Google Update Killed Me

I think he is referring to the Analytics screenshots you have included in your OP, which do not have anything to do with your sites of course

Thanks for sharing your sites, not many people do this but when they do, this is really when we can come to some conclusions about the changes google are making. Matt cutts has claimed the updates are panda and an emd update (not penguin/just yet) however, you never know what they are up to, I believe they give away quite alot of info, more than they should but sometimes they throw a spanner into the works to keep people guessing. The main issues you have are your page titles and meta descriptions have your exact url keywords contained within then, I have seen sites ranking well with neither the url keyword in the title or descriptions..

One thing I have noticed about the sites that are performing good and bad are..

Good site:

1, You have a different theme, Google are now looking at css, php attributes more.. You have less "recent posts on the good site, none on the homepage and 2 on the subpages

Bad site:

1, You have x 3 recent posts on the homepage and on the internal pages, this could be overdoing the seo in an attempt to boost rankings for the internal pages. Also the footer-bg is a different colour and too close the the overlying text. You could make the text whiter.

Good site:

1, You don't have the keyword of the domain in your page title, the first part is more natural but there is also some keyword stuffing at the end, but enough to look more natural, also no direct keywords in the meta description

Bad site:

2, You have the keywords of the url in you page titles and there are no natural stop words like the, and, if etc and no call to action keywords like get, find, search, buy etc - The site also has the keyword in the meta description.

Good site:

2, You are attributing the domain name (clickable) in brand form in your footer, there are also other keywords not related directly to your domain name.

Bad site:

2, You are attributing the domain name twice in the footer (none clickable) and the other site you have put your keywords of the url within the footer , this could be seen as keyword stuffing..

Good site:

1, You don't have any resource or other links widgets in the footer..

Bad site

2, You have and "other links" widget on one site and a "resources" widget on the other site in the footer navigation.

Good site:

1, Your bread crumbs on the good site seen to be better formed and are descriptive and better set out, this could improve the internal linking structure and making the site easier to navigate. You also have the content broken down into categories above the main post.

Bad site:

2, The breadcrumbs are less decriptive and could do with reworking, lack of descriptive page titles and no category navigation over the posts.


Good site:

1, You have less content in the sidebar

Bad site:

2, You have more content in the sidebar

Good site:

1, Your content is less blocky, smaller paragraphs and easier to read sentences, it seems google are using the Flesh readabilty score, you may want to measure the differences in content between the good and bad site.

Bad site:

2, The content is quite blocky, longer paragraphs/sentences and more complex dialogue. You need to check the readability scores to see how they measure up to the good site. It could be too technical or too lame - Also it seems you are using the h1 h2 h3 tags worse on the bad site

Good site:

1, You have a search function on the good site, this improves user experience

Bad site:

2, You have no search functions

Good site:

1, You only have 1 section for tags under your posts

Bad Site:

2, You have 2 sections for tags, 1 in the sidebar and one under the posts.

Suggestions

1, I would improve the breadcrumbs and make them more descriptive, plus add some catgegory breacrumbs
2, Remove the <ul class="wooTabs"> section in the sidebar so you have less recent posts and tag sections.
3, Remove some content from the sidebar
4, Add search functions
5, No index tag and category pages
6, Clean up the footer text and make it more natural without your main url appearing twice and removing exact url keywords but make them LSI...
7, Remove "resources" or "other links" for the footer widget
8, Attribute the footer link with your brand name and make it clickable
9, Be more consitent with h1, h2, h3 tags and order them appropriately i.e h1 first, the h2 and h3...
10, Write clear and easy to read content with good readability scores
11, Mix up the post lengths make some shorter blurbs and some longer posts, both with a mixture of pictures and videos, bullets and lists.

Alternatively you could try changing the theme to the good one and see if that has any impact on the rankings