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Hi - Can you use something like "save £££s" in the title tag. Have looked but can't see an answer. Thanks.

Hi Andy - thanks for the quick reply and confirming what I thought about the keywords in footer.

But I can see that my question wasn't phrased well enough.  Where I said "... this is what is perplexing me - they are ranking no.1 for that keyword! " It is actually my clients site that is ranking no. 1 for that keyword which is embedded in the footer of the directory site.

This is what doesn't make sense. I'd have thought that Google would have stomped on that as one of the first things they did. Instead it's the only keyword they have that is still ranking.

Just to say that I have performed a full test on all the back links using Link Detox software and now I am also going through manually and actually reviewing each link. Time consuming but also quite educational.

Thanks again.

Hi - I am trying to help a site to get out from under a Google manual action penalty - down as "Partial Matches - Unnatural Links to site".
I am checking through their links - the site that links most to them is a local directory style site - it has 2,682 links back into 1 page (Home) The directory site was built by the web co. that built my clients' site and they put a keyword link in the footer of the directory site - the keyword was "Buy Truffles". All my instincts say that is a bad thing! But - this is what is perplexing me - they are ranking no.1 for that keyword! Whereas they have lost rankings (i.e. not top 50) for all the other keywords they were targeting. So I don't get it! Can anyone explain why this is. I feel I should I get that link removed but don't want to take out their only ranking keyword!  Webmaster shows about 55 different pages in the directory site have a link back to my client. Hope you can help.
Cheers - Steve

Thanks Marie - the second part of your answer is a concern.

The client we have been asked to deal with has a couple of sites one is an e-commerce food products site (this is the one that has been impacted by 2.1) the other is a much newer recipe site (focussed on recipes involving the food products sold on e-com site). This site has a different URL and is hosted on a different server.
So given what you said before - would it be a good strategy to focus on building up the recipe site so that they have a good presence in the SERPS and then they can move visitors to the e-comm site to buy product?. In short, continue to keep cleaning up the e-comm site but not focus new link build and content efforts on it, instead go all out on the recipe site.

Thanks.

Hi - I have read conflicting advice about this issue - after taking action and removing bad links following a Penguin 2.1 hit, will the site need to wait for the next Penguin upgrade before the link clean-up has any effect? Or will the cleaning of the links be acknowledged and "rewarded" with a ranking improvement before that (assuming all bad links were cleared out)?