The writing side of my business has taken a battering recently.
Apart from on here, obviously. Because Substack is a bloody lovely, exciting, and inspiring place.
But elsewhere, things have been a bit grim, to be honest. Firstly, there was Medium and its ludicrously subjective, cliquey Boost program which has decimated the views, reads, and revenue of some of the platform’s biggest writers (including yours truly).
Then, Google did something.
Google did something very big. And, once again, it appears to have hit me. Big time.
This leaves me with two options. I can either throw my toys out of the pram and blame everyone else for a downturn in stats and revenue - or make changes.
Guess which option I’m going for?
I should note that my business isn’t on the brink of extinction. I’ve always worked hard to generate income from multiple sources and ensure I have plenty of reserves in the bank to pay the bills and keep investing in the business. Also, elsewhere in my business - specifically, on the YouTube side - things are great; really great.
Despite this, the stats for the Mark Ellis Reviews website make pretty horrific viewing.
The chart above shows the number of people using my website over the last 90 days. The dotted line is last year and the solid line is this year. As you can see, 2023 has been great for markellisreviews.com in terms of traffic - it has increased considerably over 2022. That is, until October when it took a huge hit. At the time of writing, traffic for this time of the year is down by 54%. This has impacted ad revenue, too, which is tumbling as I type.
So, what happened? Well, although I can’t say for sure, I’m 99% convinced it relates to Google’s Helpful Content Update (HCU), which was rolled out across its search engine recently. If you’re wondering what the HCU is, I’ll hand you over to Google itself.
“Google Search’s helpful content system generates a signal used by our automated ranking systems to better ensure people see original, helpful content created for people in search results.”
That makes sense, right? Most of us use Google; we want fast access to the most helpful content to answer our queries, help us buy the right stuff, and increase our knowledge. I’m all for it; it’s encouraging to know that Google regularly makes these updates to its algorithms.
What’s more, the goal of the HCU appears to align nicely with that of Mark Ellis Reviews. My brand was created to become a profitable business, yes, but it is also designed to help people buy the right stuff by offering real-world advice based on first-hand experience. I generate income via sponsorships, ads, and affiliate links, but that funds my ability to offer free, genuine buying guidance.
So, why have I been hit so badly by the HCU? Well, firstly, there’s an outside chance I haven’t been hit by it. If we zoom in to that Google Analytics chart and view the last 28 days, we can see an uptick in performance over the last few days.
There’s a correlation with last year, too, which suggests that we may simply have entered a lull in tech searches for my niche. Regardless, we’re still down by more than 50% in traffic, aren’t we? This is why I’m becoming more convinced by the day that the HCU has targeted my website; any suggestions that it is just a coincidence are scraping the barrel a bit, to be honest.
You know what? I don’t blame the HCU - I’d have done the same. I knew this day would come. I’ve been riding a wave of fortunate traffic for nearly three years. Don’t get me wrong - it’s down to an immense amount of hard work, but the reason I’ve experienced such consistent traffic growth hasn’t been strategic. It’s the result of consistency, niching down, and blind luck. That’s unsustainable.
I’ve never spent a penny on search engine optimisation (SEO) for markellisreviews.com. I’ve even worn it as a feather in my cap - I’m fairly sure I’ve taken to Substack to tell you all that you can ignore the urge to invest in SEO and just follow some basic principles.
That was shortsighted. Sorry. It’ll only get you so far and, clearly, my luck has run out.
As noted earlier, all signs point to my website and brand being perfectly placed to not be hit by the HCU - if anything, it should benefit. The reason it hasn’t benefitted is simple: the website isn’t good enough. At all.
I designed it myself, which is absolutely fine when you’re starting out and figuring out the way forward. But once you’ve built a brand that encourages more than one million people to watch, read, and listen to your content every single month, you need to get serious about one of your biggest assets.
The design isn’t horrible - don’t get me wrong. It’s just missing some obvious stuff. The homepage is nothing more than an advert for my latest YouTube video and a list of the most recently published blog posts. There’s no category listing, social proof, or the slightest hint that there’s a real bloke behind all of that content. Why should Google index it at all?
The user experience is horrible, too. Embarrassingly so. This is purely down to the ad setup, which throws as many banners and auto-playing videos at the user as possible. It’ll also kill your Mac if you don’t have much RAM to play with and prefer Safari over Chrome.
The reason I’ve left it in this state for so long is because it was pulling in $1,500 to $2,000 per month in ad revenue and I defy anyone who is serious about building a business to not make that same decision. You would. Trust me.
Alas, my time has run out. The luck has run dry. My website’s approach, underpinnings, and lack of strategy have finally bitten.
I spent most of Sunday morning last week feeling rather depressed about this. A few hours later, I grabbed my laptop, headed to a coffee shop and spent two hours writing a new strategy for the website. Two days later, I was on a call with two members of my team, and by the end of that call, we’d fleshed out exactly what we’d be doing with markellisreviews.com moving forward.
I’ll be talking about that plan in today’s Solo Club livestream, but the lesson for content creators is all too clear. Diversify your income - always; never rely on one platform as a content creator. Ever. Please.
Oh, and don’t rest on your laurels, either (for too long).