How Load Time Affects Seo Rankings for Law Firms

Does page load times affect the SEO ranking of law firms’ websites?

We live in a busy time of instant gratification, especially online. It’s no longer just about great content. Your clients are looking for quick answers. If your law-related website doesn’t load fast and provides the right information, you will lose the chance of converting website visitors into actual clients.

Source: https://magenticians.com/

Moreover, Google has indicated that site speed is included in its algorithms to rank pages. No matter how good your legal content is and how SEO-oriented your blogs and pages are, if your website load time is more than 3 seconds, you are going to fail in the Google rankings.

Most web developers don’t use all the good practices to help with SEO and site speed. Site speed can be slowed down by the amount of time it takes to load your images, files, plugins, content, videos, and any other additional features. You can improve your website’s load time by optimizing and resizing your images, using a caching plugin, choosing the right plugins, limiting your plugins, turning off pingbacks and trackbacks, and removing excessive ads to name a few. If you would like a one-on-one consulting on your website, feel free to schedule with us at  https://calendly.com/danzanel

Longer load times can significantly have a negative impact on conversions (such as phone calls, a request for consultation, etc). Nothing is more frustrating than a slow website. While your image is loading, your potential client may get impatient and click elsewhere, most likely on another law firm’s website! Studies show if your load time is over 3 seconds, 90% of your visitors will result in a bounce (The number of visitors to any given website, who navigate off the site after viewing only one page). To make your search ranking high it’s important to have the lower bounce rate possible.

Source: https://sitechecker.pro/

So be wary. If a high number of visitors are clicking away from your website without actually taking the time to read your legal blogs or check out your law services. This can be an indicator that your site needs some work. Take time to evaluate your law firm’s website; it may be because of poor site quality, unrelated or too technical content, or simply a general audience disengagement. A high bounce rate indicates that something isn’t working and needs tweaking. You can check your bounce rate on your Google Analytics account.

There are a number of things to consider when looking to improve your law website’s bounce rate.

● Increase Your Page Speed – Test your own page speeds and make sure your load times aren’t driving visitors away. Visit Google’s web-based tool to check your site’s load speed. Knowing your site loading speed and working to improve it could move you up to page one.  Contact us at go@thinkonething.com for more information.

● Define your Audience – If you’re trying to drive potential clients to your law website, make sure you are targeting the right people. Targeting the wrong demographic or those who are not your ideal clients will only lead to a high bounce rate.  Aiming for your target market is critical to have success in your SEO strategy.

Make sure that your SEO efforts are specifically aimed at your target market.

● Include Internal Links – If you want people to visit more of your pages, link related content. For instance, a blog about a tragic divorce story can be linked to your legal services pages. This not only improves your average bounce rate but also gives your SEO a boost.  More importantly, you are adding value to potential clients by providing the information they want.

Both page and website load time are key ingredients important for the SEO ranking of your law-related website. The better your site usability is, the lower your bounce rate will be – resulting in higher conversion rates and more happy clients!