Explain the purpose of this site. SEO? Spam? Both?

[ExcelRoofing]

This post is deleted!

[EGOL]

(they won't tell me because it's their proprietary secret sauce)

If they do not tell you what they do then you have no way of knowing if they are doing work that will damage your rankings or help them.

I would get out of my deal with them.  Getting hit by a Penguin problem will tank your rankings for an extended period of time.  Sometimes Penguin problems are so severe that you have to start over on a new domain.

[Mike.Bean]

You should disavow it as soon as possible. It is just a spam site.

[gazzerman1]

Chances are that this site is part of a  private network of sites being prepped for link building.

They start by doing little wrong but building good PA/DA etc... and adding content in a specific genre

Then suddenly links will start appearing on there in a short period of time and then eventually it will get caught by Google and possibly any sites linking from it will have their gains taken away or worse they may also get penalised in some way.

There is NO secret sauce any more in link building. If they wont tell you then its grey/black hat and will get you penalised somewhere down the road.

You can use link discovery tools to keep an eye on new links, like Majestic. But I would only go with transparency from an SEO company or your in for a a quick win and a terrible end.