My web site has suffered muchly (and unfairly, IMHO) recently with respect to Google ranking.

I was thinking that filing a reconsideration request should be my next step and so I went in search of how to go about doing so.

Google tells me the page to file a reconsideration request is at [google.com...] I went there and found "Check your site for manual actions". When I did so the response was "No manual webspam actions found".

I still don't see the reconsideration request form. Is this because of the "No manual webspam actions found." status, and there is no need to file a reconsideration request?

On a similar vein: I had a "Links" page where I list web sites that contain similar content to what I offer. I got a panicked email from a Webmaster of a site I link to asking me to remove their listing as Google had notified them that their listing with me was considered an "unnatural link" I read up on the subject and decided to remove the whole page (the file as well as all links to it) as it wasn't visited much and seemed to be doing more harm than good.

Was this links page maybe part of my poor Google ranking?

I have been reading up on SEO and am going through the site in detail to improve ranking. I feel that I offer high quality useful content and I'm sure a reasonable user would agree. I'd list the site but am aware that is against the TOS.