We had the same issue as this guy, except it had been carried out by a specialist SEO firm on our behalf. Naturally we had no clue that their 'legitimate techni

We had the same issue as this guy, except it had been carried out by a specialist SEO firm on our behalf. Naturally we had no clue that their 'legitimate techniques' to promote us across the net were incredibly dodgy. That's why we paid an agency after all, to let them handle it, as experts, with best practice techniques. Unfortunately 'best practice' to SEO 'gurus' appears to be whatever blackhat method is in vogue. We disengaged from them (read: got very angry at them) and had to clean it all up ourselves. The closest analogy I can think of is: it's like an oil spill. You can never be rid of the long lasting damage. Links get everywhere, and webmasters never respond to takedown requests. But we've learnt a lot about SEO in the process and can undertake the task from our own moral standpoint. In the future we shouldn't have these kinds of issues.