while it's true image links do pass PR it is thought that they pass less than text links. adding the alt tag adds contexts, like an anchor text.

create SEO friendly badges like this example and you can make your badge a text link instead!

http://www.onlinemedicaltourism.com/get-the-seal.html

it's possible, also what other changes did he do 1 week, 2 weeks, a month ago. Also, maybe something changed in Googles algorithm.

without looking at the site and page it's all just speculation

the tiny changes he made probably didn't cause the drop, something else most likely did like on page factors. he's just assuming that these changes did it because they were the last things he did for this term. getting demoted to the bottom of page 6 is definitely indicative of a penalty for that search term.

It is true that keyword density for example is just one of 200 or so factors helping determining ranking, but if you create a page with 50% keyword density for a term, that is enough to get that page suppressed in ranking for that term.

it's very difficult to assess without the URL. The site that you changed the anchor text on, was that link a sitewide link? Changing a few links shouldn't cause the drop, it's probably over optimization on the page/site for that keyword term. It's the homepage that dropped to page 6 right? Is the homepage ranking OK for your other terms still?

Two separate issues

a) keyword density. it is now better to not overuse your keyword or keyword phrase in your content, your example is way too high. you only need a few instances in the content - add synonyms and similar industry terms rather than the same keyword over and over again. it reads horrible and Google knows you're keyword stuffing.

b) content on page. yea the word count absolutely matters in a post panda world. flimsy pages with 250 words or so will be considered low quality. pages with 500+ words will have a much better shot at ranking.

You say "the service was basically a backlink building farm."

If links are your major concern I ask you this -  are these links pointing to your homepage or internal pages? If internal pages you can simply change the URL structure and 404 all of the old URLS and the links will no longer be pointing to your site, problem solved. If they did link building to the homepage you would need to go through them and contact the webmasters and ask them to remove which is very time consuming.

That being said, if you don't have a penalty from these links you might be OK, and 404'ing these pages would cut off your PR and could cause a major drop in rankings. Like Alan said, make sure your on page optimization is squeaky clean.

Ryan, with the perfect answer yet again.

You always beat me to it man! Keep up the good advice!

Good answer by Devin,

If you are coding a site from beginning I would put them in order, but if the site already exists and it is a pain to change don't sweat it. If it's a quick global fix in CSS I would take the 30 minutes to do it personally.

But like Devin said the most important thing is that you don't use a bunch of H1s on a page and the H1 should of course contain the main keyword phrase in it.

you can't put logic in robots.txt and subdomains are seen as different sites, so you need to create separate robots.txt files for each subdomain and block them in their respective robots.txt files.

You'll need to also add the Google verification code and verify them, then in GWMT you can request to have the subdomain removed from Googles index, that's the fastest way.

How many times did you submit for reconsideration? When was the last time, did you give specific examples of what you fixed?

I assume most of the link building was done to your homepage? If so, download all links pointing to your homepage with GWMT and use this tool to go through them one at a time.

http://www.bad-neighborhood.com/text-link-tool.htm

a) If you see a site that looks shady reach out to the webmaster and tell him you need the site removed. Keep a record so you can follow up. Shady means links to adult, casino and med sites.

b) Remove any sitewide links pointing to your site

c) remove any sites linking to you that are penalized in Google

Time consuming process, but as you make progress you can submit reconsideration requests periodically explaining what steps you are taking to come back into compliance. Admit that you were link building and that you fired your SEO guy right away. Explain the steps you are taking to reverse the damage he did and how it really affected your business. Promise to not engage in link building again - be humble and appreciative.

Sometimes you need to fix and fix and submit 4 or 5 times before Google releases the penalty.

1. Duplicate content is not a penalty, but a filter so Google could theoretically let only one of these pages rank:

http://www.costumemachine.com/costume/adult-costumes/sexy/1

all the way to 113 are very similar

http://www.costumemachine.com/costume/adult-costumes/sexy/113

2. How is santa getting classifies as a Jew costume lol

http://www.costumemachine.com/keyword/jew/1

3. It's not really a "search engine on more than 20 costume sites" is it, more like a affiliate site for buycostumes.com - just a personal observation, has nothing to do with penalty

Anyway, having flimsy content is not something that would get you a trademark suppression so my guess is that these is still something with your incoming links that Google doesn't like. Were you ranking well before? Sucks, this is your time of the year I could have helped you possibly recover if you reached out a few months ago.

Correct, the site is not banned but it IS penalized. Banned means completely removed from Google's index...game over. Penalized means indexed but rankings have been suppressed.

As you can see your name is not ranking when searching Google, this is a trademark suppression and almost always means the entire site has been penalized.

http://www.google.com/search?q=site:www.costumemachine.com&hl=en&prmd=imvns&ei=OPCNTraCNI-HrAeCh8SmAQ&start=30&sa=N&biw=1920&bih=888&cad=cbv&sei=DvSNTsybHMbYrQeuvcijAQ#sclient=psy-ab&hl=en&biw=1920&bih=888&source=hp&q="costumemachine"&pbx=1&oq="costumemachine"&aq=f&aqi=g-l2g-v1g-lv1&aql=&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=3619l6784l0l7009l16l13l0l0l0l0l621l4828l2-2.5.2.3l12l0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&fp=334e87e3bc984f2f