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That's probably your queue to run away screaming. Guest blogging for the sake of guest blogging is a very bad idea these days. You might also want to mention that 'Loved by Moz' bit to someone at Moz. They can confirm or deny. Whoops, they just did.

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/guest-blogging/

That's not to say all guest blogging is dead per se, but guest blogging for ABC plumbing company on alllandscapersseolinks4all.com is dead.

Here's a semi-fictional scenario:

Internet Guy A walks up to Internet Guy B and says; "Hey, for some reason I don't want to post this on my own deal, but I think your audience would really benefit from my words. What do you say?"

And Internet Guy B says; "Cool bro, much trust. I know you'll behave yourself and be excellent - Wyld Stallyns 4 eva!"

Then Internet Guy B would be vouching for Internet Guy A. Everybody's p-toot is on the line and the honor system, with editorial control on Internet Guy B's part. So long as Internet Guy A or Internet Guy B aren't offering a material incentive for the post and everyone follows the bajillion other rules, some unwritten, everybody is cool.

But what you're talking about seems to be scary and you may want to think twice. Do you really know who you're getting into 'link bed' with? You don't until it happens. In the real world, that takes an inordinate amount of vodka. If you've had one of those nights, you know it isn't pretty.

I was checking my referral traffic after Pigeon, just to see how much review site/local directory traffic has increased. Then I found something odd.

It's not exactly like Tlames has stopped. I've noticed that kamabasoft(dot)com has been referring a bit of traffic as of late. Both Tlames and kamba referral traffic primarily originate from Brazil. When I did a site operator on kamba, I noticed two Tlames subs on kamba. (See attached image)

I'm aware that both referrers come from more than one country, but Brazil makes up the bulk.

Has anyone else noticed something similar?  Isn't it interesting that the tlames subs don't redirect, rather they go to headless '...' page? Kamba is obviously scraping - I just don't understand the reason for the redirects.

YOMr7Mf

Yes, I felt myself move from total obscurity into obscurity. It was... different. There was a little more discussion about it on Barry Schwartz's Google+. I don't know how useful this is, but one Riccardo Mares & associate report that 'Media Center PC' is common in the user agent string.

I'm getting something a little different out of this. I plugged rugcare.com into SEM Rush. It shows a considerable spike in traffic in June, then a very big drop in July. Joehadeed.com and bergmanns.com are showing relative spikes and drops as well. So there's a possibility that a bigger competitor is eating everyone's share.

Though when I plug rugcare.com into Majestic SEO, it shows 55K redirect links pointing to rugcare.com. Majestic picked this up in late June, which may account for the sudden spike in rankings and traffic, followed by a steep decline in July. It also appears that the site received a number of links from housecleaningadvice.com with the anchor text 'upholstery cleaning tips - rug care'. They appeared to be nofollow, and I can't find the links anymore, but I wouldn't take a link from that site at all. It looks like it's part of a typical blog spam network.

I don't want to scare you, but have you received any warnings in GWT?

I also can't find these three pages on the current site via nav or crawl:

https://web.archive.org/web/20131230215654/http://www.rugcare.com/carpet-cleaning

https://web.archive.org/web/20131014021917/http://www.rugcare.com/oriental-rug-cleaning

https://web.archive.org/web/20131014021812/http://www.rugcare.com/carpet-and-rug-repairs

Was there any particular reason for their omission? Do you know how much traffic those pages used to receive? It looks like the oriental rug cleaning page would have accounted for a chunk of traffic on it's own. Now it just 404s.

The URLs don't resolve. Would love to take a closer look.

It would appear that it's not such a big deal. Generally the ccTLD is a good indicator of intent. But you can actually target your country of choice in Google Webmaster Tools. That would count as yet another signal that your client is targeting New Zealand.

A similar question was recently answered in the Moz forum. I would look there as well.

Some things you can do to target your location:

• Google Webmaster Tools
• Meta Data
• Contact Information
• Schema Markup

The only thing I would be concerned about is if there was a better web host in New Zealand, or if competitors were using a CDN. That would generally make their sites faster, one through geography and one through infrastructure. Either way, that's a strong ranking factor where you may lose out.

Other than that, it looks like you and your client should be alright in regard to your question.

There's a Seneca Plumbing organic on the first page for 'buffalo plumbing'. It has to be worth something. Seneca is nearly two hours away, but they have a Buffalo address and what appears to be a local number.

If it really became an issue, they could possibly rebrand. It's expensive, I know, especially for the average plumbing company mktg budget. But if it becomes evident their current brand is harming their expansion, it's something they should think about now.

It wouldn't be too hard to redirect the old domain to the new branded domain. Even though exact match domains are going down as a ranking factor, it wouldn't hurt to be XYZplumber.com/buffalo.

Yes, Google has been fairly overt when it comes to application performance. Just to give you a little insight into how important Google thinks speed is, they cut any internal application if it's even slightly sluggish. And further, wouldn't you think it's significant when they display that they've delivered nine billion results in .0000023454355 seconds?

There are a lot of easy, quick, wins you can have in under five minutes. Here's a couple to start you off.

GZip Compression:

Odds are you're using one of these server flavors. This is a very quick way to increase speed. Just be very careful when editing/updating .htaccess. The slightest bit of white space or a syntax error will take the site down. Your host may even be able to do this for you in some fashion, but a lot of them shy away from even supporting .htaccess. So once you start down that road, it's lonely a one - save for some forums.

Reduce Image File Size:

There are tons of ways to reduce image file size without a lot of hassle. Some will losslessly compress (no reduction in image quality) other forms are 'lossy'.

TinyPNG (Lossy)

Smush.it (Lossy)

Google Page Speed Tool (Lossless - In Chrome Dev Console ctrl+shift+j, yo)

There are a ton of other ways, but these are some easy ways to get a faster page.

Look at it this way, what would be an easier/more effective use of your time and your client's budget? Would it be diverting your efforts from one site, in order to support two? Whenever this particular question is asked, the prevailing answer is more or less; "Don't dilute your efforts with multiple properties when you can better achieve your goal with one property."

So in general, you would want a page dedicated to that area, rather than rewriting the entire site. When it comes to your local listings, you can likely set a service area that encompasses the targets where possible.

You should be concerned about duplicate/thin content. Why go through all of that trouble to slightly rewrite a site, just to have it come up short? Plus there are other concerns, like the domain would be brand new - so you would have to get over that hump as well.

Local Landing Pages: A Guide to Great Implementation should be helpful. Mirium kind of, sort of, knows a lot about Local. : )

I'm not really sure exactly what type of functionality they need, though Wrike could be adapted to a lot of use cases. Though for all of those project management goodies, there's kind of a steep learning curve in comparison to Basecamp. I've used Smartsheet, Basecamp and Wrike.

I didn't care for Smartsheet - something just seemed to be missing. Anyone can pick up Basecamp in about 10 minutes and run with it, but things can get lost in the simplicity. Wrike, again, has a steep learning curve in comparison and it's easy to get lost in the features. But Wrike is a PMs dream.

Wish I could help out with The In, but I don't know anyone in that business.

You would get a 404 if you didn't employ the proper URL rewrites at the server level. Unless search engines have become smart enough to understand common extensions of a URL and attribute any possible link equity to the proper URL - then yes - you may likely need a 301 instead of rewrites.

Full disclosure: I've gone extensionless for years. I have never studied this particular case.

I've seen spikes like this quite a few times. Most of the time it's a drop in the bucket and a note to the client telling them why traffic spiked, and why over-all traffic is lower now - as well as a note in Analytics for future reference. But if it gets to the point where it's hampering site performance/eating bandwidth and RAM, then it's a major concern.

I would look at your server log file to get a better idea of what's going on. Simply filtering the traffic in GA is basically sticking your head in the sand while what sounds like a DDoS or attempted hack is happening. So definitely have someone look into this deeper, rather than just filtering your data.

Considering IE7 is one of the oldest user agents imaginable, you could selectively block IE 7 user agent string at the server level. Though they could modify their user agent at a later date.

The only reason, that comes to mind, you wouldn't want to do this if your site is meant to target local/state governments. I've heard horror stories where one state required IE 5 Support, but that was some kind of ERP deal. Other than that, I haven't seen legit IE 7 traffic in years.

If your server is running Apache, you can give this a try. Also, it's possible you're using WordPress, so give WP Secure a glance. I would not advise that you do this on your own if you're unfamiliar with .htaccess and you can't push and pull from a test environment. It can knock the site down.

Well, there are a lot of sites that aggregate reviews. But they're generally adding some sort of other value. I wouldn't actively try to spread the same review. Content gets scraped every day, why pay for something that's going to happen anyway? That's my general take on things like this.

Looking into the situation a little deeper, I think this particular effort is about rep. mgmt. The first thing that has to happen is actually fixing the issue, or issues, with the business. No matter what's done, traditional approaches to reputation management are just a bandage if a real problem exists.

What you can do instead is something similar to the Reputation Management Workout section. It's a pretty good overview of how you can generate real reviews. Once those start coming in, you can iframe them or use them as an image.

I've seen a case, here on the Moz forum, where a site appeared to drop considerably after including reviews on their site. I'm not 100% sure that was the root cause, but it was also the only change. So if you're feeling feisty, you can try it out and let me know.

That particular site was using Schema markup for an aggregate rating without the other reviews. So you can see there are a lot of possible ways to do this inappropriately.

Actual, unique, reviews that are properly marked up should be kosher in HTML form. Just be careful to avoid general review spam/schema spam.

There are a lot of sites that aggregate UGC. But they tend to do something with this aggregated UGC that adds value. If you're super concerned, there's always the possibility of an iframe.

It's kind of funny that I've referenced this whiteboard Friday twice in the last few days, but I think it's a great starting point for part of what you're trying to do. Part of your situation is referenced as an anecdote.

I would definitely avoid any product/service that spreads duplicate UGC across the internets. (Review on Yelp! gets placed on numerous other review sites... that sort of thing is bad.)

I would generally recommend a percentage based upon a set budget. That seems to be fair enough. Bruceclay.com is pretty transparent about their pricing. I would say that's a fair enough pricing example. If you start charging much more than that, it will really eat into campaign performance, IMO.

Then again, if I didn't have to pay bills, I would do pretty much all internet marketing functions for free.

It's pretty hard to tell if that's a followed link, what with the strike-out and all. Though I would say this falls into the link scheme category, given the exact match anchor text. Google has already been fairly clear that badge/widget links, especially those that pass PR and include exact match anchors, are seen as manipulative.

So yes, it appears they're playing a pretty dangerous game. Though they may slide in under the wire until it comes to a manual review, or if it becomes so noticeable that it's filtered or hit by the algorithm. It definitely violates a few of these guidelines on link schemes.

410 is the recommended way to tell search engines the page is gone. all of the things mentioned above are a facet of how you should deal with this issue. sorry for the brevity and terrible punction. moz forum is a pretty iffy thing via mobile. my eggs are getting cold.

You shouldn't expect anyone to solve anything that technical, with any sort of certainty, without stating the actual domain.

If it's getting organic traffic, great. Could it get more? Maybe.

No one can speak with any sort of certainty based upon what you have written at this point.

Apologies if I appear a little cranky. I'm getting tired of all of these; "I have a problem with a bajillion possible issues, but I won't tell you what I'm looking at." questions.

So you can always PM me, I'm not coming after your client. The problem is more interesting.

I really don't know how that forum handles sigs, so I can't say for certain. What you can do is check a handful of your old posts at random, if the sig is gone - the links are gone.

The problem with all link data, even Google Webmaster Tools, is that it's never up to date. Mozbot, Googlebot and all the various crawlers have to crawl the links to show us link data. It can take a while between removal and another crawl, so the answer is 'patience'.