Panda, Penguin and Hummingbird Problem !!!

First you need to be sure that you know what you're talking about. Sorry about this questionaire, but many warriors are quite confused about Google rankings. If you look into these you probably have better understanding of the situation.

Why do you say it was a Google's algo change? Is it possible that you've changed something on the site, or that there's some obvious problem with site structure or content?

What kind of niche are you in? Can you give an example of a keyword you were ranking on before, but are not ranking any more?

What kind of bad links do you have exactly? Do you have any idea where did they come from?

James did you receive any notification/warning in webmaster tool?
There is a common misconception among many that the moment someone spots loss in traffic/rankings it is due to backlinks pointing to the site.

Please check following on-page issues:
robots.txt "disallow", meta robots "noindex,nofollow", redirection issues, canonical tags pointing to wrong url, thin/copied contents, or even analytics tracking issues.

If you come to a conclusion there are no on-page issues next is to figure out whether its Manual or Algorithmic penalty.

In either case collect all backlinks (manually assess & classify (link networks, paid links, rich anchor text, non-relevant sites, low quality directories, bookmarking, forum,blog commenting etcetra) contact website owners/webmasters to remove or no-follow links, document everything (google needs to see considerable effort is made to remove links) use disavow file for links that cannot be removed.

Send reconsideration request if you have received notification/warning in webmaster tool. If there is no manual action from Google, performing link removal and disavow would suffice.

That's correct. These days backlink profiles are the crux of the problem.

First make sure if it's only an algorithm issue or a manual penalty issue. I'm assuming you have access to Webmaster tools?

Unfortunately many of the links that worked years ago are now triggering penalties.

I'd probably recommend a link removal service, they'll help you do it right and save you the headache of managing thousands of links removals.

All you mentioned was pageviews.

How do you know it is a Google traffic problem? Maybe there was another source of traffic that got bumped off?

If it was a Google traffic issue, what did you see in the rankings? Sometimes a few major keywords dropping 2-3 spots can cause a huge drop in traffic.

Your product teaches people SEO amongst other things and how to become an expert.

Shouldn't you have a bit of an inkling as to what's going on here? I'm not saying you shouldn't be shooting the sh## with other like-minded SEOs, but if you had an expert course then as an expert you'd know that you have to provide more information than just page views.

Surely you can identify bad quality links, surely you know to line up the major Penguin refreshes against analytics data to observe any traffic drops, surely you asked for a spreadsheet of any users/pws from link building efforts, surely you've checked all on-site crawl related issues.

Not trying to bash on you OP, but I'm wondering what sort of product you're selling when you are asking these sort of questions.

To answer your question, the process for removing bad links is
A. Attempt to remove manually, if not possible than
B. E-mail webmaster ask them to remove it, if no response than
C. Disavow
D. Wait, and wait and wait perhaps a long time

Firstly you need to find that which Google algorithm hit your website. Here Google Algorithm Change History - Moz is history of all algorithms and updates. Find out, which one hit the website. Read the recovery options by experts. And, then make a strategy to get rid of this.

Here's a tip James never build a backlink you can't remove, and if you know it's a backlink you won't be able to remove don't place the link if you wouldn't be comfortable showing it to Matt Cutts.

When backlinking keep records of all user names and passwords that you use for Web 2.0s, PBN sites, etc.. Make sure if you outsource any link building efforts that they keep records as well and can guarantee link removal in the future if necessary.

Most directory sites, and social bookmark sites once you place the link it's there forever. These webmasters will rarely respond to removal requests. Places like PHP LD and Pligg avoid like the plague.

This is tier 3 at the best assuming you have total control over tier 1. Some things to keep in mind for the future.

Redesign the website.

James,
One of my sites was penalized March 2013 for low quality backlinks I was able to find and disavow in webmaster tools. It helped... slightly.
It did not bounce back to where we were, but it is being indexed and found by some in organic search. Its like starting a new site now.. one that is almost 5 years old!

That data shows a strong correlation to Penguin 2.0. My primary money making site was hit by that algo update as well. Still hasn't recovered since.

What was the link building efforts like on that up until then? Keep in mind anything you do now will probably have to wait until the next Penguin refresh before you see any benefit.

It seems that Google really changed algorithm a lot, Hummingbird Is Google’s Biggest Algorithm Change In 12 Years.

So it seems, that the link disavowing, keyword deoptimisation, and other steps for getting back to previous positions might not help, since the key part of a story is in changed algorithm.

Since there are a lots of websites that had lost a lots of visitors( up to 90%), and almost no one in forums&blogs communities didn't had huge visitors improvement on Google update ( 20% isn't huge), I suppose that Google has buried smaller websites in favor of big ones.
Those 90% visitors of small website which was optimized for certain keywords might be on the other big site with wider topic ~ 1,2,3,4%.

Just thinking..

It looks to me like my site was bumped out by ecommerce sites, and by people selling on Amazon and ebay. I was right at the top for years until those 'big boys' moved in on my keywords.

James - doing fab, thanks Vegas is definitely where I want to be - as long as my Mom's move goes smoothly. Yes, real life stuff happenin.