As new sites emerge and the web grows, continued core update is a way for Google to make sure they are supporting a broad range of publishers, creators, and businesses, while also providing searchers with the best information available.
In November last year, Google announced that the page experience signals in ranking will start rolling out in May 2021. The new signals will combine Core Web Vitals with their existing search signals, which include mobile-friendliness, safe-browsing, HTTPS security, and intrusive interstitial guidelines. This 2021 core update is two-part — the first part being completed as of 12 June, with another rollout coming in July.
In this blog, we’ll walk you through what are Core Web Vitals and how these updates impact law firm websites.
What are Google Core Web Vitals?
Basically, Core Web Vitals are Google’s way of measuring your page’s overall user experience (UX). They are made up of three specific page speed and user interaction measurements: largest contentful paint (LCP), first input delay (FID), and cumulative layout shift (CLS). Google is specifically asking site owners to focus on these scores and improve them where they can.
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) – This measures how fast your website loads. To pass this test, your website should meet the target load speed of 2.5 seconds or less.
- First Input Delay (FID) – This measures the time it takes for the browser to respond to the user’s first interaction. Ideally, your website should respond within 100 milliseconds.
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). This new metric measure how stable content loads onto your screen. It looks at how often stuff jumps around while loading and by how much, with a target score of 0.1 or less.
How does it affect your law firm’s website?
Whenever Google makes some changes or improvements to its search ranking algorithms, this affects how your site appears in search results. The search results play a big role in how visible and findable you are for your prospective clients. That’s why it is important to understand how its algorithm works and how to stay on top of changes as they roll out.
As user experience becomes an important metric this year due to the new Google’s Page Experience update, our law firm marketing agency has already taken the opportunity for our clients to get ahead. Aside from the regular website audit, we also strive to deliver quality law firm website design and meet all the other metric requirements we’ve covered in this article, to stay on the winning side of this update.
Why is SEO important for law firms?
If your law firm isn’t relying on search engine rankings, think again. Depending on different factors, they can make or break your website’s findability, the amount of traffic you get, and the business you generate from it.
While some consumer-focused law firms may rely more on the Internet traffic for new client leads, all law firms want their content and brand to rank high in research-related searches.
With multiple factors affecting your website rankings daily, SEO is a mix of technical accuracy, great UX, strong authority signals, and the most important of all — the best content.
Get Help From a Leading Law Firm Marketing Agency
There’s no time like the present to improve your law firm’s website.
If there’s one thing this article has served to zero in on, it’s that there’s no silver bullet when it comes to a solid SEO strategy. Google may have thrown overall UX into the mix with its new Core Web Vitals, but it’s just one slice of a very big pie.
The bottom line is that in a highly competitive industry if you aren’t improving your website performance more quickly than your competition, you run the risk of losing out on very profitable work that could end up in someone else’s pocket.
At Practice Proof, we have a proven track record of ranking law firms #1, #2 and #3. Find out more about our Law Firm SEO or contact us today.
