Anybody have useful advice to fix a very bad link profile?

[CustomCreatives]

Hello fellow mozzers. I am interested in getting the communities opinion on how to fix an extremely bad link profile, or whether it would be easier to start over on a new domain.

This is for an e-commerce site that sells wedding rings. Prior to coming to our agency, the client had been using a different service that was doing some serious black hat linkbuilding on a truly staggering scale.

Of the roughly 53,000 links that show up in OSE, 16,500 of them have the anchor text "wedding rings", 1,300 "wedding ring sets", etc. For contrast, there are only two "visit website", and just one domain name anchor text. So it is about the farthest from natural you can get.

Anyway, the site traffic was doing great until the end of February, when it took a massive hit and lost over half the day to day traffic volume, and steadily declined until April 24th (Penguin), when it took another huge hit and lost almost 70% of traffic from Google. Note that the traffic from Yahoo/Bing stayed the same.

So the question is, is it worth trying to clean up this mess of a backlink profile or would it be smarter to start fresh with a new domain?

[Adam.Whittles]

I would say this depends on a few factors really.

1. How big/well known is the client? If they are relatively well known or a big player in the market then I would be less inclined to start again with a new domain. Especially if they have built up a brand that is recognizable, you would lose that value by switching domains.

2. How old is the current domain and how much authority does it have? Again, I would be less inclined to switch if they have a well aged domain with authority.

If there is value in keeping the existing domain then I would focus on cleaning up their backlink profile. It may take a bit of time and persistence on your part but the rewards will be worth it.

[CustomCreatives]

Thanks for the response.

1. They do some fairly impressive business, but are by no means a major player in the industry, at least as far as brand recognition goes. The company name/domain are essentially their main keyword, so it is pretty well targeted in that respect, so it would hurt to lose that.

2. The current domain is a few years old, and has 55 domain authority, so not too bad.

Based on that, do you think it would be worth it?