Old Links Remove or not to remove?

[nutjobshell]

Hey everyone,

So i have a site which I had previous seo work on over the years, none of which was successful for me.  Now that I have taken over the seo work, I am analyzing my old links  I have a certain amount of links from what I would see are "crappy" seo sites and I wondered if I need to try and remove them.  Here are a few examples.

http://seorankingsresult.com/what-to-consider-when-shopping-for-electricians-tools/

http://seoservicepackages.com/tag/electricians-tools/

How do I check if google has penalized me for these links and should I start removing them?

ThanksMichelle

[nutjobshell]

Thanks Andy, feel a lot better now

[nutjobshell]

Thanks Highland,

I am pretty sure non of my links are from link farms and so by the sounds of things I should be ok with leaving what has already been done.

[Highland]

Google won't tell you if links are hurting you. But you generally need a large group of spammy links to really hurt you. I would only remove links after doing a top-down analysis of your backlinks. Use Open Site Explorer and ahrefs.com together and look at your profile. One major thing to look for is common anchor text. You need to ask yourself if people would naturally link to you using anything other than your company name.

Blog spam - I wouldn't remove these because it might still be providing some benefit. It contains content so it's not obvious there's a problem. At worst the site will be devalued.

Link farms - These are the most common low quality link and the ones you should pay attention to. Link farms are typically loaded with links and little or no real content. If you can remove them, do it. If not, I wouldn't disavow them since they are already likely devalued.

Paid links - Make sure these are nofollow or they could hurt. I've found "mommy blogs" and other similar efforts don't always do that.

[SEOAndy]

unless you get a warning from google don't be too hasty about trying to remove them. they may hold little value but they probably aren't doing any harm.