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Totally agree with Alan, it can cause circular navigation problems for crawlers too.

And is it the homepage you're going for with those keywords then? It seems to be a bit mixed up as to whether you're targeting everything at the homepage or other relevant pages.

You've got keyworded anchor text going to the pages from the homepage, but then you seem to be targeting those same keywords with the homepage itself at the same time.

It's on here somewhere that I read it... no idea who was commenting but perhaps findable by search.

Ahem: http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/359704/google-approves-co-domain-for-international-use 

Found it... http://www.seomoz.org/q/co-domains-any-thoughts

haha don't worry, if you get proven wrong as much as I do, you get used to it

Also, when you say you backlink regularly, from where? Try to get backlinks from local sites to local pages... i.e. Sydney Electrician: get backlinks from local sydney directories, blogs & sites about Sydney, etc...

I haven't checked any of these for whether they're paid, nofollow, etc... but just as examples:

http://www.sydney-city-directory.com.au/

http://www.sydneycity.net/directory.htm

http://www.sydneybusinessdirectory.net/

http://www.expat-blog.com/en/directory/oceania/australia/sydney/

http://sydney-city.blogspot.com/

http://blogs.usyd.edu.au/sydneylife/

And obviously mix that with relevant links to do with electricians... and preferably sites that are electrician and Sidney based combined if possible... easier said that done I expect.

The same for other trades and other towns.

You've not got that much in terms of link diversity, or from much that's relevant. Directories, blogs and forums, links pages, etc... that don't pass a lot of value. 11 Linking Root Domains, including directories, some are nofollow. Not a lot in terms of quality links. And then your anchor text needs a little more diversity too: http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/www.nintendowiifitconsole.co.uk%252F/a!anchors

Google will often let a new site rank well for a bit before knocking it back down again.

Also, my personal belief is that Google's not all that keen on affiliate sites anyway... I lost rankings on mine from Panda.

I reckon all in all, if you get some more, higher quality links... and as it appears now some social signals too, then you'll start ranking much better

If it's not a competitive keyword, or a phrase that's unlikely to be found elsewhere then it will rank them all. They're all indexed and they're all relevant to the query. They wouldn't all rank if other sits had that same specific word string.

Righty, I've been on a mission to clarify... it seems there's a lot of conflicting views on it. I mean I know there's conflicting views on pretty much everything but these views all seem to be from very good sources, so now I don't know what to think... I'm on the fence!

There's some discussion in here: http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4176006.htm

Along with this: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/backlink-age-seo-factor/9943/

It's a difficult one, but it doesn't appear to be in the ranking factor survey, which is a shame as it would be interesting to see what level of agreement there is.

Anyway, Rand's is more recent than Ann's so I guess it would make best sense to follow his

Thank you for pointing it out, I would have been none the wiser otherwise!

Well yeah that wouldn't be too many at all, but then going back to what Marcus and EGOL said you're much better off using bold tags for readability reasons than simply using it on keywords really. It has little to no impact in terms of rankings (probably a tiny bit) but can have a much greater impact on keeping your visitors moving forward and converting if used to break the content up into more digestible chunks with a good scent of what's important to them and where their eyes should go next.

I'd probably use bold a few more times in a 500 word piece but use it as what it is, an emphasis tag Not emphasising keywords for Google but whatever it is in the content that will encourage the user to feel they're in the right place... if that happens to combine with some keywords or keyword phrases then great, but don't see it as a game-changer for rankings

You've just missed the "on" at the end of the first line and have it at the start of the 2nd I think (not sure if that matters). So,

RewriteEngine On

And then take the www off the second line. So,

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example.com

Did you always have as many links going out of each page? There's quite a few... plus that spammy content, whilst I hate to say it, might have provided the longtail exact matches you were ranking for. Maybe get those keywords back in to their pages in a non-spammy way?

There's no rel="canonical" tags which would help if it is down to dupe issues.

Also, you're cannibalising a lot with the keywords... not just content and links but for a quick demo look at your page titles, the same keywords cropping up in a few of them.

Sorry Johannes I think I confused matters... I didn't mean there is spammy content now, I mean the spammy content that you removed. I'll be cursed for saying it but it's quite possible some of that spammy stuff was working if there were exact matches in there then which aren't now. Google isn't perfect yet so unfortunately some spam does still work (for now) though it will likely hold risks too. My suggestion with that was to look at the spam that was removed and figure out how to incorporate some of it back into the site in a non-spammy way.

With regards to the link numbers, yes if it was me I think I'd remove at least some of those footer links too.

My mistake with the rel canonical, I didn't spot it but just noticed it was a bit lower down.

The duplication could well be the issue, but if that's the case and the dupe is no longer there then it should sort itself out pretty quickly.