If you have built backlinks from websites that have been hit by the update then basically those backlinks which are helping you to rank have gone and therefore your rankings drop.

When you say 'lots of (good) inbound links' what we talking about directory submissions, guest posts, paid links?

I do this a lot (on a daily bases), so first off your not alone.

And your right in the fact it does need to be weighed up.

It's very hard to give an actual answer but in general if I see PA/DA 40+ a lot of work could be involved, if I see PA/DA 20- should be easy, id expect first page rankings in a few weeks to a month if that.

I don't just go off this alone but it's my starting point, I will check out all of page 1 and page 2 and some times page 3. You might find page 1 is 40+ then page 2 is 25+.

But I do look at lots of elements for example how much there content is shared socially, this gives me an idea if I produced the same sort of content and pushed PPC to it what kind of sharing potential is available from this audience (but this is just a method I do, haven't seen anyone else doing it).

See what I would do like I said was put social buttons on it, to try and and gather some social signals to those articles but then anchor text link out of the content to a page with a term that does generate traffic.

Maybe you can use those articles to help the SEO of other pages.

I would stay away from doing that as good chance it could flag as duplicate content.

What would the ratio of reviews to current content be on a page?

I would be inclined to use it to conversion optimise, but only selecting a few of the better ones.

Go into Google Analytic's, check out all the keywords generating traffic organically, export a csv of the data and copy all the keywords into Google keyword Tool.

If Google Analytic's says you have received 50 visits from 'fluffy bunnies' over a monthly period and the keyword tool says the local monthly search volume is 5000 searches, go into google and query 'fluffy bunnies', there is a good chance your result isnt that far into the results as you are picking up clicks off that term.

Thus low hanging fruit, if you work on the already ranking term, which might be on page 2 and push it through to page 1 your see a good increase in traffic for the term without to much effort (depending on the keyword).

You find 5 of these and work them up... well you get the picture.

No worries, im pretty sure my reply is what there on about when they say low hanging fruit, although Seb's reply are good things to check.

I will say paying for the membership on here will be a good thing for the company you work for to pay for.

You wont find a better bunch of SEO pros (who know what there talking about) then on here.

Few places I like to check out and use are: copyblogger, myblogguest, webdesignersforum and viperchill.