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I agree with Devanur.  Just about every site get's scraped and has other poor links to it.  Google knows this.  They are looking for a pattern indicating intent to manipulate the rankings.

Doug, You are the man, nailed it! Robert

Oleg makes some good points about putting those links on an index page for the articles (like the articles "section" of the site, which would be linked to from the home page) instead of putting every article link on the home page. However, I would argue that if these articles aren't helping "your website accomplish its goals" they shouldn't be on your site at all. Even if "SEO" is considered a goal of your website, you're bound to fail if you publish article-style content just for that reason. So in your strategy I would really think about how this content is helping your users. For example, where in the process of their journey on your site they might need/want to see that content (e.g. 'How to Choose a Widget' might be linked to from your widget category, or 'Ten Ways to Use Your New Widget' might go on a widget product page)? That would be where you want to link to it from.

It doesn't actually help. All this does is bookmark your information for users quickly so they can access pages quickly that they want. I do this quite often when I have a site or page that I want to get to quickly - just a regular bookmark. NO impact on SEO/SEM what-so-ever (but it could in the future if Google added another feature metric/variable to track!)

This is done automatically by Wordpress.

Thank you for the additional advise. I have implemented by keyword/phrase policy based on the above UK wide logic. Thank Mark

You're welcome

Hi Tom, Thanks for the great info. Mark

Hi Zach, Thank you for all your help today. Regards Mark

PowerMapper has a free trial.  Works great.  I haven't found a free solution however this is a great tool.

Hi Tom, Thank you for you help & support. Regards Mark

Hi Mark Yes, Google will display your rich snippets if they are static or "hard coded". They need to be true numbers as you shouldn't be abusing the ratings but they will in-fact show provided your structured data is correct. Hope that helps!

I would never get rid of links simply based on pagerank (or DA/PA).  I would evaluate my links based on whether or not they were natural or self-made. The first thing you need to decide though before slashing links is whether or not your links are actually hurting you.  If your rankings dropped it doesn't necessarily have to be because of spammy links as there are many algorithm factors that could be in play. Now, if your rankings dropped significantly on a Penguin refresh day, then yes, you could consider removing or disavowing the links.  Most SEOs agree that the key to recovering from Penguin is to do that.  You may not even have to remove them.  Just disavowing is likely enough for Penguin.  But no one can say for sure because Penguin hasn't refreshed since the disavow tool was released. But be careful messing around with the disavow tool.  I've seen sites that had other issues such as Panda or site structure issues that went and cut a bunch of potentially spammy links out and damaged their rankings even further.