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Thanks Don! I'll look into that

Thanks for the replay Marc, that clears up my confusion. I had chance to ask John Mueller (from Google) what to do about spammy backlinks and he automatically assumed I was up to no good.  I've never bought a crappy link in my life.  Previously hired SEOs and/or unscrupulous competition were likely the culprits.  We can take accountability for ignorantly hiring shady link builders but apologizing for being a victim of negative SEO is flat out ludicrous.

Great, thanks Gyorgy for the advice.

Sure, glad to help

Try not to focus on percentages. most SEOs try and build a certain % of each type (branded, naked URL, exact match keyword, random anchors, synonym keywords, etc). The problem with trying to do this is you're manipulating your link profile. The key to building a natural link profile is letting the link type do the work. Take your Moz profile as an example. You're allowed a link to multiple sites - the NATURAL link type for this is naked. Other sites will let you add an anchor - if you do, use a branded one. Blog comments are another example. Most platforms will allow you to create an anchor, but it's unnatural. Use a naked URL for blog comments and you can diversify easily. There's a really good article that goes into detail about it here: http://webris.org/anchor-text/

Thanks Moosa, that makes perfect sense to me now