the seo mystery: why a beverly hills dentist was getting traffic from china (and what we did about it)

By Enzo Sison — Founder of Prism

If you’re a local business and your website (opens in a new tab) traffic report looks like an international travel itinerary… something’s off.

In this video, I walk through a real “SEO (opens in a new tab) detective” case we hit with a client (a dental (opens in a new tab) practice (opens in a new tab) in Beverly Hills). Google Analytics showed most of their traffic over the last 28 days coming from China, with the U.S. coming second, plus meaningful traffic from places like Singapore, France, and the UK.

For a Beverly Hills dentist, that’s not “global expansion.” That’s a problem.

Below is the exact workflow we used to trace the root cause and what you should do if your website has the same kind of SEO baggage.

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Watch the video (full breakdown)

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The symptom: “Why is my traffic coming from China?”

When you look at your analytics and see:

• A big spike in traffic from countries you don’t serve
• A bounce rate that’s insanely high (70–80% is a classic sign)
• Sessions that don’t convert, don’t call, don’t book, don’t buy

…it usually means one of a few things:

1. Bot/spam traffic
2. Bad tracking setup (filters, tags, or referrers polluting your data)
3. Your site is being referenced/linked in weird places (often from old SEO tactics)

In our case, it was #3.

And it was ugly.

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The root cause: old-school black hat backlink spam

Here’s what we uncovered:

• The client’s domain had been around since before 2010
• Lots of vendors had worked on the website over the years
• Back then (roughly 2005–2015), some SEO vendors used black hat link building to “game” rankings

The classic strategy was:

• Pay someone a small amount (often via marketplaces like Fiverr)
• Have them create accounts across hundreds or thousands of random blogs
• Drop comments with a keyword-rich name + a link back to your site
  Example keyword: “Dentist Los Angeles”
  Link: the dentist’s website

Years later, those links are still out there.

And now they don’t help you. They hurt you.

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The “SEO detective” workflow: 3 tools, no fluff

You don’t need 10 tools and a $5,000 audit to find this stuff.

We used three:

• Google Analytics (free)
• Google Search Console (opens in a new tab) (free)
• Semrush (paid, but worth it when you need it)

Here’s the exact flow.

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Step 1: Confirm the weirdness in Google Analytics

Start with the simplest check:

GA → Reports → User / Acquisition / Geo (depending on GA version)

Look at:

• Traffic by country
• Traffic by source/medium
• Bounce rate / engagement rate
• Landing pages for that traffic

In our situation:

• China was #1 by country
• Bounce rate was sky high
• Nothing about the traffic matched the business

That’s your first clue: this traffic is not real demand.

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Step 2: Check if it’s referral traffic or backlink-driven

Next question:
Where is this traffic actually coming from?

In GA, look at:

• Referrals
• “Source” and “Referral path” (if available)
• Landing pages those users hit

If you see traffic coming from random websites that have nothing to do with your business (food blogs, spam domains, weird directories), you’re probably dealing with backlink spam or referral spam.

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Step 3: Use Semrush to inspect backlinks at scale

This is where Semrush earned its keep.

In Semrush:

• Go to Backlink Analytics
• Enter your domain
• Review:
  • Referring domains
  • New/lost backlinks
  • Anchor text distribution
  • Toxicity signals

In the video example, we found:

• 385 referring domains
• Almost none were related to dentistry or Los Angeles
• Many were based in totally irrelevant countries
• One random site was linking to the dental practice 75 times

That’s not “good SEO.” That’s a footprint.

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Step 4: Click into the worst offenders and inspect the page

This is the part most people skip, and it’s the part that actually explains the “why.”

We opened the referring page and did:

Command + F → search (opens in a new tab) for the anchor text
Example: “Dentist Los Angeles”

And there it was.

A comment from a “user account” named something like Dentist Los Angeles saying random nonsense (like “I didn’t know Indians eat pumpkin.”)

And here’s the tell:

• Clicking the “user” didn’t go to a user profile
• It redirected straight to the dentist’s website

That’s deliberate spam.

And if you scroll further, you see more accounts like:

• Therapist Los Angeles
• SEO Los Angeles
• (more keyword-stuffed names)

That pattern is not accidental.

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Why this hurts your SEO (and your data)

Here’s the blunt truth:

1) It confuses Google

Your site is about dentistry, but your backlink profile says “food blogs, random comments, unrelated international sites.”

Google is way smarter than it was in 2010. This stuff does not look trustworthy.

2) It wrecks engagement metrics

People click the link expecting one thing, land on a dentist website, and immediately leave.

That inflates bounce rate, ruins conversion reporting, and makes it harder to interpret what’s working.

3) It creates “SEO baggage” that follows you for years

If your domain has been around a long time and a lot of vendors touched it, you can inherit old tactics you didn’t approve—and might not even know exist.

This is extremely common with older domains.

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What to do next: a clean, practical action plan

There are three levels of response, depending on how bad it is.

Level 1: Don’t panic—document what you’re seeing

Before you start “fixing,” get clear on the facts:

• Which countries are spiking?
• Which sources/referrers are driving it?
• Which pages are being linked to?
• What anchor text is being used?

You want receipts before you touch anything.

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Level 2: Identify and prioritize toxic referring domains

In Semrush, export your referring domains list and flag:

• Totally irrelevant sites
• Sites with obvious spam patterns
• Sites linking dozens of times with keyword anchors
• Networks of similar-looking domains

You’re not trying to clean every single thing overnight.
You’re trying to remove the obvious junk first.

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Level 3: Remove what you can, then disavow what you can’t (carefully)

There are two main options:

Option A: Outreach + removal

You can contact site owners and ask them to remove the links. This works occasionally, but it’s usually slow and inconsistent—especially with spammy sites.

Option B: Disavow (advanced)

You can create a disavow file and submit it to Google so Google ignores those links for ranking purposes.

Two important notes:

1. Disavowing does not “block traffic.” People can still click links and land on your site. Disavow is about how Google counts links for rankings.
2. It’s not instant. It can take time for Google to reprocess signals.

A disavow file typically looks like this:

• domain:spammyexample.com
• domain:anotherjunkdomain.net

(Do not disavow random stuff blindly. If you disavow good links, you can hurt your own rankings.)

If you’re not confident, get a second opinion before you submit anything.

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The meta-lesson: SEO is just debugging

This whole situation is exactly like software engineering:

• You spot a weird symptom
• You trace the system backward
• You isolate the root cause
• You ship a fix without breaking other things

Sometimes it’s frustrating as hell.
Then you finally find the real cause and it’s so obvious in hindsight.

That’s the job.

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Quick checklist: “Is my domain carrying SEO baggage?”

If you answer “yes” to any of these, it’s time for an audit:

• The domain existed before ~2015
• Multiple vendors worked on it
• You’ve never looked at your backlink profile
• You see traffic from countries you don’t serve
• Bounce rate is unusually high with no clear reason
• You get random spikes that don’t correlate with marketing campaigns

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If you want help: Prism can run the audit with you

If you’re seeing weird traffic patterns and you want a clean answer (fast), this is the kind of detective work we do.

We’ll walk through:

• GA + Search Console data sanity checks
• Backlink profile analysis
• Anchor text and referring domain patterns
• A safe remediation plan (removals + disavow when appropriate)

If you want us to take a look, reach out through the Prism site.

Or start with our seo audit service to get a prioritized plan.

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Final takeaway

You don’t need fancy tools or magic SEO hacks.

You need:

• Google Analytics
• Google Search Console
• Semrush (when needed)
• The willingness to follow the evidence

Because half the time, the “mystery” is just an old vendor’s strategy still haunting your domain.

And now you know how to find it.