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Thanks very much everyone - very helpful.

Good point re page speed - the pages are certainly slow to load so this could well be due to the huge amount of js and bad code.

And yes, think the duplicate tags should be sorted - this shouldn't be difficult.

Has anyone got any tangible results that they've seen as a result of cleaning up js and code?

My client has a site that we are trying to optimise. However the code is really pretty bad.

There are 205 errors showing when W3C validating. The >title>, , <keywords> tags are appearing twice. There is truly excessive javascript. And everything has been put in tables.</keywords>

How much do you think this is really impacting the opportunity to rank? There has been quite a bit of discussion recently along the lines of is on-page SEO impacting anymore.

I just want to be sure before I recommend a whole heap of code changes that could cost her a lot - especially if the impact/return could be miniscule.

Should it all be cleaned up?

Many thanks

Thanks everyone - apart from following up on backlinks, will try the GWMT route and hope for the best!

My new client has had his URL for 8 years and built up good SEO, visitors and links. He has now lost it and the cost of getting it back is prohibitive.

Apart from contacting all the places he is currently getting links from, is there anything he can do to salvage SEO and site visitors? Is there anyway he can get 301s done if he no longer owns the URL?

If he starts again with a new URL, and loads all the new content on it, will submitting a site map help Google understand its not duplicate and all the content is just at a new URL?

He is hoping that contacting Google and explaining will help them "look kindly", but I have never heard anything like this happening!

Any ideas?

Many thanks