Wow, definitely helps, Marie! Didn't expect to receive a helpful hand from such an SEO expert as you Thank you so much!
First of all, on Webmasters there is no manual action.
Thank you for bringing attention to on-site issues, that's actually what I am doing now, over 8 years we had more than 2000 published articles and right now I am cleaning them out after seeing that 20% of articles receive 80% of the traffic.
By any chance can you suggest the best way to deal with deleted posts? Right now I am redirecting them all with 301 Redirect to related similar post, or if none is suitable I redirect to home page, trying not to leave 404. What would you recommend doing?
Really good points, well, I never syndicated posts, lots of link building included submitting it to related web design news websites (pligg, digg voting type sites or where news appeared in sidebar).
I did exchange blogroll links maybe with 10 max friends sites, but nothing massive.
And regarding May 20, it indeed happened then. Comparing Tuesday, May 20 to Monday, May 19.
Actually after research..and following your disavow article how to work with massive amounts of links in spreadsheets and trying out Detox tool, I found, there are certainly links i would want to disavow, but it's not as significant as I thought. I really think, that what you are saying is right - that simply Google stopped counting some links and that' why rankings did drop.
Action plan is clear at least, first focus on fixing everything possible on-site before touching Disavow tool. Really, really appreciate your helpful reply and taking time to give such an insightful feedback to simple guy like me
Thank you again, Marie!