Old SEO Agency Left a Mess? How to Clean It Up

The conversation nobody wants to have

It usually starts like this. You hired an SEO agency two or three years ago. They promised first-page rankings. They sent you monthly reports full of graphs going up and to the right. Maybe your rankings did improve for a while.

Then you parted ways — maybe the results plateaued, maybe the budget ran out, maybe you just moved on. The agency left. The links they built stayed.

Now it's later. Your rankings are flat or declining. You've heard something about "toxic backlinks" and decided to take a look at your link profile. And what you find makes your heart sink: hundreds of links from websites you've never heard of, directories that look like they were built in 2003, blog posts on sites with names like "bestseotips247.xyz," and forum profiles on Russian-language discussion boards.

Congratulations. You've inherited a mess.

Why agencies build bad links

Not all SEO agencies build bad links. Plenty of agencies do excellent, ethical work. But the ones that rely on volume over quality tend to use the same playbook:

They submit your site to hundreds of low-quality directories — the kind that exist purely to sell links, not to help anyone find anything. They create guest posts on private blog networks — fake blogs that look independent but are actually run by the same people selling link placements. They leave comments on unrelated blog posts with links back to your site. They create profiles on forums, social bookmarking sites, and web 2.0 platforms — all with links pointing to you.

These tactics worked reasonably well before 2012, when Google launched the Penguin algorithm update specifically to detect and penalise manipulative link building. Some agencies adapted. Others kept doing the same thing, hoping they wouldn't get caught.

How to know if your agency left bad links

Run a backlink audit. Look at the domains linking to your site and ask yourself: would a real human being ever visit this website?

If the answer is no — if the linking site has no real content, no apparent purpose beyond hosting links, or a domain name that sounds like it was generated by a random word machine — that's probably a link your agency built.

Other signs:

Anchor text that's too perfect. Natural anchor text is messy. People link using your brand name, "click here," your URL, or random phrases from the surrounding sentence. If a large percentage of your anchor text is exact-match commercial keywords like "best plumber London" or "cheap accountant services," those links were built deliberately. Links from irrelevant niches. If you're a dental practice and you have backlinks from a gambling blog, a cryptocurrency forum, and a pet care directory, those weren't earned naturally. Clusters of similar-looking sites. Agencies often use the same networks, so their links tend to come in batches from sites with the same template, the same hosting provider, or the same geographic location.

The cleanup process

Here's the good news: this is entirely fixable. It takes some time, but the process is straightforward.

Audit everything. Get a complete list of your backlinks. Classify each one as clean, suspicious, or toxic. A good audit tool does most of this automatically, but you'll want to manually review the borderline cases. Don't panic about the numbers. It's normal for a site that was actively link-built to have 30-50% questionable links. That sounds alarming, but remember — the clean links still count in your favour. You're not starting from zero. Focus on the clearly toxic. Start with the obvious spam: link farms, PBNs, spammy directories, and sites with no real content. These are safe to disavow without much deliberation. Be careful with the grey area. Some links might be on sites that look a bit dodgy but have some legitimate content. A niche directory you've never heard of isn't necessarily spam — it might just be small. When in doubt, leave it. You can always disavow it later if you change your mind. Build and upload your disavow file. Add every confirmed toxic domain to a disavow file and upload it to Google Search Console. Include comments explaining what you found and what you did about it.

What to expect after cleanup

Don't expect a dramatic overnight change. The effect of disavowing links is gradual — Google needs to recrawl the disavowed domains and update their assessment of your link profile. This typically takes 2-6 months for the full effect.

What you should see is a slow, steady improvement. Your rankings stabilise. Then they start creeping up. Pages that had been stuck on page two start appearing on page one again. It's not exciting — it's more like watching grass grow — but it's real progress.

If your site already has a manual action (check Google Search Console → Security & Manual Actions), you'll also need to file a reconsideration request after uploading your disavow file.

Choosing your next agency more carefully

If and when you hire another SEO agency, ask these questions before signing anything:

"How do you build links?" If they can't give you a clear, specific answer, that's a red flag. Good agencies build links through content marketing, digital PR, genuine outreach, and relationship-building. Bad agencies build links through directories, PBNs, and automated tools. "Can I see examples of links you've built for other clients?" Look at those links yourself. Are they on real websites with real content? Or are they on the same kind of junk sites you're currently trying to clean up? "What happens to the links if we stop working together?" Legitimate links on real websites persist because they provide value. Links on PBNs and paid directories disappear the moment the agency stops paying the hosting bill. "Will you share a monthly report of every link built?" Transparency is non-negotiable. If an agency can't or won't tell you exactly what links they're building and where, you're setting yourself up for the same problem all over again.

One last thing

If your old agency is still in business, you might be tempted to contact them and ask them to undo their work. In my experience, this rarely goes anywhere. Most agencies that built spammy links either deny it, claim the links were fine at the time, or simply don't respond.

Don't waste energy trying to get them to fix it. Clean it up yourself, learn from the experience, and move on. Your site — and your rankings — will thank you.

Ready to see what your old agency left behind? Our free backlink checker shows the top links for any domain in seconds. For a full audit with toxic link classification, run a free scan.