Google is in the business of providing accurate and useful information to people who enter a question into a Search field. Your law firm is in the business of solving people’s legal problems. But how does Google determine whether your law firm can solve their user’s problem? The answer is SEO: Search Engine Optimization. SEO is a strategy for website owners to create content and design a website that both their visitors and search engines understand. Law firms need to share information about their services on their website in a way that search engines - and by that I mean Google, since Google has nearly a 90% share of all search engine traffic in North America. Google scans your law firm’s website to understand the content and deliver webpages that answer user’s Search queries. If Google bots can’t understand your law firm’s website - or if your information is poorly written or your site is difficult to navigate - Google will rank your website lower than other websites - and your competitor who delivers better content or a better user experience will rank higher!

In May 2021, Google is rolling out its new Page Experience Algorithm that will prioritize the user’s experience - UX. Google first announced the update in the fall to give website owners plenty of time to prepare and update their website. It is unusual for Google to announce algorithm changes in advance, which means they WANT your web pages to provide a good UX, and if they don’t - they could penalize you and lower your page’s rank in SERPs: Search Engine Result Pages.

Google has key indicators that they rate when considering how good of an experience a webpage provides:

1. Mobile Speed 

2. Mobile Friendliness

3. Ease of Navigation and Usability 

4. Safe Browsing

5. Accessibility 

6. Loading

7. Interactivity

8. Visual Stability

Google’s update will strengthen their emphasis on the “core web vitals” that they consider for rank, and UX will have increased importance. Google wants web pages to be easy for users to understand and navigate and to SOLVE THEIR PROBLEM! Why? Because Google doesn’t want to lose market share - and ad revenues.

What You Should Do Now To Prep for the Google Page Experience

1. Mobile Speed
When a webpage takes too long to load, people will leave it - and your bounce rate will increase. Bounce rate is an important measurement of user satisfaction with your webpage - and a high bounce rate tells search engines that users don’t find your page useful, and that will negatively impact your rank.

• Most people won’t wait beyond 2-3 seconds for a website to load

• 53% of mobile users leave a page that takes longer than 3 seconds to load.

• 85% of mobile users expect websites to load at least as fast or faster than on their desktop

How long does it take for your website to load and become usable? It’s easy to find out. Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool is a free tool that scores how quickly your webpage loads - and provides recommendations on how to improve load speed.

2. Mobile Friendliness
Over 50% of Search is done via mobile. Mobile-friendly websites should have responsive design that makes them easy to use on mobile phones and tablets. Adaptive design lets your website adjust to different types of mobile phones and tablets. How many of your website visitors are on mobile? You can check your Google Analytics report to see how many of your website’s visitors are on mobile, versus desktop. But the real question is how many of your potential website visitors didn’t go to your website because of problems with website design and load speed?

Is your website mobile-friendly? It’s easy to find out. Google’s Mobile-Friendly test is a free tool that scores how quickly your webpage loads - and has recommendations on how to improve load speed.

3. Ease of Navigation and Usability

Is your website easy to understand and navigate?

• Do you have popups that are impossible to close?

• Is your font too small to read?

• Are buttons too close together?

• Does your chatbot cover up important information or CTA buttons?

• Do users get a lot of 404 redirect errors?

4. Safe Browsing

If your website isn’t HTTPS, you’ll never get on page 1 of Google. HTTPS is hypertext transfer protocol secure and it is a safer version of HTTP, which has been the primary protocol used to send data between a web browser and a website. Check your website’s URL in the search bar on your computer to see if you are HTTPS or HTTP.

If your site is still using HTTP, it’s fast and inexpensive to upgrade to HTTPS.

People who use Google’s Chrome web browser (66% of desktop users) and try to visit an HTTP site will often get a message from Chrome alerting them that website is not safe to visit - something no law firm wants to happen to their potential clients!

5. Accessibility
Google is signaling that accessibility is a key factor in ranking sites. For several years Google has emphasized making sites user-friendly for screen readers used by the visually impaired.

• Make sure ALL images, buttons, etc on your website (and social media posts!) have ALT text (alternative text).

• Google can’t “see” images so ALT text is vital for visually handicapped and legally required under ADA laws. 

Lawsuits have been filed over limited access to websites for the visually handicapped.

Core Web Vitals

Google Analytics provides detailed analysis of your core web vitals for both mobile and desktop, and information on how to fix any problems. Log into your Google Search Console, a free Google report to help website owners improve the performance of their website. Select Enhancements then Core Web Vitals from the menu on the left side of your dashboard.

6. Loading
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) reflects how long it takes to fully load the pages on your website, and for the largest content to be visible - typically an image or a video.

7. Interactivity
First Input Delay (FID) is a measurement of how quickly the page responds after a visitor clicks a button on your webpage and interacts with it.

8. Visual Stability
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) measures how frequently your webpage layout changes or shifts unexpectedly.

Content Is Still King

User experience matters a lot to both website visitors and to Google. However, a site with great content can rank higher than a site with a fast load speed that is mobile-friendly. But if two sites have equally good content and one offers a superior user experience, Google plans to rank the site with the better UX higher.

Google values and rewards good content that:

• is relevant to the visitor’s needs

• is well-written and understandable

• formatted for easy online reading including headlines, bullets, images and other formatting strategies

• is fresh with up to date information

• SOLVES THEIR PROBLEM

When Google announced the new Page Experience update, they reinforced that quality content will remain the most important ranking signal.

Conclusion

More law firms are using SEO content optimization strategies to help their law firm rank higher, but often are not paying enough attention to the user experience and how well their law firm’s webpages perform. Your law firm's rank and traffic can continue to grow if you place emphasis on:

• quality content

• clear website design

• good user experience

And if your rank and traffic grow, and your law firm can SOLVE THEIR PROBLEM, your conversions should grow too: and that means increased profitability.