theartfuldodger

The ads are very effective, but ad agencies are not filled with top tier people, you can train someone to run ad campaigns in a day. As a result, much of the button pushers at small agencies are recent grads with backgrounds not well suited to optimization.

A remarketing ad can be set up using exclusion lists to stop display after a purchase ( checkout page cookie), also most should be set up with limits. These are basic,obvious and easy things to implement. Attribution isn't always perfect but what you observed is more of a reflection of the high frequency of low tier ad managers. Many don't know any better, many don't care, many have no access to actually edit a client website (or know how)

It's the wild west still.

The example you used is also of a brand that I am overmarketed to, whoever is spending their money has some belief or knowledge of very broad targeting that I don't understand. I have not nor ever will buy blinds and my browsing behavior does not align with the obvious interest groups one would pick.

It's not just the small agencies that blow money, someone is patting themselves on the back about the 100,000,000+ impressions they are generating daily for selectblinds, but that funnel is going to be ugly when it's time to jazz up their presentation to show off that success!

I was in G&T programs and ended up skipping multiple grades and going to specialized schools for a few years. I was also a colossal asshole and a behavior problem so my story wont be an exact parallel.

The trade-off was worth it. But my teachers did care, they campaigned for some solution to what they saw as bad behavior from being bored and unchallenged. It did create authority problems to see the Teachers one was supposed to respect stutter on with easy problems and to see your peers having trouble spelling basic words, it was ok to be "other" from that. Early social life doesn't have to be tied to a classroom, I got that from neighborhood friends, athletics church and family. There is no excuse to having your young child wasting the opportunity of her headstart by following the same path as the other kids.

Once you are out of early ed, the honors and AP classes should provide enough challenges, it would be unusual for her to excel in every topic.

I didn't have any particular academic or career excellence other than the path I described there, turns out I just read fast and had tested out of standardized reading levels by the "third" grade but if someone hadn't intervened and noticed that I wasn't mean spirited, I just had read the whole book in the time the rest were reading three pages and now had nothing to do, I would have had a way different feeling about learning and likely would have ended up in alternative schools for being an authority issue.

Most kids in G&T programs even out with others academically over time, there is no reason to waste the younger years where she is showing advanced aptitude

Sure, because it's just a comment on hackernews and I expect a higher understanding of the basics of the online world here. Did you write and create a piece of content, did you format it, did you host it, did you skip out on going out with your friends because of a deadline?

Specifically creating products to damage these people's returns because of your inability to scroll, use page down, ctr f to move quickly to the information you need is your own weakness and it doesn't give you a right to someone else's labor. You know that without a long ethics conversation. Most recipe writers will fail hard and most who try to create revenue through the ad model fail hard. You want unrestricted access, pay a subscription fee, just as you would expect for your own efforts.

There is no Grey area here, you know and understand the problem and the excuse of laziness or the importance of your time for a 30 second operation wouldn't hold up with anyone.

Can you define beginner more specifically? Knowing basic semantic structure like the back of your hand is required for quick review and composition, understanding basic buyer psychology is necessary for developing appropriate content to match the querier's needs.

Most SEO content is garbage, rehashed, outdated, unproven.

I have the benefit of owning over 300 sites and managing another 300 or so in some capacity including full analytics access. I don't often see content written by people who "do" and work across diverse industries.

But if you define where you are starting I'd be happy to send a few ideas your way.

Looks normal, I've taken down hundreds of sites this way.

Source your content correctly or make your own. What seems like a very well researched story is gone because of lazy understanding of rights.

Just republish without the images, it's not a difficult SEO space to rank in, 301 the old article, contact anyone you can to replace the backlink to your new url.

It's obvious to everyone that content producers who write, format, publish and promote recipes usually have a revenue goal. Any tactic that defeats that is theft, whether you want to point to fineprint somewhere or not. You know that someone made something and you have decided not to give back.

Ad free recipe sites are already handled, you pay a subscription fee instead.

That being said, the final format of an onlyrecipes scrape is very attractive! It would make for a nice intentional feature of recipe website, so the producers can still get their impression revenue and the readers can enjoy such a pleasing format

I used to print out entire texts from this site from my school library when I was a research assistant with unrestricted access in the early 00's

Awesome to see it still exists and is getting views

This has happened to me several times, I have never taken it seriously or put much effort into responding.

I usually would go straight to the throat and very personal.

Publish their letter on the domain they seek, capture all lawyer and company details and publish to site.

Use opsec for phone numbers, call them at terrible hours ( at home) to discuss offers of payment.

They are trying to bleed you with superior resources so guerrilla tactics are best ( legal of course)

They act different when they realize they are exposed and you don't care about normal processes.

Lol, I should make my own David v Goliath service.

Depends on the size of Goliath. No one scary came for me and a few 2am calls led to crickets.

I thought Edison's "visionary" status had been discarded and his primary skillsets were deceit and self publicity?

How much meditation time does it take to strong arm other people's work over and over again?

It's a talent, but visionary doesn't seem apt.

Habits, I didn't fully adapt to a reasonable workout schedule until I had an unhealthy 9-5 desk job. It became quite simple to just go to the gym on lunch and prep meals on the weekend. Eventually strength and physique changes added to motivation and the habit was formed It's also made the work day easier with a more significant change of pace and extra energy and focus levels.

As long as it was a legal option, I would immediately exclude all of Texas from having user accounts or advertising on my network. In the case of FB, public pressure would immediately work in my favor.

There are plenty of financial groups and apps that exclude based on territory due to local laws and regulations, I believe it is a legal option. It's a little flex and would result in short term advertising revenue loss but should end any further meddling in my "free" to join business.

"Your representatives believe they have the right to meddle in the content policies of our organization, they do not, until these foolish new regulations are repealed, Texas is no longer part of Facebook, please contact your representatives about this matter, a download of your account content will remain available "here" - Thank You, The Lizard King"

I collect at a rate that far exceeds our production capacity to develop and have a nice collection stored at a relevant domain. It's not advertised or used, just an alternate management technique.

I own somewhere around 600 domains, with only 20% in any type of active state.

I think there are about 200 on the site, thinkfur.com and skycaver.com are probably my favorites that don't have a planned use yet. Awakera.com is pretty solid too.

Seobrandabledomains.com

It would be very difficult to get a lunch or dinner for $15 that was of any reasonable quality in my region. I do not live in an absurdly high COL area (CNY)

What can you possibly be eating for $5

I think some people can treat eating as more utilitarian, while having a great meal or even a halfway decent meal is a true pleasure and an experience worth having as often as possible for myself. The small pleasure is what makes the grind feel worthwhile.

I fully expect to walk out $25-$30 lighter after a basic entree/lunch, a drink and a tip, even if eating alone on a lunch break. A date with my wife ( on the low end) $70, bring out the whole family ($100)

Do we have significantly different average prices. Maybe a pre-made gas station sandwich or single fast food sandwich could cost $5

A $5 meal sounds like a chore, an amazing roadside Shack find! or absolute trash ingredients not worth eating.

How do you do it?

This is magnificent.

It's not top of mind at the moment

I have has this app installed for at least a year, but only received one call that ended up being a training/example call. It seems well made, just perhaps more volunteers than users

I sell around 1.5-2m a year in website and design and marketing projects for a 5-7 person team mostly through a monthly adwords spend of $1k and portfolio references and being legitimate SEO experts so our site performs well and our client sites perform well.

Minimum website project is 5.5k, the moment I just stopped working with smaller budget clients, the moment my time opened up to pursue more profitable partnerships. The cap on sales is only on production assets and could easily be 2xed using the same methods and more lenient sales tactics.

Most clients could care less about technology, but most of our projects are in Umbraco which allows us to not be apples to apples to your run of the mill wordpress providers (im personally a fan of wordpress and have hundreds of WP sites from my affiliate marketing and webdesign background)

I reviewed your portfolio, if I was hiring or looking for a web provider, it wouldn't work for me because nothing in the portfolio is complete. You should determine your audience also as most of your portfolio language is heavy with design terms, business owners (if that is your audience) should be talked to in their own language.

I audit sites frequently, the most common flaw is designers treating text as an afterthought. This article had one point that probably assists in the poor contrast choices that are so common. As I type in black on white in this text box I have trouble understanding why design professionals would call "black" on white unnatural. It is not. Unnatural isn't even an appropriate word to use for images and text displayed on a screen unless you are describing the entire experience. Do yourself ( and us) a favor and throw that whole idea out the window and start at #333 to pure black on white as your minimum contrast unless something particularly important in the overall aesthetic changes that priority.

In at least 100 examples where one of the audit fixes was "change font to #000" was the follow up feedback by a client or user tester saying that the gray was better or that "its unnatural" or "way too legible" nor a single case of analytics showing less dwell or read time ( or conversions) from users.

Complete design myth and it should die

I felt cheated this also particularly because I'd never take the time to break down the storage I used when it was a free benefit so I became locked in.

I had used multiple free accounts for years for the same purpose with minimal aggravation.

I wouldn't mind a little compensation for the nth time they have cheated,closed,broken or otherwise fucked up a product or offer I trusted from them.

I run this on my forms. I include a hard to follow disclaimer that says your entries are saved in real time "for your convenience"

It freaks people out when we reach out on the partial fill, but since I sell lead generation, it's a nice trick that they appreciate.

It's definitely problematic.

Luckily, our time is costly so only one single follow up occurs ..no list selling, mailing lists or repeat calls occur, but would be easy to do.

Its actually just an available feature on existing form software

On their previous outage/lockout they offered me a $75 gift card.

I included the same offer email as a forward to finra and they offered me $725 shortly after.

I accepted.

They may have lost me the opportunity to have had 10k profit, but maybe I wouldn't have held, who knows, but by a fluke I came out 2.5k ahead after being locked out of my account for 3 days.

I took all my cash out that day so didnt have anything in play for this outage.

I actually tried to transfer in money that morning but that failed too.

That's her story. She very much could be terminated for all manners of failure and error that we don't know about.

It's an HR nightmare to fire a pregnant woman, most would rather just avoid that particular claim and pay a few more months of salary

My local grocery store ( Wegmans) in a larger New York city has at least 60 options of chocolate bars available. A local pharmacy in my tiny rural village with a small selection still has 12-15 unique chocolate bars. This is a different selection than the standard candy aisle.

There is no good mass market American chocolate, but there is readily available access to gourmet chocolates and pseudo gourmet chocolates.

Chuao Chocalates comes to mind as having frequent distribution and can be found in many places, Sees chocolates is fairly easy to find and has been around for a century,it gets mentioned on cooking shows so I think it has some prestige/familiarity to it.

Gertrude Hawk chocolates exists in many eastern us malls (maybe elsewhere), it's made not far from Hershey park. The samplers arent bad, never really gave it a proper try.

I happen to like Godiva chocolates which is owned by Campbell's soup company and also has a factory near Hershey's but that is maybe nostalgia as I often purchased them only around Christmas and rarely even consider buying them now.

Ghirardelli is American and Theos chocolate has some esteem.

By conventional meaning of mass market, I believe only Lindt and Ghirardelli qualify and fit the description of "good"

I recently tried Callier chocolate which I read had quite a prestigious swiss heritage, it blew away any mass market Hershey/Mars "chocolate" bars but it wasnt particularly exceptional compared to similarly priced artisanal chocolates already available in the local grocery store.

Regardless of the legitimacy of the app, it is unwise to be dependent on Google for your entire infrastructure. They do and have shutdown entire accounts with no information, feedback or appeals.

I'm overly dependent on them currently myself.

We had a recent issue in accounting where an unaccounted for charge kept hitting billing from Google LLC. As we use and sell Google Suite, run a few million in Google ads and have limited cloud services we assumed the error was on our side. I audit all google ads looking for appropriate matches and then call Google Ad support, which was helpful and able to confirm the charges were not in any way related to Ads ( billing prefix suggested it was not but frequency aligned with how ads bill so was the most likely candidate)

They could not tell us what it was for or what "google llc" is

A google search for the prefix identified it as what is used for Google Play.

That is the one service that has no legitimate uses on our corporate card.

Contacting Google play about the charges and asking for clarification and disputing was not difficult.

They have an internal review period. I think 5-7 days, the review came back as. Legitimate charges. Ok, what for? They can't tell us.

What?

These were multiple charges of $500 adding up to nearly 5k in a month, but they can't match the charge to a service?

And with several million in yearly spending with Google, one would hope for a little more response time and explanation, but, that's chump change to them.

I will still be using every service, but I definitely would invite some alternatives as It is unwise to depend on Google for anything.

Those regulatory concerns should fall onto the purchasers list of responsibilities. The EEOC has the authority to censure the parties misusing their advertising options.

For example as a marketer who does work in all of the above industries , technology should not limit my use of my dollar.

If i have 10,000 for an apartment campaign, i should be able to spend 5k on ads showcasing my apartment gym focused on men and 5k on the view of the gym full of men targeted to women.( tongue in cheek example)

If the actual top level strategy is not discriminatory but rather is segmented to allow better messaging, any bullshit tech blocks shouldn't get in the way. Let the regulators do their jobs the old fashioned way.

You are right though, there are always ways to define the necessary audience using the the type of qualifiers you describe.

Volunteer Editors

"We Eschew That"

Then you eschew the massive audience of lazy gym goers, bodybuilders, referrals from the latest Joe Rogan podcast, Tim Ferriss ..basically the entire casual health crowd that want's to pretend they do hardcore research but is jumping away from you due to the text heavy layout.

I read code,I like minimalism, I am not being personal here, your designing outside of a greater potential audience and leaning towards an academic/journal design. Any UX expert that has not pointed that out, is just a job title, Go back to them and demand an example or case study where their recommendations did anything .. the industry is wrought with fools

In years past, If you were to be searching anywhere in the nation for audits relating to whether your website was legally compliant under ADA guidelines (accessible) you would run into my team quickly. Stepped away from that angle, it's boring, but still necessary, You pointed out your body font color and it's relationship to the background, now examine all the other options - particularly link colors and your choices for fine print,citations and small text. There are plenty of easy scan tools that will show you deficiencies in contrast choices including your Chrome browser.

Neither of those comments relate to your loss in rankings though -- but are deficits in your previous partners decisions and whoever made final approvals and whatever "experts" you trusted. Fairly basic stuff there. Im on your side,impressive content, I would be a reader, I am just offering some fairly simple fixes.

"moved to cloudflare"

I use cloudflare. I use cloudflare on dozens of sites, I have never personally seen a correlation of a negative impact, or really see the bad neighborhood impact as being as significant as your drop was - but there are a lot of case studies and forum posts from people who swear by a cloudflare correlation to significant drops in positioning. It's worth testing what removing it will do.

I didnt call your titles "clickbaity" - im just referencing past comments and pointing out there is nothing wrong with them, but they should be page titles and OG titles, not meta titles.

If you dont know what I mean on document structure and on page optimization options - then I really have no idea what manner of SEO opinions you could have received, "we" all have different strategies and positions, but this certainly should have benn discussed with you.. as I kind of referenced, the printed "white hat" dont over-optimize crap is only good for selling enterpise seo consultations .. your superfoods article has 4 images named superfoods_*, you have wasted opportunities throughout the site. Anyone with a basic SEO background should be able to pick out page by page and show you missed opportunities (but would have nothing to do with the dramatic drop) The directory structure you are highlighting as good, is what I am highlighting as bad, it does not align with queries, it aligns with your own encyclopedic concept of data organization ala journal websites

A hint I would make is that you seem to drop the categories in your breadcrumbs/visible architecture from the page urls in favor of shorter urls. I never would have done that myself. /supplements/pyritinol/ should be in /cognitive-function/ or even better /cognitive-function-brain-health/

The backlink profile is problematic

I am not pointing fingers, just agreeing with a previous commenter, it is not an unusual backlink profile, it looks exactly like what my own would have looked like 8 years ago on hastily made affiliate sites that could generate 5 figures a month...in there first months (those days are gone), it just does not follow what the average "natural" site looks like.

As an authority site as you rightly pointed out, crap sites will link to you to mask their crapness, but why is the volume of off page anchors so perfectly matched to exactly what "you" would it need it to be> That would be a very sophisticated attack against you

I suspect your user testing was for an intelligent crowd or done by hacks, but usability is a legit platform - how big was the sample?

You will be moving up the ranks for "Adrafinil" shortly, for that term, Look at your search competition for the term, how do you stand out?

I cant believe i am saying this, but there is such a thing as too much interlinking and excess outbound links.

You just experienced the horror of google's nonsense. your site is far superior to the sites currently earning better positions - both in quality and traditional metrics we have all bee chatting about - you got hosed... so why do you seem to have such an organic focused strategy?

One post on Facebook a day? A cover image that is not optimized for mobile, little use of video content (you have tons of it in google's index)

You might not have purchased links ..would Sol? Lots of references to examine.com and it's rise to 7 figures in the entrepreneur/marketing/growth blogs - exactly the space full of people that do this type of quick and dirty link building.

Just wanted to try and answer your response, I realize this is a very stressful time and general jabs arent helpful, so was pecking out the most useful response I could on a phone ...and other than possibly the cloudflare option, nothing should be an immediate fix, but if your going to be digging into recovery

1. Open up new channels - minimize google reliance 2. Social space is perfect for supplements, get a social team 3. Find a middle ground between minimalism and "popular science" to make your site more attractive to a larger audience. 4. Try some actual optimization around queries instead of building around a sterile encyclopedia directory 5. Bribe a Googler 6. If all else fails, even the playing field and pay blackhatters to fill your crappy competition with unnatural backlink profiles, because if you didnt do it, someone did it to you, and they had money and a reason and Google is seemingly not following their own rules in how your being assessed 7. Look at the hubpages example - the site deserved it's destruction, but watch the desperation and poor decisions made trying to "fix" it for Google and the complete lack of feedback from Google they ever managed to get

Hopefully, Sullivans comment holds true and the algo gets tweaked just right to restore you to where you belong - and the tiny list of concerns I pecked out becomes meaningless for you.

I am just noticing that you own/manage this site and are getting a lot of grief about subjective design opinions from many random developer types that do not consume content in the same manner as your audience or live in reality, so can see the frustration.

The May to present drop in positioning is catastrophic.

The content is fantastic for your space and design aligns more with journal websites than health/nutrition space. That may not be beneficial to keeping users more accustomed to image heavy,popular health space.

Contrast/Accessibility is poor - What standards were you following in a redesign?

After the redesign and as your organic positioning started plummeting - did you identify any increase in 404's and/or do visitor recordings of the traffic you do have?

Most of the titles being identified as "clickbaity" should be your OG titles and it is true that there is a weakness in on page optimization decisions and general architecture across the site. The backlink profile IS problematic! but with on page and general architecture concerns that could be improved that would be the first order of business if I was trying to restore this to former glory.

Seeing the WEB Md and drugs.com / health.com that appear in positions that your site and content are much better qualified for is concerning. You are being screwed.

Just looking at your "white kidney bean extract" article from your profile and then seeing the Livestrong article and other crap that is better positioned points out the terrible weaknesses in the last 4-5 years of Google's improved positioning for bigger brands and move away from exact matching. Livestrong hides their references in a dropdown and sticks an adblock there.

I point that out because in the end - the white hat quality guidelines are garbage and propaganda and rarely reflect reality in the enterprise/brand space .

Make the site more accessible to the average reader and those who are first researching supplements and improve your social channel. Google is not reacting logically in your positioning in comparison to the structure,positioning and quality of your competitors. But the site could be much better composed and structured.

When creating bullshit backlink sites for whatever purposes, usually not for actual reading by users, it is a common tactic to link out to non-commercial sites to show authenticity and mask the true backlink/spam purposes of the site.

This has been theorized as being ond of the original reasons wikipedia received heavy backlinks.

It is not necessarily the fault of an SEO strategy of the linked site.

Disavowing is not a worthwhile practice ( at least in recent years)

Herbal supplement review is not a PBN as it is so heavily filled with affiliate links that the backlinks would have no value to any who purchase such things. So in this case, examine.com is being used as the attempt to seem authentic.

The single term.keywords is problematic and likely unavoidably proof that the backlink profile is very manipulated

I scanned in Moz and although I dont agree with the "why" ( nofollow links are uncommon in traditional small websites and blogs, most don't even know what they are, so your ratio is meaningless to me) the anchor keywords could never be accidental, this is very much intentional.

I don't know what previous designs looked like ..but basic opportunities in on page seo are ignored or automated, top level architecture is weak, the index conventions by letter is wasteful/missed opportunity.

Although not a ranking factor ... accessibility is abysmal

In short, there is so much wrong with the document structure, general architecture and even title conventions.. i dont even think looking into backlink profile is necessary yet.

The article mentions reviews by SEO's but doesn't mention whether they paid anyone to point out the obvious flaws.

Content seems strong to me, I dig into the Rogan and Ferris mentioned supplements regularly, this content is better cited than most I run into and certainly better than bb.com / roid world forums that fill this space. So, it's a shame.

Looks like a ton of poor architecture and document structure decisions to me.

I ask this question a lot from new clients coming in for marketing or ecommerce rebuilds who have this style pricing.

I get three answers

1. Not allowed ( manufacturer/vendor regs)

2. High Touch sales, "anyone who was over worried about price isn't likely a buyer/good match" real buyers know the price range and we need to customize/vet the buyer

3. Highly customizable product that they cant or won't invest into making possible to pre-price online, probably wont get added to a cart and shipped or sold without a buyer wanting to actually talk to someone)

( for example, a 150k Caterpillar with various attachment options)