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Last month, a client of mine has had a very large increase in irrelevant traffic.  This traffic is all being sent by Google from mostly eastern Europe, but also from Egypt and Brazil.  The largest influx is from Turkey. The traffic is all landing on only two URL's.  The magnitude of this traffic is about 350 visits per day.  The main keywords sending traffic are: müzik indirme programları (Turkish which translates to "music download programs") تحميل برنامج اوبرا (Arabic translates to "download Opera") program za skidanje muzike (Bosnian for "program for downloading music") My client is a small nonprofit summer music festival (with a strong emphasis on Opera music) so some of the on-page at least relates to these keywords.  But the site is entirely in English. Since the words are related to a traditional sketchy vertical I'm worried that my client site has been hacked. Though, for the life of me, I can't imagine what anyone can gain from this. My questions are: Does anyone have any idea what is going on? What are the potential ramifications of this irrelevant traffic?  (I'm worried about the traffic slowing down the site, I'm also worried that 350 visits per day and a 95% bounce rate is going to hurt my clients reputation with search engines) What can be done about it? Thank you for any insight you can provide.

Hello good people, I've read just about everything on SEOmoz about the value of the Better Business Bureau link and accreditation.   But at some point a business is so small that the ROI calculation doesn't make sense. I'm trying to pinpoint when the BBB accred.  becomes a good deal.  Your input is greatly appreciated. Here are some theoretical businesses based on my local clients.  Which businesses would you recommend BBB accred to for $350/year? *Trial Law Firm - 4 partners.  Doesn't show up anywhere in the serps despite good industry reputation.  Big revenue. *Metropolitan Massage Business - 2 contractors.  100k annual revenue.  1st page for most relevant serps.  But few #1 rankings. *Dog Walking Service - 1 man show.  About 50k in annual revenue.  Has top ranking at hyperlocal level but doesn't show up in the larger metropolitan landscape. *A crafting semipro -  Sells jewelry online about 10k annual revenue.  No presence in search engines. Thanks for your help!

My client is a personal injury lawyer with one office in a highly competitive major metropolitan area and another office in a very small town.  They are changing offices in the major metropolitan area in June and will have a new address. They are already doing well in serps related to the small town but are nowhere to be found in the metropolitan area serps. Currently I can find unclaimed listings in Google+ Local for both offices.  I cannot find any Google+ business page and they don't know of one. Given this information and the current state of Google+ how would you proceed to list this client? Specific questions include: *Would there be any straight SEO benefit of making a Google+ Business Page for them? *Would you claim the Google+ Local listing for the Metro office that is going to be moved in 5 months?  or would you wait until the office is moved then create a new Google+ Local listing?

I'm trying to compile a list of SEOs and/or Inbound Marketers that specialize in helping micro-businesses. For the purposes of this study 'micro' means any business with 5 or fewer employees. Names are great.  Website URLs would be Fab.  Twitter accounts would be super Fab. For instance: David Mihm http://www.davidmihm.com/ @davidmihm I'd be happy to share the final list with anyone who provides a name.

Does anyone have any thoughts about on-page optimization for the long-tail of keywords? I know, I know, the way you capture long-tail searches is by having lots of content.  The problem is that I can't convince some of my clients to do anything with content marketing. Even so, I'm noting that as much as half the leads for some small business clients comes from long-tail searches.  Meanwhile I spend all my time trying to get their pages to rank for a one or two terms. It seems like there must a scientific way to approach increasing long-tail traffic on pre-existing pages.  I'm now experimenting with looking at the frequency of words that appear in searches that the client only receives 1 visit from.  Together these one-offs amount to about half the traffic. For instance if I have data like this: Visits           Search 1                    Training help for my German Shepard 1                   German Shepard resources in St. Paul 1                   German Shepard clubs etc. etc. Then it makes sense to add some language about German shepards, and perhaps try for anchor text with the 'german shepard'  match.   Perhaps add a photo with alt text of German Shepard etc. The trouble with this technique is that my main target term for the page might be something like "Dog Training Twin Cities".   If I try to increase my long-tail traffic about german shepards I risk creating a frankenpage! I'd love to know if any one else has tried to approach this problem of maximizing long-tail traffic on existing pages without hurting UX. Thanks!

I often work with people who are in service industries who do not have a business address (dog sitters, pilates teachers, personal trainers, house cleaners).  They often work by going into someone's home to provide the service. However in some of these industries independent contractors compete with businesses who have a brick and mortar location.  This presents an SEO challenge when a serp features a 7-pack of local business. When I search "masseuse" I get a 7-pack after a Wikipedia result, and a merriam-webster result.  So being in the 7-pack is essential for any real traffic for the term. One solution to this problem is to have the contractors use their home address for their Google places listing, Yelp, etc.  Is this a good idea? I'm a little worried about this technique because these independent contractors don't actually bring clients into their homes.  Also it would be misleading if someone was searching for a place to go to get a massage instead of having someone come to their home. But the presence of 7pack in a serp really puts these people at an unfair advantage. Would you use a home address?  Do you have any other suggestions as to how to level the playing field in these cases?

Hi Mozzers, So in one of my campaigns I'm trying to optimize for "Personal Trainer Minneapolis" and "Minneapolis Personal Trainer". Would the best tactic be: Develop and optimize two pages.  One for each of these similar keywords.  (Clearly not the best UX). or Try to optimize a single page for both. Thanks for your thoughts!

I'm dipping my toes into infographic design. On of my desired outcomes is to gain links by having other sites embed my graphic. I'm considering using Tableau's interactive data visualization software to do so; thus creating a widget, embedding it on my blog, and including the embed code for others to post. Is it possible to include a juice passing link in such an infographic?  I know its possible to include links inside the tableau graphic but not sure if they have straight SEO value. If these links are not juice passing would it be better to go with a simple image link that passes value?

I just watched Rand's latest webinar on the end of search without social.  It was very timely for me because I've been putting a lot of thought into how allocate my available person-hours. It is clear that SEO these days necessitates both linkbuilding and social.  But how much of each?  (50%/50%?, 80%/20%?, etc.) -For the DIY small business owner (<10 hours per week available for SEO) -For SEO savvy web business (~20 hours per week available of SEO) -For in-house or other full time SEO's (30+ hours available) Clearly it depends on a lot of other factors, I'm just looking for a good rule of thumb that can be adjusted according to the business.

The general advice is the SEOmoz community is not to bother with low quality submission directories.  Makes sense to me as there existence seems solely to manipulate search rankings, which google doesn't like. So what are some clear and actionable criteria to distinguish between a directory worth spending time on and one that is not worth spending time on?

I've seen a couple of questions about outsourcing linkbuilding.  The general tone is that it is a very dangerous practice to select any service or to hire someone without a very thorough vetting of their past projects. This makes sense to me. But my businesses don't have the resources to hire an employee or an established seo firm.   I am developing a sound linkbuilding practice from what I learn here at seomoz.  The trouble is I just don't have the time to do it to the scale necessary. I can afford to hire an assistant/contractor for $15/hr or less. Would it be a good idea to hire someone from elance or odesk and work very closely with them to make sure they build quality links? Do you think this is better than hiring someone who says they can get me to google #1 for a specific keyword for $100 or so? Does seomoz or anyone else have any recommendations on where to go to find quality help? Thanks

I noticed one of the negatively correlated ranking factors was length of URL.  I'm building a page from scratch, we are trying to rank for 'Minneapolis Fitness' and 'Minneapolis Massage'. Is www.minnnepolismassageandfitness.com  just ridiculously long?  Or does the exact match outweigh the penalty for URL length?