How do I audit an SEO agency's link building and catch risky tactics?

You also need to look at the technical nature of these links. If your anchor text profile is dominated by commercial terms like "wholesale cardboard boxes" or "packaging prices" instead of your brand name, a penalty is right around the corner. Link placement is equally critical: are they contextual links within genuine content, or shoved into site footers or sidebars? Sitewide links repeated across every page are the quickest footprint for search engine algorithms to catch.

We had the exact same suspicion last year with an agency we hired for our industrial hardware site on a 32,000 TL monthly retainer. When we ran a historical backlink check through our console, we discovered that 38 out of the 45 acquired links came from PBNs hosted on the identical IP block. Every single one was a hollow site spun up six months prior. We terminated the contract immediately and submitted a disavow file; our rankings would have been wiped out otherwise.

In this industry virtually every agency calling their link building a "trade secret" is buying trash links. What agency wouldn't proudly show off a sponsored article placed on a reputable news outlet or niche industry portal as a success story? If they hide it, they're probably buying automated directory or profile link blasts for 100 lira and billing you a fortune for it.

Send an official email asking the agency for these three records: 1) The exact source URL containing the link and the target landing page on your domain, 2) The clickable anchor text and its HTML tag attributes, 3) A copy of the guest post copy to verify it was uniquely written for your brand. An agency that can't provide these three basics isn't bringing you value; they're just setting you up for penalties that take months to clean up.

An agency that is totally transparent when invoicing 28,000 TL every month, but suddenly treats link placements like classified state secrets, is honestly a bad joke. If you aren't allowed to see what's being linked to your own domain, that budget is just funding their own private little farm.

First thing tomorrow morning, export the "Top linking sites" report from your webmaster dashboard. Filter for new domains acquired over the past 6 months in a spreadsheet. Open those homepages in your browser one by one; five minutes of checking will tell you immediately whether they're working with legitimate publishers or auto-generated spam farms.

Does your service contract have a liability clause covering search engine penalties? If the agreement doesn't hold them financially liable for damages or traffic loss caused by manual actions, keeping those URLs hidden is a massive red flag. How did you define performance and risk terms in your contract?

Bottom line: demanding a transparent URL list is your most basic right. Verify incoming links yourself through your console; if they refuse to share or the links turn out to be cheap PBN farms, cut ties with their link service immediately. Forcing risky links just to hit a quota without solid content and technical foundations can get your site banished from search results for months.

Let's separate the concepts they're getting mixed up. Solutions that work at a small scale collapse when you grow; I learned this late.

Any unwritten clause becomes a point of disagreement later, as both sides remember it differently. That's all sorry if I went on too long.

timely topic.

I agree.

There's a common mistake people make when doing this. Everything goes well for the first three months; problems arise in the fourth.

Taking notes for two weeks yields better results than a six-month estimate. If I were you, I'd go this route.

My questions are cleared up, thanks.

You're right. Internal linking is the cheapest and most neglected task.

If you have questions write them; I'll answer as best I can.

This thread is archived. Hasty decisions become decisions you have to fix six months later.

Three different views emerged they all complement each other. like don't trust anyone who gives guarantees; there are no guarantees in this business.

Let me summarize the topic, since several different answers were given. When we decide without measuring, we always end up in the same place.

This is exactly what we experienced. Merge instead of deleting; deleted content doesn't come back.

This is my opinion, I'm not claiming it's absolute truth.