Dirty Link Profile - Suggestions?

[poolguy]

Ok, so I was just hired to do SEO for a company and so I did a backlink analysis.  As it turns out, they've got a pretty dirty link profile - footer links, white on white links, unrelated links, tiny font links, links from penalized sites, hardly any branded links... you get it.

I was thinking about taking the worst of the worst links, removing them and leaving the rest, just to clean it up a little.  I don't want them to get penalized.... but... I don't want their rankings to drop either.

Think I should leave them all and just start building relevant, branded links?

OR

Clean up the whole link profile?

OR

Just clean it up a little?

[AdamThompson]

I have heard multiple reports recently of spammy backlinks hurting a site. Seems Google is more willing to penalize a site for bad linking practices.

[poolguy]

To follow up on this, the backlinks were in fact hurting rankings.  We removed some paid backlinks and immediately saw large increases in rankings.  I hope this helps someone else.

When I asked this question I really did not believe that removing backlinks would improve rankings, but it did.

Thanks!

[Thos003]

If the bad links are not currently hurting then I wouldn't worry too much about them hurting them in the future. I would advise the owner of the site of what you have found, explain the risks, and then offer him your advice. Not that you are excusing yourself if you advise them poorly, but knowing the risks upfront makes it easier if something does go wrong later.

[AdamThompson]

I would just leave the old links and start building new, good links.

I would double-check that their site is clean and remove anything poor, though.