Ep. 50 - Why Your Law Firm Rankings Keep Changing

In this episode of The Law Firm Growth Professor, I tackle a concern that keeps many attorneys up at night: Why are my rankings suddenly changing — and should I panic?

Google no longer rolls out a few large algorithm updates each year. Instead, it deploys smaller updates daily, creating constant movement in search rankings. That means your number five position today could be number seven tomorrow — and number two next week — without you changing a single word.

I explain why this churn is now normal, how AI is driving continuous algorithm refinement, and why small ranking fluctuations don’t necessarily signal a problem. More importantly, I break down the difference between expected volatility and true warning signs — including the kind of sustained ranking decline that requires immediate action.

If you’ve ever logged into your analytics and felt your stomach drop, this episode will give you a clear framework to determine whether you’re experiencing routine algorithm movement or a serious strategic issue that demands intervention.

Want to learn more about how our agency can help your law firm grow? Speak with John Rizvi ☎️

Transcript

John Rizvi 0:00

Hi, and welcome. I'm John Risby, the Law Firm Growth Professor. For my new listeners, I'm pleased you came to join me today. For my returning listeners, it's always great to have you. In my podcast, I share the strategies for growth that have worked for me in growing my law firm from a startup with just me, a laptop, and a cell phone, operating out of a spare bedroom to where we are today, a team of 60 professionals generating over$10 million a year in revenues from our 10,000 square foot headquarters in Coral Springs. Google is changing the game as far as how we understand algorithm updates. Historically, they'd roll out one or two big changes a year and a few more smaller ones at more or less regular intervals, usually quarterly. But Google's not doing that anymore, and they really haven't for several years now. What Google is doing instead is they're deploying algorithm updates on a daily basis around the clock. So what you wind up with, instead of one big package algorithm change, like with Panda or Penguin or Bert or any of those huge one-shot packages, now what you're finding is that everything is changing in a subtle way all the time. You know, a big part of this is because AI has become such an important part of social media and search engine optimization. AI is everywhere, and we don't really have a good handle on how it works yet. But Google, Microsoft, all the major search engines have one thing in common right now. Besides Google's strangold on SEO best practices, they're all betting heavy on AI, as you've probably already noticed. And ChatGPT, Grok, and other large language learning models are getting more prevalent. So that means that Google does have to update more frequently to keep track of an ever-changing landscape. And what that means for your law firm is that the position you thought you had locked down last week may not be as stable as you think it is. So why this sudden change from Google? Why are they suddenly pivoting, doing all of these smaller updates instead of rolling them out in one big package? Well, part of it is because putting them out in small targeted algorithm changes, uh this continuously helps mitigate a lot of the shock to the SEO ecosystem that comes from larger updates. Now, sometimes a larger update is necessary for whatever reason. Primary arguments for larger updates are to help combat black hat SEO techniques and help maintain a healthier and more accurate search ecosystem for websites. It also grants a more trustworthy environment for people who use Google. This means larger, less frequent updates make sense in a lot of ways, although the implementation can get a little weird. But the key thing to remember about all these algorithm updates is that everything is constantly in a state of flux. They have created an illusion of stability, while at the same time they're causing a situation where you can't be too sure from one day to the next whether what you're doing is actually working. So you may start with your uh law firm's website at say number five on the first page. If you look two days later, suddenly you're down to number seven. But then you come back on Monday and look at that, we're at number two. So what's going on? It's the same content, you haven't updated anything, you haven't changed anything, but the ranking changed anyway because the algorithms changed. This can make you feel like you're constantly chasing a moving target. And this is a completely fair and understandable way to feel when it hits your site's rankings. What you need to consider now is because Google is rolling out these algorithms to try to make their updates less shocking to the people who use Google, and of course the people who live in that marketing space, when is it time to panic? Now the fact is there's no hard and fast answer to this. Some content is going to stay at number one against all odds, no matter what you do. And ironically, it's probably not the stuff you think is going to stick. I personally have uh dashed off a TikTok or a tweet that took me a whole 30 seconds to compose, and then went it turns out it went through the roof. But white papers that I spent weeks on didn't even budge the needle. That's strange, but there you are. You never know what's going to take off, and you never know what's going to turn out to have uh sticking and staying power. So you need to be cognizant of this, and you need to remember that a tectonic shift in your rankings also means that the people you're competing against for those rankings are in the exact same boat. Now, some of them may do better over time, some of them may not. Some of them may hit it out of the park in one area and completely fall flat in someplace else where you step in and dominate. This is normal behavior where you need to start worrying about whether uh or not your SEO is working is when your content is continuously falling in ranking. Like I said, a loss and then a jump and then a loss and a jump and a loss and a jump. This is normal. That's how Google has set up that ecosystem to operate. So if you understand that, you're a good part of the way there already. You're going to be expecting to see some shifts. You already know you're going to see some churn in your rankings. Again, this is normal. And unfortunately, it's not something that your SEO agency can do much of anything about because all of that is being driven by what Google is doing. Where you need to be concerned is when you lose ranking and when you don't regain it, or when you start seeing your content continuously slipping. You might say something like, Well, last year we were at number one for all of these keywords, and now all of a sudden we're at five or eight. We're not even on page one for some of this stuff. Why? Well, that's the point where you need to start looking at uh does your SEO align with what Google is doing? Because that's the only way you'll consistently lose ranking. Assuming, of course, that your SEO is crisp and tight and you have good, solid, quotable information. It's conversational and it's informative. It answers a question, it fulfills a need for the person searching. If you have that, you have 90% of what you need right there. And I've said this before content is still king. It's how the content is presented and how it is marked up for SEO purposes that's going to determine where your content falls. And Google ranks all the available iterations of that information under a given keyword. Now, of course, the goal is uh is always to be number one, but getting number one on everything is simply not attainable. And we've discussed this before as well. So a sudden jump, a small backslide, this is expected behavior that's baked right into the mix. We understand this, but when your content is consistently underperforming for the keywords that you're targeting, and you're watching people uh who are not doing it as well or could be considered not to do it as well, and they're doing better in the rankings than you, that is where you run into a problem. And that's where you need to say, okay, why are we consistently uh tanking in these rankings? Maybe you need a new voice. Maybe it's time to revisit and revise your SEO KPIs so that you have the most competitive edge possible. Now again, you need to expect some churn. You expect to see a big jump followed by a small decrease, followed by a jump again, up and down, up and down, up and down. This is normal and it's baked into the cake. So as long as you've got that, you're probably doing okay. It's that constant decline where you might be riding high in May, and in November, all of a sudden, you're out in the cold, but you haven't done anything different. That may honestly be part of the problem right there. The fact that you haven't done anything different, the fact that you haven't changed or evolved your KPIs in a while. So this is a good time to revisit and re-evaluate what your SEO is doing and whether you need to look at new content or a fresh approach, maybe a fresh voice. Maybe you've been trying to keep it more attorney-like, but what's selling right now is a conversational tone. You need to frame it like you're talking to an actual person, not just throwing words at a screen for anybody to read. Now, a lot of people struggle with this. They get into a rut, they get used to saying things a certain way, doing things a certain way, and that can be hard to break out of. It's especially true when you don't really understand how the tools you're using work beyond the fact that they do work. So the time to start panicking is when you start seeing that continual decline in your rankings. If one page isn't doing the job, you could probably not worry about that so much and really shouldn't, as we'll discuss more in an upcoming episode. But if it becomes a systematic, system-wide problem and all of your rankings are impacted, and all of your rankings are affected, now you have something to look at and say, okay, maybe it's time for a fresh approach. And that fresh approach uh and what it's going to be is largely up to you. It has to be, after all, as I keep saying, it's your name on the letterhead and your law firm that's going to benefit or suffer from your choices that your SEO agency makes. I'm assuming that they're all reputable and are knowledgeable about what they're doing. It is reasonable to assume that yes, your SEO is doing it right and according to the contract and KPIs that you've agreed to, unless you have significant direct evidence to the contrary. But if that's the case, we need to shift the focus on what it is that they're doing. They're presenting the SEO package that you ordered a year ago, but things have changed. They have changed so much in the last year that we have a whole new dictionary of terms relating to SEO coming out just to keep pace with all the changes, as we'll discuss more in the next episode. So you need to make sure that your KPIs and your SEO benchmarks for 2026 align with what is actually happening in 2026. Now, of course, your SEO agency should be doing that more or less automatically, but they can't go too far off script without clearing it with you, nor should they. If you have them changing things on their own rather than yours, you're not in the driver's seat anymore. And that could be a big problem. It also means that there's less accountability at the sharp end. When your Google rankings aren't doing what you expect them to do, when the market isn't doing what you expect it to do, and when your results aren't aligning, then it's time to revisit your KPIs and what your overall SEO strategy is. Now, again, your SEO agency could be doing everything right. They could be doing everything exactly as per your contract. But if your contract's more than six months out of date, it may be time to reconvene with your SEO agency and make sure that you're still getting the results and hitting the numbers that you want. Again, it's not time to panic. This is just a routine course correction at this point. But if suddenly all of your content gets buried on, say, page 37 in Google, no one's going to see that. The only person is going to know or care is you and your SEO agency. So if you have that dramatic of a slip, something is really wrong. And this would be the time to panic. If you suddenly slide from page one to page five, that would be the time to panic, and especially if you notice that you're having the same slippage across your entire online footprint. If everything you do is suddenly going down multiple pages in the rankings, this is a significant cause for concern. And if this is the time that you need to be picking up the phone and asking your SEO agency, what are you doing to correct this? And the fact of the matter is, your SEO agency should be on top of this. They should already know before you find out that there's a problem and asking what you want to do to try to fix the problem. That, after all, is what you pay them for. But again, if you're doing your own auditing, as you also should be, and I strongly advocate that, that regardless of what type of business you're talking about or what type of law firm, it becomes all the more pressing that if you have the information first, you're talking to your SEO agency and finding out why you found this out before they did. Now, a lot of people aren't going to like that approach. A lot of people are going to say, well, that's kind of an aggressive stance. Yes, it is, but it's your business, it's your law firm, it's your future and your success on the line. Why would you not want to be aggressive in safeguarding that? That's the only way it makes any sense. You know, of course, be nice but be aggressive. So you call your SEO agency and you say, hey, why am I suddenly on page five when I was at position five on the top of the first page a week ago? And your SEO agency had better have something to tell you that you don't already know. If I don't know is their default answer, no matter what, then not only do you need to think about overhauling your SEO presentation and your KPIs, you also need to look at getting another SEO agency because they, of all people, should know why your internet presence isn't working the way it did. Now, again, a small change or a little bit of churn in your positioning, that's not a bad thing. And over time, the cream does rise to the top. Although some might argue so does the scum. But of course, the entire point of Google's algorithm updates and the fact that they're putting out so many of them so aggressively is to ensure as best as they possibly can that low quality content doesn't get front page rankings and curb the chance of something that shouldn't get through, uh, getting through. And if it does, you know that something's wrong, and you can bet that Google is going to be along to fix it in about 15 seconds, and that causes more churn. There are people out there who still want to try to shortcut their way to the top. And we know, as you know, if you've been listening along for a while, that there are no shortcuts. There is no such thing as an overnight success, and there's no such thing as uh hitting it out of the park every time. It's just not going to happen. But when you see your rankings constantly falling, there's that's there's only one of two possible explanations for that. Either your SEO agency isn't doing the job, or you need to take a long hard look at your contracted KPIs and your SEO campaign. And if that's the case, it makes sense uh to make some updates to better accommodate those new terms that we're getting. The point is, don't panic unless you know there's something to panic about, and unless it's uh across the board with several pages. You wouldn't panic just because you get a hostile action from an opposing counsel. Uh, wouldn't you not agree that the same should apply here? You want to get all of the information, you want to get all of the details, and you want to get all of the data that you possibly can. And then and only then would you start crafting your response. So if you think about it that way, you'll see most of the time there's no reason to panic. And if your SEO agency is on top of things, they know there's a problem or they should before you do. And they're probably already coming up with ideas amongst themselves to present to you to fix it. So give them that opportunity before you start hitting the panic button and talking about, well, I'm going to kill this contract, or well, we're obviously not on the same page, or you guys are not doing the job. The biggest danger sign isn't always what you think it might be. The long protracted slides and ranking without any recovery, those are the moments that you need to be concerned. And uh, if you've got that and you're not getting those big slides, you're probably doing okay. And the rest of it is all organic SEO and letting the content do its job. And as long as you've got that, you're good to go. Again, I'm John Risvie, the Law Firm Growth Professor. Before you leave today, I'd appreciate it if you could click the like button and make sure you subscribe so you don't miss any updates from this channel. And don't forget to share with your friends and colleagues who might find this podcast helpful. Thank you so much for stopping by today, and be sure to tune in next week for more tips and ideas on making your firm's digital presence stronger and more durable. I look forward to seeing you next time.