Correcting an unnatural link profile

[kdcomms]

A site I work with ranked page 1 for a competitive keyphrase until recently. (Not Panda-related as far as we can tell.) We've done extensive on-site tweaking and the page is still parked at 27-32 in the SERPs. We believe the only viable explanation at this point is an unnatural link profile.

Over the course of several years the site has racked up a large collection of footer links with anchor text due to business relationships with the sites in question. So the profile is now skewed, with the result as follows:

• 100,000 domain links (top 10 competitors range 1800-50k)
• 87% anchor text optimized (competitors 0-41%)
• 99% follow links (competitors 85-100%)
• The vast majority of links are footer links

We're working on creating more natural, high-value links but this of course takes time. In the short term, two questions:

1. Should we aim to remove or change some of the footer links? If so, do we remove them, or just change anchor text? How many?
2. How many new links should we pursue each month to make a meaningful impact on the profile without being too aggressive?

Any other thoughts on how to fix this are also appreciated. Thanks!

[dittoeffect]

You want to have less than 100 links on a page, that includes internal and external links. using a tool like seoquake or even an seomoz tool may exist to check this kind of on page info.

generally you want to have a constant link building profile, do you think facebook and twitter getting incredible volumes of links would get penalized?! no of course not. natural just means regular and normal looking. if you can build 100 links in a day and then spend 10 days not building links you are much better off building 10 links a day for the 10 days.

really you shouldn't be in charge of your incoming links, your quality and value bring in links by having people like your content and share it.

hope this helps