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Thanks Patrick, that's really helpful.

I have a site that ranks differently for the same search term on mobile and desktop computer.

I'm based in Glasgow, and the search term is (I've replaced the term with X's)  XXXXXX XXXXX Glasgow

Searching from a location in Glasgow:

Desktop:  Snackpack : 2, Organic : 6
Mobile: Snackpack: 1, Organic : 10

I'm keen to improve on the Organic positions as this term is a lead generating one for me.  My site is mobile friendly and scores 69/100 on the speed test.  Do you think bumping the pagespeed well "into the green" would help improve it's position?

Is there anything else I should look at?

Thanks Anthony - that's sound advice.

We also own the .com domain.  Could we use that and start again or is it likely to wrongly fall foul of the algo, in that Google will assume it's the same domain.  The content would be largely the same.

Guys, this is great advice and kind of what I'd thought had happened but didn't know if this would affect the appearance of the homepage in search results.  What a mess!  Here's what I'm planning

Compilation of links from WMT, AHREFS and Open Site Explorer.  It will be pretty easy to spot which ones are spammy or of no use and let's face it, things couldn't get any worse
Using Remove'em and the data from above, I'll compile a list of sites that I need to ask for link removals from
Follow the process of doing three emails, contacting webmasters where possible etc and then submitting one big disavow file to Google.
Throughout this time, doing competitor analysis of other link profiles and looking for genuine and relevant sites to get links on
General improvements and relevant increases to web content and greater adoption of Facebook and Twitter

Does that sound like a reasonable [limited budget] plan? Any other suggestions.

Thanks Andy & Casey!

I've recently gone through the homepage to reduce the keyword repetition so hopefully that will help.  May act on the canonical tip-off.  The site is hardly ranking now, even for the internal page.

The site used to be first page (and usually in the top five results) but got heavily smacked down by some of the Google updates (quite rightly btw - the previous "consultants" SEO tactics were heavily based on Comment and Forum spam) so I just wasn't sure if this was some kind of Google penalty in action too.

Looking forward to helping turn it around though...

Colin

That's a shame.  I have noticed losses in organic traffic

Do you think replacing these links with just straightforward would  help?

Anything else I can try?

I'm in the process of trying to clear up a spammy link profile for a site I'm working on.

I'm using the excellent data from MOZ and the list of links from Google Webmaster Tools to come up with a list of sites and Remove'em to manage the process and before I go to Google I want to make sure the file I am going to submit for the disavow process is as strong as possible.

I am aware that I need to contact webmasters about three times to do the removal request properly.  How long between requests should there be and how long should I wait between submitting a final removal request and submitting the file to the disavow tool?

Any advice welcome.  Thanks.