good info, i do the exactly same things on my sites too
the first is what we are talking about but it has a tone of competition (adult)
The second site, that i do it close to yours,and i hit my local business first page (no competition with locals)
[ btw the links that u say are so low, i can do some thousands more, per day!
but im not penalized with the above.... ]
THE THING IS after i change the whole site it dis-appear,
And another question is "what happened all this time to my PR (1yr)"
i was for the first six months PR-2 after 0 , what happened? it happend
coz i stop the promoting or penalized ? but this does not effect my keywords!
~I was working on the site 6 months, the other 6 i ignore it a lot, to see the results!
And i have not see good results, thats why i change it!!