Duplicate Content Question

[Vincent16]

Hi Mozers!

I have a client who, before coming to me, created a good site with about 100 pages of useful unique content however used services that landed them with a link profile that included 100's of backlinks with the same anchor text (for each pages' few targeted keywords). There are so many backlinks that trying to escape the filters naturally would be nearly impossible...and not really worth the effort if it were possible.

While the approach was bad, due to G's new anchor text filters, my question is really about the content on the site itself. There is nothing wrong with it. It is unique, kw targeted without being spammy and helpful to the reader.

There are two approaches I'm thinking here:

1. Scrap the whole site (as it wasn't all that architecturally sound anyhow) and try to keep the content for another new site...done the right way from the start.

2. Delete the site's pages where the bad anchor text profiles are pointing and create a new page/URL, using the same content...to get out of the filter frenzy.

It is a bit of a weird situation I know, but would Google see that as duplicate content, even if I went into Webmaster tools and tried to remove the pages from the index first?

Is this a reasonable solution or is the content a lost cause?

Even if I do delete all those pages that have the poor link profiles, would all of those spammy backlinks pointing to a non-existent page on my clients' site effect the site overall?

Any insights would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance-

[SEODinosaur]

If you are going to rebuild the site on a new URL with the same content. You can copy the content externally (in word or another app) and de-indexed the bad site. Once the bad site is completely de-indexed from Google you can add the old content to the new URL and submit the new site map to Google.

Otherwise you can also start contacting webmasters to remove or change those backlink so that you are not over optimizing.

[Vincent16]

Hey Donnie-

Thanks for the response! That sounds like a great idea. I wasn't sure if Google, although de-indexing the site itself, would find it spammy that all the same content turned up on another domain. My thinking was although de-indexed they wouldn't necessarily 'forget' the old content, if you know what I mean.

Thanks again for the helpful response!