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If you have a list of the linking pages from which your SEO firm requested removal (and you should) you can use ScreamingFrog to crawl that list, with a custom filter set to look for your URL. It'll spit back a list of pages that still have your links on them.

Its a great discussion. I doubt that Google or Bing will give us a real answer. But if you can forward negative SEO then we are in a heap of trouble. As far as testing this, I say go for it. Mr. Cutts says that if you get an algo penalty and you undo it then the penalty is undone.

Did you receive the answer you were looking for?  I'm going to go ahead and mark this question as "Answered," but if you need more info or help please let me know.  Thanks!

Hi Nakul, Thanks for the detailed suggestion again. We will take Richard's suggestion to explore the possibility of hiring  Virante if the price is right.  However, it is great learning experience to gain insight to your thought process. Have a great weekend!

I would recommend using the brand name for linking in 5 out of 8 links. Be diverse and target the user. The search engine can detect what you want to rank for with a few authoritative links and proper usage for internal linking. How to keep it looking natural... Good Question. Would you put an ad on the moon for one of your customers to find your business? Better yet would you direct a random person to the moon for no reason? Well, any link that does not belong is doing just that. It is targeting not relevant traffic to your niche, and you are placing an ad on the moon. If it makes sense then its natural and the search engine will determine this via user interaction. Use your keywords in variations and also be sure to deep link. Only place links where it makes sense, even if you have to create sense : ) Google will punish you for over optimizing and spam.. However if you are targeting customers with an ad on the moon. I feel like Google should send your site to the moon. It deserves it! lol

I would tend to agree with Phil. The bottom content doesn't feel natural, at the end of the day a homepage cannot be all things to all men, use your internal pages and blogs (if you have them) to target some of your lesser keywords and let your homepage focus on your big hitters. You should take a look at this Panda centric White Board Friday, it covers a lot of common SEO bad practices, i think a couple of these may be applicable to your proposed website. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/6-changes-every-seo-should-make-before-the-over-optimization-penalty-hits-whiteboard-friday I hope this helps, as its a jungle out there right now!!

I told Google that SEO company promised they will remove as best as they can.  I don't know how it sounds to Google.

We also have a list of recommended companies at http://www.seomoz.org/article/recommended that might help you out.

I don't have any hard numbers as what is too much, so I can't speak to that. My approach to building backlinks is try and act like a user of my site. Go to sites that have blogs, or forums that discuss your industry and add links where appropriate. For new sites, I try to build a link a day. For established sites, I try and get a link a week. If your users are engaging, you should encourage them with your content to help build the links for you. Maybe I have a little to much faith in Search Engines, but it is their job to know when a site is relevant to a specific query. You do your part on creating a good user experience on your site and your customers / consumers should be reacting to it positively by speaking about it on forums, blogs, and social media, these are also known indicators to search engines about the value of your specific page or site in regards to the topic being discussed. Google has been cracking down on link networks, link rings, spam sites and the like. For a long time sites were manipulating the natural back links by buying or exchanging links with each other. This you can understand Google must take seriously with people's livelihood at stake. If you're a new site, then spend some extra time getting the word out about your site. If you're established, time maybe better spent improving content, adding cool tools or features and making your users want to link to it for you.

Thanks again for sharing. At this point, we also lean towards building good quality links as what Ivaylo suggested.