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I would agree with mctip_it.  The description is a little long.  The keywords tag is not helping you at all (other than telling your competitors what keywords you are targeting.)  Bing recently caused a stir when they announced that YES, they do use the keywords tag in regards to SEO.  Then, they came out and clarified that actually it was a negative ranking factor.  Sites that stuffed their meta keywords tag were more likely to be engaging in spammy SEO.

I have found that having extra domains is really not helpful unless they are domain names that are likely to get type-in traffic.  When my husband and I first got into real estate we went about buying up a bunch of keyword domains for real estate in our area...and none of them have helped us.

It is tempting to create a small website on each of these domains and then link back to your main site.  However, these links are pretty much worthless unless one or more of the domains has accumulated links.

I'm no expert in robots.txt but you've disallowed Google from crawling the following directories:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /website-designers-uk.html
Disallow: /sem-smo.html
Disallow: /bespoke-web-applications.html
Disallow: /web-application-framework.html
Disallow: /Articles/seo-design-development.html
Disallow: /alquilandote
Disallow: /amptpp
Disallow: /bait
Disallow: /bin
Disallow: /brudedixox
Disallow: /bt
Disallow: /bug
Disallow: /cgi-bin
Disallow: /debamet
Disallow: /divinsms
Disallow: /fb 	
Disallow: /ft
Disallow: /ft-music
Disallow: /micasalla
Disallow: /new
Disallow: /orders
Disallow: /projects
Disallow: /Scripts
Disallow: /site
Disallow: /Templates
Disallow: /test
Disallow: /tiwido
Disallow: /alquilandote.websitedevelopersuk.com 
Disallow: /bait.websitedevelopersuk.com 
Disallow: /bt.websitedevelopersuk.com 
Disallow: /debamet.websitedevelopersuk.com 
Disallow: /ft-music.websitedevelopersuk.com 
Disallow: /micasalla.websitedevelopersuk.com 
Disallow: /orders.websitedevelopersuk.com 
Disallow: /tiwido.websitedevelopersuk.com

If any of those contain content, then Google won't be able to crawl it.

OK.  I think I see what you are saying.

My first thought when I read this post was that if I was evil, I could have a template designed, put a keyword anchor text in the footer that pointed at my competitor and then spread that template all across the internet.

But let me see if I understand you.  Are you saying:

1. That would only work if you had other signs of bad linking in your profile.

2. A reputable website, as soon as they saw referral visits coming from strange footer links would act on this right away.  So, if this got to the point where there were hundreds or thousands of these links across the web then the website owner was in some sense "in on the game" and aware of the links and therefore has some sort of responsibility to own up to.

Does that make sense?  If so, then this would mean that a website that was otherwise  pretty clean really should not be able to be hit with negative SEO.

But if that's the case, doesn't it mean you could easily hit a competitor with negative SEO if they already had some shady stuff going on?

(To the OP, sorry to hijack your thread...I hope it's ok.  This is an interesting discussion.)

How old is this website?  When I look at your backlinks in OSE there is only one backlink.  In ahrefs (which is faster than OSE at picking up backlinks) there are more, but only 8 domains containing the word takı.

If you are worried that Penguin affected you for overusing a keyword as anchor text, I think this is unlikely.  Penguin last rolled out October 5.  It looks like these links were made since then otherwise OSE would have picked them up.  (But there is a possibility that OSE doesn't look at foreign language links?  I don't know...it's possible that they have existed for long enough for Penguin to be a factor.)  With that being said, ahrefs is only reporting 8 domains linking to you with this word.

If this is Penguin then your drop in rankings would have to have happened October 5 (or May 25 or Apr 24).  Otherwise, it's not Penguin.

The only other linking penalty that could get you would be a manual unnatural links warning in which case you would have a warning in WMT.

If this is a relatively new domain then it's possible that you had a honeymoon boost which placed you near the top and now you rank where the site deserves.  According to Google Translate, Taki means Jewelry.  To rank on the first page for a single keyphrase competitive term like that you'll need a lot more domain authority.

I work with a lot of sites that have been affected by Panda and the type of thing that you are talking about doing is exactly the type of thing that has gotten most of these sites flagged by Panda.

You're client is right that it is a good idea to have text next on the pages.  But, if the text is not unique then what Google does is say, "This page is essentially the same as one that is already in our index.  There's no reason showing two identical pages to searchers so we won't show this one."  If enough of your pages are duplicates then the whole site (including original pages) can be flagged by Panda.

Streamline Metrics has got it right.

I've seen pages take MONTHS to drop out of the index after being noindexed.  It's best to use the URL removal tool in WMT (not to be confused with the disavow tool) to tell Google to not only deindex the pages but to remove them from the cache as well.  I have found that when you do this the pages are gone within 12 hours.

I can recommend someone very good.  My website was affected by malware.  I first contacted my host and they did a few things that we thought fixed the problem but it came back.  Then I hired sucuri.  I believe that for many virus problems sucuri is good, but they couldn't get this one.  It came back every single day and got harder and harder to detect.

A friend recommended Michael VanDeMar.  (You can contact him here.)  It took him a little while but he uncovered the problem.  It was a sneaky malware that would only appear on computers using internet explorer, and not all the time.  Plus, it would hide itself when someone from the host's IP was trying to find it.  Michael fixed it for me.  His rates were really fair.  It cost me just a little bit more than sucuri.

The answer depends on whether or not the site has a manual penalty against it.  If there is a message in WMT of unnatural links then it won't be enough to just disavow.  You've got to go through a whole process of trying to manually remove links and reporting your efforts to Google and then disavowing the rest.

If you want to simply have those backlinks nofollowed then disavowing the whole lot will do the trick.

However, be careful if you're disavowing all of the links.  I have seen cases where people went disavowing links willy nilly and did more harm than good.  If the plan is to simply start over with a clean slate then go ahead and disavow.  The problem is that these links will still be present in your backlink profile whether you use OSE, ahrefs, majestic or even WMT.  They will simply be treated as nofollowed by Google.

But if you are trying to save some of the existing rankings then whether or not you disavow can be a complicated decision.

For example, the links could be shady, but if the site hasn't been affected by Penguin then you may not have to remove them.  Some of them could actually be helping.  Remember, Penguin is an algorithm and doesn't catch EVERYTHING.

Or, for another example, if the site has been affected by Penguin for certain keywords then you may not be able to rank for those keywords until you get rid of Penguin.  But here's the problem - no one really knows with certainty how to do that.  Some SEOs will tell you that disavowing all your links will clear it.  Some will tell you that Penguin has already disavowed all of your links and all you need to do is get some good links.  There are very few (if any) case studies that really show a site what to do.

How's that for a confusing answer?  LOL!

This is going to sound preachy, but I would be very slow to point fingers.  Perhaps there were multiple SEO companies involved.  If Branded3 was indeed their most recent SEO it doesn't mean that they were involved with the most gregarious spam.  (I'm not saying that they weren't - just saying that we don't know.)

Also, I think you will find that the vast majority of effective SEO companies out there are using techniques, that, if reported, would not satisfy the Google guidelines.  I challenge you to rank a flower shop number one using ONLY white hat techniques.  At this point in time, with the level of effective spam that is out there, it would be very hard to do.

In my opinion, whether or not we point fingers depends on what was discussed between the SEO company and Interflora.  It's possible that the agreement they had was that the company was to do all they can even if it meant bending some rules.  I've had some people come and ask me to rank their sites using only completely white hat methods and I've had others come and say, "I don't care what it takes - just get it done and we'll deal with the consequences if they come."  Sometimes the short term gains are worth it.  Plus, until recently, most websites were not aware that you could get deindexed for pushing boundaries too much.

Are you sure your rankings dropped on a Panda day and not Penguin?  You have a lot of links using the anchor text "zombie games" and that could easily get you affected by Penguin.

If it was a Panda date on which your organic traffic dropped then you've got to look for the two most common Panda factors: duplicate content and thin content.  I think the latter would most likely be your problem.  Your pages all have only 1-2 lines of text on them.  If this is Panda then the solution is probably to beef up the text on each of your pages.

With 1 link pointing to it, it's not likely to add much benefit even with the keyword in the domain.  Personally, I wouldn't bother.

If you're not in the top 100 then there is probably some type of penalty or filter going on.  My best guess, again, is Panda.  Here is some information that may help you understand Panda: http://www.mytrafficdropped.com/panda/

Not having the word "zombie games" in your url is not going to make you drop out of the first 10 pages.  Plus, if you dropped at the end of Sep it either has to be EMD (which it can't be because your domain name is not exact match) or Panda.  Panda will cause a whole site to drop, or sometimes just a section.  But, if Google perceives that the majority of your site is either thin or duplicated then it puts a Panda flag on the site and won't allow you to rank well.  A few good pages in the midst of hundreds of thin pages are probably not enough to help you escape Panda if this is what it is that's affecting you.

"I think it's a legitimate backlink text though because my website is literally a list of zombie games." - Things have changed in the last year about using exact anchor text.  It's not good practice and can get you penalized.  Whether it has, in your case is hard to say.  If you were penalized it would be either an unnatural links penalty in which case you'd have a warning in WMT or it would be Penguin and you really should have had a drop on Apr 24, May 25 or October 5.  So, again, I'd focus more on Panda than Penguin.

I fear that you may be over your head though in trying to tackle this.  Forums like this are great for getting tips here and there, but you're not likely going to get a solution as this would probably entail someone spending a good 5-10 hours going over your site, your redesign issues, your analytics and your backlinks.

Hi Jesse.  I've seen it happen often where a site gets an unnatural links warning and then anywhere from 2-3 days later to 2-3 weeks later the rankings drop.  Occasionally Google will penalize you for just one or two keywords.

Do a search on SEOMoz for unnatural links recovery and you'll see lots of advice on how to recover, but in general the steps are:

1. Identify which links are unnatural.

2. Take all means possible to remove them.

3. For the ones you can't get removed, disavow them.

4. Document your efforts at removal thoroughly.

5. Send in a reconsideration request.

It's not about the percentage of links removed.  Really, what Google wants to see is that you understand which links are manipulative and that you've worked to get rid of those and that you're not going to continue in this matter.

The site won't load for me either.  Out of 10 attempts, I did get one page to load (but couldn't repeat it.)  When it did load I saw that the toolbar PR was N/A.  That's often not a good sign.

However, you've still got 773,000 pages in the index so you are not deindexed.

The one page that I saw simply had a business address and was no different than, say, a dmoz scraper site.  If the site doesn't add value other than just listing information that is available elsewhere on the web then there is a good chance that it not going to rank well.  Many sites like this are affected by Panda.

Do you have WMT set up?  This can tell you a lot such as whether or not Googlebot is having trouble accessing your site.

You don't have many links so I don't think it is a link penalty.

One link?  Don't worry about it.

When Google penalizes sites it is almost always for link building done on a large scale.  They're looking for linking schemes.

There are many large brand sites that have huge budgets for advertorials and have hundreds or thousands of such links.  These are the ones who need to worry about being penalized.

Haha Jesse!  I'd rather have that message.  That is a weird one.  I have had things go super viral and I've never had a message telling me of an INCREASE in traffic.  Some of them have been increased Google searches too...not just direct or Facebook visits.

I have had a message that there was a decrease in traffic for my top URL once.  This was when one of my sites had a slight Panda hit.

I think the messages are very random.

Whenever I see a (1) next to messages in WMT my heart races a little.  It's usually a good thing because I am waiting to hear back from a reconsideration request for a client though.

If you're transferring the content then make sure that the old pages are out of the index before you get the new page up.  I had a situation where I consulted with a client who was starting a new site because the old was hit severely by Penguin.  He bought a new domain and we moved all the content to there.  We did no 301 redirects from the old to the new and there were no links from the old to the new at all.  Yet, a couple of weeks later, the WMT backlinks to the new content showed all of the same links as the old site!  They all said, "Via...oldsite.com".   It was like Google recognized a canonical here and attributed the links to the new page.

The old site was gone, but was still in the Google cache.  We had to manually remove each old url using the url removal tool and then the problem resolved.

I ignore these links when I do backlink audits.  They're obviously not self made and that's what matters.

How many domains do those 24 million links come from?  It's possible you could find that they distill down into a manageable number of domains to manually review.  I think that tools like Link Detox can help in an initial review of links and perhaps you can use that as a first pass to find as many spammy ones as possible.  Then, I would take all of the links that were marked as suspicious or healthy, and visit one link from each domain manually.

In my experience, the only sites that I am seeing recovering from link based issues (either manual penalty or Penguin) are ones who have been EXTREMELY thorough on their audits.  It sure is a lot more work to evaluate links by hand but I think it is necessary.