Best way to combat spammy links

[EclipseLegal]

Hi folks.

A client of mine has taken to building spammy links from commenting on forgein blogs etc. Since hes started this his site has totally dispeared from the SERPS apart from company name searches.

I'd be really interested to hear your thoughts on how to bets combat this?

Many thanks in advance

[DougRoberts]

I believe the best way to tackle this is by getting some good quality links and try to educate the client so that he knows how to spend his time effectively building links/relationships that are going to be beneficial.

Are you sure that the spammy links are the only reason the site has disappeared form the SERPS though?

Have there been any changes to the site that have affected the relevancy of pages for your target keywords? Has there been a change in the competition? As well as gaining the spammy links, have you lost any good links from good authoritative sites?

[evolvingSEO]

Nice Doug, you bring up a good point and that is to not assume the spammy links are the (only) cause.  I would:

1. Ask your client to stop doing that

2. Comb through Google Webmaster Tools for errors - 80% of the time you'll find what need in there.

3. Do what Doug suggests which is run a check on the site to be sure its not some sort of on page factor - dont forget the often overlooked things; robtos.txt meta robots, xml sitemap etc.

4. And finally what Doug suggests: building quality links to balance out the negative ones is essential.

-Dan

[KeriMorgret]

Here's some more advice about what to do if bad links are pointing at your site, from some SEOmoz blog posts.

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/6-ways-to-recover-from-bad-links

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/what-if-my-competitors-point-spammy-links-to-my-site