google

The digital landscape for law firms underwent a significant shift with the August 2018 Google algorithm update, swiftly dubbed the “Medic Update” by the SEO community. While Google officially categorized it as a “broad core algorithm update,” its disproportionate impact on websites in the professional sectors including health, medical, and “Your Money or Your Life” (YMYL) sectors, which inherently include legal services, earned it its telling moniker. This update was not a mere tweak but a profound re-evaluation of how Google assesses content quality, particularly for topics that can directly influence a user’s well-being, financial stability, or safety. For law firms across the United States, this meant a critical reckoning with their online presence, ushering in both substantial challenges and unforeseen opportunities.

Two Ways the Medic Update Adjusted Law Firm Results

At the heart of the Medic Update was Google’s heightened emphasis on E-A-T: Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. This triumvirate became the guiding principle for evaluating content, particularly for YMYL pages, which encompass legal advice and information. Previously, a law firm might have achieved strong rankings through aggressive keyword stuffing or a high volume of generic content. However, the Medic Update signaled a definitive move away from such tactics, demanding a deeper, more substantive demonstration of a firm’s credibility.

The negative impacts of the Medic Update were immediate and, for many, quite severe. Law firms that had built their online visibility on shallow content, overly promotional language, or questionable link-building practices experienced precipitous drops in search rankings and organic traffic. Websites with outdated legal information, or those lacking clear author attribution and verifiable credentials for the content creators, found themselves penalized. This was particularly detrimental to smaller firms or those with limited resources for consistent content creation and website maintenance. A website that might have ranked highly for a common legal query one day could find itself relegated to the depths of the search results the next, effectively disappearing from the radar of potential clients. The Medic Update exposed vulnerabilities in strategies that prioritized quantity over quality, forcing a painful re-evaluation of their digital marketing investments. It also brought to light any lack of transparency regarding a firm’s physical location, contact information, and the direct association of content with qualified legal professionals, all of which became critical trust signals.

However, amidst the initial disruption, the Medic Update also paved the way for significant positive transformations within the legal marketing sphere. For forward-thinking law firms and marketing agencies advising them, this update presented a clear mandate: prioritize genuine value and demonstrable credibility. Firms that embraced the spirit of E-A-T saw their rankings improve, often significantly.

The Google EAT Emphasis

The emphasis on Expertise meant that law firms were incentivized to showcase the qualifications, specializations, and professional achievements of their attorneys. Detailed attorney biographies, academic credentials, bar admissions, published articles, and speaking engagements became crucial elements for on-page optimization. Content itself needed to reflect deep knowledge, offering comprehensive and accurate legal insights rather than superficial overviews. Firms began investing in developing genuinely informative articles, legal guides, and case studies that truly addressed client pain points and offered actionable information.

Authoritativeness was reinforced by the quality and relevance of a firm’s backlink profile. The Medic Update further devalued spammy or irrelevant backlinks, pushing firms to pursue natural, editorial links from reputable legal directories, academic institutions, news outlets, and other authoritative sources within the legal or related industries. Building a strong online reputation through legitimate avenues, rather than manipulative tactics, became paramount.

Perhaps most critically, the Medic Update underscored the importance of Trustworthiness. This encompassed several facets, from having transparent contact information, a clear privacy policy, and a secure website (HTTPS), to actively soliciting and displaying legitimate client testimonials and reviews. Google increasingly looked for signals that a law firm was a real, reputable entity committed to serving its clients ethically. This encouraged firms to focus on client satisfaction not only for their practice but also as a direct input into their digital visibility. For instance, firms that actively managed their Google My Business profiles (renamed “Google Business Profiles” on Nov. 4, 2021) and encouraged satisfied clients to leave reviews often saw a positive correlation with their local search rankings.

The Need for Professional Marketing Strategies

In essence, the Medic Update forced law firms to mature their digital marketing strategies. It moved the needle from merely appearing in search results to truly earning visibility through genuine authority and client-centric content. The firms that adapted successfully recognized that their online presence was an extension of their professional reputation. They began to invest in high-quality content creation by their own legal experts, engaged in ethical link building, and focused on building a holistic digital footprint that radiated expertise and trust. This long-term, sustainable approach, born from the disruption of the Medic Update, ultimately benefited both law firms and the public seeking reliable legal information and representation online. At Arkside, we understand the environment in which law firms market themselves. The key to success is demonstrating your credibility to earn your next client’s trust.

“What do you mean?” This is Google’s ultimate and fundamental question. They want to answer your question. They want to provide the resource you need. They want to know what you really mean. The Google BERT update began the week of 28 October 2019 and is intended to answer that question.

Welcome “BERT”

The acronym stands for “Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers”. This update from Google is about understanding human language. It began to roll out last week. It uses A.I. (artificial intelligence) on a neural network powered by machine learning. Google already knows perfect grammar, spelling, and punctuation, but it needs to know lingo, intention, and meaning. That is what BERT studies and interprets.

“Bass” can mean the lowest male singing voice or a fish.
“Rose” can mean a flower, a color, a wine, or a cut.
BERT uses context to understand meaning.

The Impact of Google BERT

Instead of just trying to match keywords from the search to a website, BERT is trying to match your intent to a web result that gives the most relevant answer.

This is a big change! Google has said it is their biggest update of the last five years and will impact 10% of all searches in the English language. (Other major updates affected 2% – 5%.) The goal is to understand the meaning of longer, conversational queries such as:
“cost of a college degree in a job interview”
“credit report needed for car financing”
“2019 brazil traveler to usa need a visa”
“sale commission to real estate agent”
“do estheticians stand a lot at work”

This will impact:

• Website rankings
• Featured Snippets (the top result that appears inside a box)

Your SEO and BERT

Nathan Greenberg runs our SEO strategies and in his opinion BERT is going to negatively impact websites that employ “keyword stuffing”. He also believes it is going to impact image and video search as more ADA-compliant content is created utilizing ALT tags. For Arkside clients, no strategy change is necessary. We have not observed any negative impact on any client websites at this point from Google BERT!

Bottom line: It reinforces the need to write website copy for human readers instead of search engine bots.

How to rank on the page 1 of Google is one of the most coveted and misunderstood business goals of the 21st century. The holy first page. 93% of the eyeballs never go to page 2. Business managers and owners understand its value. This has opened a huge market for disreputable companies to make false promises we see every day. They usually arrive via email and look something like this:

“We can put you on the first page of Google!”
“Our program will have you ranked on page 1!”
“This patented system guarantees you will be #1 on Google!”
“You will rank #1 on Google within 30 days!”

As a company that offers and specializes in digital marketing, we fully understand the importance of appearing on page 1 of Google. It can boost website traffic, enhance reputation, and improve sales. But it can be done in two very different ways: right or wrong. The right way is worth an investment. The wrong way should be avoided at all costs. This false “Page 1 Promise” can cost you dearly.

Continue reading and you will learn why any company (with one exception) is lying when they make this promise.

How Google Calculates Rank

Google has confirmed that there are approximately 200 ranking factors in the calculation of a page’s rank. This is a major reason reaching page 1 of Google isn’t easy. Once they are evaluated and broken down, there are perhaps 10,000 variations that are included in the Google ranking algorithm. Thankfully, Google has been kind enough earlier in 2016 to confirm it’s top three ranking factors:

1 & 2. Inbound links and content
3. RankBrain

Links and content are listed together because Google has never confirmed which is more important. Those two elements are vital but bad links or content can also result in penalties. We’ll cover those later in this post. They are directly related to the false promises of Google rankings.

RankBrain is a machine learning artificial intelligence program which evaluates searches and the results they generate. In 2013, Google stated that approximately 15% of the 3.3 billion searches it handles every day are something it has never seen before. RankBrain evaluates those searches and the results produced. Always keep in mind that Google’s top priority is to serve the most relevant results possible. RankBrain helps Google efficiently learn about new searches and better understand what the user is searching for.

What is the Google Algorithm?

The recipe for Coca-Cola.
The formula for WD-40.
The Google algorithm. (It is called “Hummingbird“.)
The calculation of a FICO score.

These are all highly coveted targets of corporate espionage. They are secrets. Only a select group of people in the world know any one of them. That secrecy is the primary reason any company (with one exception) claiming to know the Google algorithm is lying. That one exception is Google. Much like FICO is the only company that knows the full and accurate way a credit score is calculated, Google is the only company that knows every ranking factor and their importance. It is rumored that less than 10 people at Google actually have this information. The rest of us are making educated guesses – some more educated than others.

Millions of dollars are spent every year by companies around the world trying to determine how to rank a webpage. The entire search engine optimization (SEO) industry is devoted almost entirely to this pursuit. For any company to claim they can guarantee first page ranking, they would need to know the algorithm.

They don’t.

An important element of the Google ranking system is called PageRank. It is an algorithm within the algorithm that ranks webpages within the search results. Its primary factor are inbound links to a site. As mentioned above, links are one of the top two ranking factors so the PageRank algorithm is vital to a site’s appearance on page one of Google. PageRank is also a primary means of dishing out penalties from Google.

Google Penalties

Beyond the secrecy surrounding their algorithm, Google is very serious when it comes to people who try to “game the system”. Remember Google’s top priority? They don’t take kindly to people who intentionally manipulate the organic search results to circumvent search results. Such efforts have a material impact on Google’s quality. They publish Webmaster Guidelines which, when violated, can result in serious damage to a webpage’s ranking.

Google’s most notable penalty is a loss of PageRank. When Google discovers “black hat” SEO techniques such as artificial blog networks or paid links, it usually responds with a corresponding loss of PageRank. This has happened to companies such as BMW and even Google’s own Chrome browser website. The loss of PageRank -which, in some cases, goes to zero- can be coupled with the complete removal from search results of the offending blog network or site with paid links.

Companies that suffer Google penalties have reported loss of website traffic, loss of revenue, and a long climb back to page 1 of Google. Companies like BeatTheQuote.com, JCPenney, and Rap Genius (lost 700,000 visitors a day!) have all had to endure Google penalties.

SEO Best Practices

Obviously, you should not be buying links, using black hat blog networks, or keyword stuffing your webpages.

Focus on creating content that is valuable to your audience(s). Educate and entertain to earn visits and time. Doing so requires a deep understanding of your market.  The best SEO is organic value in the content you create. Blogs are an excellent means of regularly updating your website while providing educational or entertaining information. Pages (along with your blog posts) should be updated when needed, consist mostly of text, and include images as visual support or illustration for the material presented.

Google has a guide: ask yourself “would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?” While this shouldn’t be taken literally, it should be considered whenever an SEO strategy is proposed.

Next Step to Reach Page 1 of Google

If you would like to have your current website analyzed and SEO strategy created or evaluated, contact an Arkside specialist today. Our team can provide you with objective insight, identify unrealized opportunities, and present effective strategies that maximize your search engine presence.