Do you have a manual penalty or have you been hit algorithmically?
It really depends on what has actually happened as to recovery time and what you need to do next!
Clean-up your link profile before starting any new link building. 404 pages, use disavow and request links are removed. If you get a manual penalty Google are going to want to see proper proof you have done a good effort to clean-up and not just disavow.
Another option, is he doing anything better than you at all?
If so, are his skills or ideas something you had not thought of or executed so well, could he/she an asset to you on your team?
Sometimes it makes sense to make friends and not enemies when it comes to business.
One thing I would do...
I use Trello a lot for specific projects, but on a day to day basis I use this http://www.basicsproducts.com/pages/notebook and I have to say I'm very pleased with it.
I start with content, you can't really proceed with links with nothing to point the too, but before I do any of that I spend quite a bit of time with keyword research, planning site architecture and getting the branding looking right. It will make link prospecting and building an audience much...
I'm currently in a niche that was easy to work but has become much harder and now my business goals have had to be pushed back by years to get to domination. Frustrating but that is the way it goes.
I would echo the value of agency experience. I have worked client-side, agency-side and running my own gigs and in big big start-ups. But working in agencies is where I always found I learnt the most and to that end I work one day a week at an agency for no other reason than to keep some form of...
Didn't Google recently state that content that is not visible to the user will not be used by Google, as many sites were using tabbed or accordion style formatting to roll in more content for SEO.
In my experience websites that focus on a small set of keywords and obsess over them are normally the ones that end up either being hit by the Google Penguin algorithm or being penalised manually.
The best approach is to research the widest possible set of terms that are relevant to your...