Taking over a site means taking over its link history, including the parts nobody wants to tell you about.
When you inherit a site, you inherit every link ever pointed at it, and every decision a previous agency made about them. Before you plan anything, you need to know what you are standing on.
Start with the disavow file
Download the current disavow file from Search Console before doing anything else. We regularly find files that suppress hundreds of perfectly healthy links, often uploaded years ago by an agency being cautious after a penalty scare. In one audit, removing an over-broad disavow recovered a meaningful share of the site’s link equity within six weeks.
Read it line by line. Anything domain-level that looks like a real publication deserves manual review before you leave it in place.
Pull data from more than one source
No backlink index is complete. Export from at least two commercial tools plus the Search Console Links report, then deduplicate by referring domain. Any single source will miss between 20 and 40 percent of what the others find.
Look at anchor text distribution before anything else
A natural profile is dominated by branded and naked-URL anchors, with exact-match commercial anchors making up a small minority. If exact-match terms exceed roughly 20 percent of your anchors, that pattern was manufactured, and it is the clearest signal of historic link buying you will find.
Check link velocity against site history
Chart referring domains acquired per month across the whole history. Sharp spikes that do not correspond to a campaign, a product launch or a press moment usually correspond to a purchase. Note the dates and ask what happened.
Find the recoverable links
Two categories are worth real money and cost almost nothing to reclaim:
- Broken backlinks — strong links pointing at URLs that now 404, usually casualties of a migration. Redirect them to the closest relevant live page.
- Unlinked brand mentions — publications that named you without linking. A short, polite email converts a surprising share of these.
Only then consider disavowing
Google has become considerably better at ignoring low-quality links without help. Disavow only where you see a clear manipulative pattern — paid networks, obvious footprints, links you know were bought — or where you are working through a manual action. Disavowing out of general anxiety does more harm than good, and it is reversible only slowly.