind of problem but when I analysis my competitors website, link, social network. I start following good things and that steps help my site ranking.
These sort of things happen, just focus on building good links through the prescribed methods. Consistent efforts definitely bring in results.
Just keep working hard. Sites go up and down on Google all the time. What you can't do is become lazy and let other websites dominate over yours. Keep working. To learn about getting targeted traffic, check out this site needtargetedtraffic.com/