How Do Core Web Vitals Impact Your Law Firm’s SEO?

Date: June 25, 2024

Core Web Vitals are a great indicator of how well your website satisfies user experience. Overall they are a set of metrics that measure real-world user experience for loading performance, interactivity, and visual stability of the page.

What Are the Core Web Vitals?

Three main Core Web Vital metrics are calculated to determine whether you are failing or passing what Google considers to be the most important basic technical aspects of website health. Let’s dive into those now.  

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)

Largest Contentful Paint measures the render time of the largest image or text block visible in the viewport, relative to when the user first navigated to the page. This metric helps determine the perceived load speed of your website. 

To provide a positive user experience, websites should aim to have an LCP of 2.5 seconds or less.

Interaction to Next Paint (INP)

Interaction to Next Paint has been designed to measure a page’s overall perceived responsiveness by observing clicks, taps, and key presses across the entire user journey on the page — rather than just the first interaction.

To provide a positive user experience, websites should aim to have an INP below or at 200 milliseconds. 

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) 

Cumulative Layout Shift is a measure of the largest burst of layout shift scores for every unexpected layout shift that occurs during the entire lifecycle of a page. 

To provide a positive user experience, you’ll want to have a CLS score of 0.1 or less. 

Other Notable Metrics 

Google also analyzes three additional metrics when conducting its Core Web Vital analysis. While they don’t have as heavy of a weight as the other three mentioned above they do still contribute to a positive user experience.

  • First Contentful Paint (FCP) – Measures the time from when the user first navigates to the page to when any part of the page’s content is rendered on the screen.
  • Time to First Byte (TTFB) – Measures the time between the request for a resource and when the first byte of a response begins to arrive.
  • First Input Delay (FID) – Measured the time from when a user first interacts with a page to the time when the browser can begin processing event handlers in response to that interaction.
    • Note: This metric has been replaced by INP in March of 2024

See how your law firm’s website performs by checking if you are passing or failing Core Web Vitals by running Google’s free PageSpeed Insights Report. 

Why Are Core Web Vitals Important? 

Core Web Vitals play a key role in your potential and current clients’ user experience on your law firm’s website. If your website is slow, users will just go back to the search results and find another firm. The same goes for all of the other aspects the Core Web Vitals measure, such as responsiveness and formatting. These all tie in to a positive user experience and if your users cannot find what they are looking for or your website is complicated to navigate you could miss out on new business opportunities. 

In the same vein, what makes this of utmost importance is that it has been revealed that Core Web Vitals play a role in how your website ranks within search results. So, not only do you want to provide a positive user experience for your users but search engines as well. 

TLDR; The better your user experience within your website, the better off you are both from a search engine perspective and the perspective of a person visiting your website. 

Ensure Your Law Firm’s Website is Properly Optimized For Search 

With all of the rapid impending changes to search engines and how they display information, it’s now more important than ever to have a trusted SEO partner in your corner who can keep up with the evolving trends and ensure your firm is on the right track for success. That’s where we come into play! If the future of search is leaving you uneasy, reach out today to see how we can help your firm grow.