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The good thing about EMDs is that sometimes (not always) they rank well for one specific query (the one that matches the domain) but unless they have all the other factors in place, they rank for nothing else. I had a client who was a lawyer who had multiple sites and the negatives way outweighed the positives.

If you're recovering from Penguin you might want to have a professional who specializes in this look at your site. I've seen cases where people disavowing links wrong had the opposite effect they were looking for (made them drop even further) because it wasn't done right. My recommendation would be Marie Haynes.

Most lawyer searches on Google show Google Places results first. How does your site rank in that section?

I read this article recently and I think it might be helpful: https://lawyerist.com/66919/stop-using-location-practice-area-attorney/

I have a business that I just recently started working with and he has written a ton of blog articles (some of which are really good) and decided it would be a good idea to insert the keyword hes targeting into the content or title of many of his blogs. Lets just say for example that the keyword is plumbers chicago. So I searched on Google and the words "plumbers chicago" (in that exact order) are on 199 pages on his site, not including filtered content.

He is on page 2-3 for that keyword and I'm wondering what people's advice would be for a site that has so much content referencing the same exact keyword. It is a keyword that is service + location too so it actually doesn't even make sense when you read it in half the sentences it's in.

I think one of the main issues of why it's on so many pages is he has a tag for it in Wordpress and tons of the blog articles have that particular tag.