Help-seeker guides
38 short HTML guides written from the questions people ask the helpline, each answering one question at a reading age of nine, with the next step in a single tap.
Larder Line · Food-bank charity · London
Making help findable: a London food bank's content plan for people in crisis
+287%organic help-page visits
A 10-month Content Engine plan that took referral guidance out of PDFs and put it where people in crisis are already searching.
Shelf ticket · Month 10
Full shelf
- Visits
- 4,800
- Top 10
- 204
- AI cites
- 26
Last PDFs retired and redirected. Help pages now the first result for the searches that matter most.
Tap a tin, or use the arrow keys, to read each month.
1The challenge
People searching 'how to get food bank referral' found confusing council pages, and the charity's own guidance was buried in PDFs.
Larder Line runs nine distribution centres across London. Its helpline was fielding the same three questions all day: do I need a referral, who gives one, and when are you open. The answers existed, but in scanned PDFs no phone could read and no search engine could rank.
Meanwhile, the volunteers and donors the charity depends on landed on a donate page that never mentioned volunteering at all. Help had to be findable first, in words people use, on the phone in their hand.
Before · mock search result
how to get food bank referral
council.gov.uk › services › welfare › support
Local Welfare Assistance scheme — eligibility
Applications are assessed against criteria set out in section 4.2 of the scheme policy document…
forum.example › threads
Does anyone know how food bank vouchers work?
I think you need to go to the job centre but not sure…
larderline.org.uk › media › Referral-Guidance-v7.pdf
[PDF] Referral Guidance v7 (2.4 MB)
Larder Line Partner Agency Referral Protocol. 1. Introduction 1.1 This document…
2Stocktake: the audit
Six things stood between a hungry family and the right page.
- ContentA1
Guidance locked in 23 PDFs
The only explanation of how referrals work lived in scanned PDFs averaging 2.4 MB: slow on prepaid data, unreadable on small screens and barely indexed.
- ContentA2
Reading age of 16+
Help copy scored a Flesch-Kincaid grade of 11.8. People in crisis read under stress; the target became grade 4 (reading age nine).
- TechnicalA3
Help four clicks deep
“Get help” sat under About › Our work › Services › Referrals. Internal links pointed at the donate page 9× more often.
- Structured dataA4
No schema at all
No FAQPage, Organization or opening-hours markup, so search engines and AI answers had nothing structured to lift.
- LocalA5
Centres had no pages
Nine distribution centres shared one contact page; addresses, hours and access notes were missing or out of date.
- PerformanceA6
Mobile LCP 4.6 s
A 3 MB hero photo and an unused slider script. 82% of help-seekers arrived on mobile, many on low-end Android handsets.
3The strategy
Four ingredients, one recipe: the Content Engine plan.
Content & AI search: content built around the questions people really ask, structured so search engines and AI answers can quote it.
AI Overviews
Every guide opens with a dated, self-contained 40-word answer and a named source, so AI search can quote it accurately instead of paraphrasing a council page.
FAQ schema
FAQPage, Organization and OpeningHoursSpecification markup across guides and centre pages, validated weekly so a changed opening time never goes stale.
Topic clusters
Three hubs — getting help, giving help, volunteering — each linked to its spokes, so help pages earn authority instead of the donate page hoarding it.
4Month by month
10 months, stacked one tin at a time.
Month 1
Stocktake
Every page, PDF and council link audited. 23 PDFs found carrying the only copy of the referral guidance.
Month 2
Listen first
Search terms mapped from 1,900 helpline notes and queries: the words people actually use when they are frightened and hungry.
Month 3
First guides
“How to get a food bank referral” rebuilt as a plain-English HTML guide at a reading age of nine.
Month 4
FAQ schema
FAQPage markup on 14 guides; answers rewritten to lead with the one sentence a person needs.
Month 5
Centres mapped
Nine distribution-centre pages with opening hours, step-free access notes and the nearest bus routes.
Month 6
Cluster: referrals
Referral hub linked to 11 spokes: without a job centre, for students, for asylum seekers, same-day help.
Month 7
Cluster: giving
Volunteer and donation guides joined into their own cluster, with a two-minute volunteer sign-up.
Month 8
AI answer pass
Each guide gets a 40-word answer block, dated and sourced, so AI Overviews can quote it whole.
Month 9
Translations
Top six guides published in Polish, Bengali, Somali, Arabic, Romanian and Urdu, each with hreflang.
Month 10
Full shelf
Last PDFs retired and redirected. Help pages now the first result for the searches that matter most.
5The results
The full shelf, after 10 months.
+287% organic help-page visits, from 1,240 to 4,800 a month, while the same guides started appearing inside AI answers.
Modelled scenario for a fictional business — not a client result. Rankings and traffic are never guaranteed; see our Terms.
AI-overview citations
26
Volunteer applications
+67%
Applications per month, from 42 to 70.
Keywords top 10
31 → 204
Organic help-page visits per month
Each tin is 400 visits. Top tin marked in orange.
Price list: where the help pages rank
| Search term | Vol./mo | Before | After |
|---|---|---|---|
| how to get a food bank referral | 2,900 | 100+ | 2 |
| food bank near me london | 6,600 | 38 | 6 |
| can i use a food bank without a referral | 1,000 | 54 | 3 |
| food bank referral without job centre | 320 | 100+ | 1 |
| emergency food parcel london today | 480 | 100+ | 4 |
| what to bring to a food bank | 590 | 71 | 2 |
| volunteer at a food bank london | 1,300 | 22 | 5 |
| food bank opening times weekend | 210 | 100+ | 3 |
| baby formula food bank london | 390 | 100+ | 7 |
After · mock search result
how to get food bank referral
AI overview
Most London food banks need a referral from a GP, school, advice centre or Citizens Advice. Larder Line also offers same-day emergency parcels without one.
Source: larderline.org.uk › get-help › referral
larderline.org.uk › get-help › referral
How to get a food bank referral in London (plain-English guide)
Who can refer you, what to say, and how to get food today if you can't wait. 3-minute read.
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