EMD with 3.3million broad match searches got hit hard by Panda/Penguin

[SwissNinja]

k, so I run an ecommerce website with a kick ass domain name.

1 keyword (plural)
3.3 million broad match searches (local monthly)
3.2 million phrase match
100k exact match

beginning of march I got a warning in GWT about unnatural links. I feel pretty certain its a result of an ex-employee using an ALN listing service to drip spun article links on splogs.

This was done also for another site of mine, which received the same warning, except bounced back much sooner (from #3 for EMD w/ 100k broad, 60k phrase and 12k exact, singular keyword phrase)

I did file reinclusion on the 2nd (smaller) domain. Received unnatural warning on 4/13 and sent reconsideration on 5/1 (tune of letter is "I have no clue what is up, I paid someone $50 and now Im banned)

As of this morning, I am not ranking for any of my terms (had boucned back on main keyword to spot #30 after being pushed down from #4)

now back to the interesting site....
this other domain was bouncing between 8-12 for main keyword (EMD) before we used ALN.
Once we got warning, we did nothing. Once rankings started to fall,we filed reinclusion request...rankings fell more, and filed another more robustly written request (got denials within 1 week after each request)until about 20 days ago when we fell off of the face of the earth.

1- should I take this as some sort of sandbox? We are still indexed, and are #1 for a search on our domain name. Also still #1 in bing (big deal)

2- I've done a detailed analysis of every link they provide in GWT. reached out to whatever splog people I could get in touch with asking them to remove articles. I was going to file another request if I didn't reappear after 31 days after I fell off completely. Am I wasting my time?

there is no doubt that sabatoge could be committed by competition by blasting them with spam links (previously I believed these would just be ignored by google to prevent sabatoge from becoming part of the job for most SEOs)

Laugh at me, gasp in horror with me, or offer some advice... I'm open to chat and would love someone to tell me about a legit solution to this prob if they got one

thanks!

[SwissNinja]

just started using ahrefs.... seems like the best one so far (over majestic, raven, etc)

[SteveOllington]

You must still have bad links that you weren't able to get rid of it, try this: http://www.linkresearchtools.com/case-studies/link-networks/ tis awesome

[irvingw]

how many backlinks do you have from bad places, is it a huge number or only 1000 or so?