It's no secret that law firm websites are one of the most effective marketing tools around.

They're affordable, easy to manage, and one of the best ways for firms to generate new business.

But, not every Web site produces results. It can have flashy graphics and plenty of good information about the law firm, but if it's poorly designed or not search engine optimized - a website can be a wasted effort.

So how does your law firm Web site stack up?

Start by taking a good hard look at the site traffic. Where are your readers coming from? Google? Yahoo? Bing? And, what search terms are people using to find your Web site?

These are some of the important questions you need to ask yourself in order to maximise web traffic.

Link popularity is the number of links that point to a web page. Google bases its numeric Page Ranks based on this popularity.

Yahoo, however, operates a little different. Its ranking system is highly dependent on anchor texts, or word or words that make up the link – the text you actually click on (generally highlighted or underlined). Anchor texts are one of the most ignored elements of a law firm’s website - yet, they're one of the most important!

So how can your website start using anchor texts more effectively?

Start by reading Patrick Della Valle's article - Is Your Firm's Web Site Really Producing
Results?

Valle's article is an informative, easy-to-read guide to SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION.

He explains:
1) Internal links, or how to use important key words as links that point to other pages on your website.
2) Inbound links, or links from other website that point to yours.
3) How to generate link popularity.
4) The importance of fresh content. Search engines are more likely to "spider" your website if it's regularly uploaded with fresh articles that are rich in keywords and links.

Your firm's Web site should be generating real traffic from search engines. If it isn't, now is the make the basic changes needed to boost your rankings.