I just responded to this exact question. Here's my answer and a link to that question:

Honestly, my advice would be to grab a list of your backlinks using both Google Webmaster Console as well as the OpenSiteExplorer and merge them into a spreadsheet and get rid of all the duplicates.

Next step would be to identify which of those links are spammy and you'd be better of having them removed. This is in my opinion the hardest part depending upon the volume of sites/links.

Then hire somebody to find email addresses of the websites where you want links removed. Finding something on the page and if nothing else, using whois. I would then send an email to each one of those contacts and in a quick short email, tell me the URL where the link is located and your site URL. Tell them to remove the link right away since you have received a Google Warning. I would imagine this taking care of a good portion of those links. I would send another email in a week and then again for a total of 2-4 times to see if you get a response and get the link removed. When nothing else worked, offer then $10 for the link removal and that should gain their attention. If that does not work either, I would suggest you move on.

I hope this helps. You could get somebody on odesk.com or a similar site to get all the labor intensive work done.

Enam, I would not worriota out it. This is a natural link. Think of other social networks like twitter. If you were to tweet your link and 10,000 users retweet it, you have that many links from different pages within twitter.com

this s the nature and structure of the website, don't stress yourself about this. If this was coming from a crappy domain or spammy bloon other it would be something to worry about.

I hope this helps. Have a good weekend.

I agree with Toshi one hundred percent. It's strongly recommended to change it. I'd say it's crucial you do it. There's absolutely no reason to not do it.

I have been attending Pubcon in Las Vegas every year since 2003. I have only missed 1 or 2. Also, Pubcon is the only conference I have attended.

What I'd say about Pubcon is that I look forward to it every year, year after year. It's a busy 3-4 days conference. Usually 6-10 sessions running concurrently and the topics vary from On-page SEO, Off-page SEO, Paid Search, Affiliate, Conversion Optimization, Social Media and so on. There are usually around 100+ sessions in total to choose from.

Overall a great event to attend.

What will you learn ? Well, that's a tough one to answer. Usually I don't go to conferences and expect something to learn other then meet a lot of nice people in different industries. Sometimes you talk to people, hear out speakers and see them talk about specific strategies they use or specially the tools. I love the tools part. There's always something new to learn in the SEO Tools area. Other then that, talking with people and attending sessions kind of gives you a very broad/but in-depth overview of where the industry is moving, whats going on in the world of search.

I also have Mozcon/Distilled/SMX Advanced/SES to the list of conferences I would consider attending based on timing and budget.

I hope this helps.

I think there's considerable value in understanding more that goes into SEO and how you can build your business both short term and long term in the World of Search. When you say "Basically, I live and die on search engine ranking.", that really answers the question itself for you.

Honestly, I would stay away from buying links unless you are ina really really black hat, super competitive niche like Online Casino, Gambling, Rx, Adult etc etc.

Those guys are clearly selling links with PR. Huge Red Flag. Stay away.

I would suggest building content with that budget, content that helps your user find what they are looking for. Content that they would link to and so on instead of spending your money on junk links.

Was this a Wordpress blog and did you install a plugin to do these changes ?