How to deal with over-optimised anchor text?

[garethbrown]

Hi,

We took on a client a few months ago, who came to us after seeing a drop in rankings. After cleaning up the site, we concluded that their drop is more than likely down to over-optimised anchor text. The keywords that have mainly been affected are the ones that have a majority of links with the exact anchor text.

The links have built using blog networks, articles and there are some comments thrown in for good measure. We have no way of getting them removed.

Hmm, links can't hurt you!? So what is the best solution? Has anyone had any success over coming this issue? What sort of time scales are we looking at?

Gareth

[Dan-Petrovic]

Submit a reconsideration request explaining the situation in as much detail as you can. Worst case scenario you will find out if it's a manual or algorithmic penalty. If no manual action has been taken then you will have no other option but to try harder to remove the links from dodgy sites.