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I'm going to assume that Debunker readers are like millions of other business people who use the Internet to search for information, products, and services. And indeed, 100% of respondents to the last NoSpin Debunker poll indicated that the FIRST place they go for quick information about business topic, a company, a product or a service is the Internet.

Think about what YOU do when YOU want to find something that you don't know a lot about on the Internet. You go to Google or Yahoo or MSN or another favorite search engine and type in a couple words (or maybe 3 or 4). You peruse the top listings and maybe click on one more listings. If that doesn't work, you search more and maybe try a couple other combinations of words . You are using key words. You might use a search engine to type in a company's (or product's brand) name--especially if well known (and perhaps you don't know the url) but not for most of your searches.

Let's use a very simple (one company with one product) hypothetical example: Grandma's Mayo LLC makes Grandma's Famous Mayo. Grandma wants to start selling her (locally) popular, zesty gourmet mayonnaise that she's been making for over 40 years from a recipe handed down from her mother. Awesome stuff that everyone in her small town loves. Now she wants to go big time and start selling her mayo via the web. But only a few hundred people on the planet have every heard of Grandma's Famous Mayo. Her company/product name is not what a potential buyer is going to type into Google. But what WOULD a prospect for Grandma's Famous Mayo maybe type into a search engine? Grandma is selling a gourmet mayo (at around $6 bucks for a 12 oz. jar) and is not trying to compete with Hellman's (at $2.29 for a 16 oz. Jar). We'll get back to Grandma in a minute.

Everyday millions of people type key words into hundreds of search engines to locate what they want to find on the WWW. Ah, but how do those search engines use that information to find and rank the hundreds of millions of urls?

That's a complicated and ever-changing equation--and way beyond this one Debunker. They all use different algorithms and are continuously tinkering with their methodologies to troll the web and capture the best listing information from sites so that they can display those sites in the best rank order. But one top criterion that all the top engines use are key words that appear in the html code on web sites (in the right places--which will be discussed next Debunker).

Key words are one mission-critical prerequisite for effective search engine optimization. Key words in the right places on your web pages will help search engine crawlers find you, index your urls, and place you higher--so that people can actually find your site and will click on your url--versus another option.

Key words are also critical if you use pay-per-click search engine optimization which can be an outstanding approach to pay for higher sponsored rankings on virtually all engines (but more on pay-per-click in another Debunker).

Think first about WHO you want to visit your web site. And think hard. Anyone? Site traffic for the sake of traffic is of little value. You want people who might be interested in what you have to offer: your particular products, your services or your related expertise--maybe not to purchase something today--but possibly at a point. If you have an Information Commerce (vs E-Commerce site) you want to at least collect a visitor's email address. But first you've got to get them to your site.

You've got to put yourself in the place of those people--who might be interested in your stuff--but who do not know (or remember) anything about your company's particular products or services. What are THEY going to type into Google or Yahoo or MSN or their favorite search engine to find what THEY want? This is the tough part of key words. That is, what words are THEY going to literally type into various search engines? Not words that you'd like them to use, but ones they would actually use. If you have not gone through this exercise before, I promise that you will be surprised.

You know your business and customers, and so YOU are the best, first source of key word options. Think hard and start jotting down your laundry list of key words. And then use these tools:

Look at the reports that show key words or key words by search engine. If you don't have a tool that tracks your traffic and a variety of other data (that includes key words that people are typing into search engines to find your site), get one today. There are dozens out there, but a good, economical one that I recommend for clients is Site Stats. If your company name or a derivative is currently your top key word, then 9 times out of 10 you are not even touching the surface of bringing higher volume quality traffic to your site. It's certainly OK that your company name is one of your key words, but optimized sites are primarily found via key words other than merely company names. The primary exceptions are web sites of companies that have worldwide brand names.

Perhaps, though, you got lucky and actually have used a few good key words in your current web site content. Your web site traffic tool monitors a lot of valuable information, but one very important piece of data is the key word phrases (that are typically monitored per search engine) that are actually being used now. If you are not consciously using search engine optimization techniques at present, those words will not necessarily be the best key words for you, but they might give you ideas for your key word list. Grandma is just putting up her new site, so she doesn't have any web site traffic history to examine. But there is more help:

Go to: http://www.overture.com/d/USm/adcenter/tools/index.jhtml and click on the Term Suggestion Tool on that page. If you type in one single key word or set of words, the Overture tool will not only list the number of searches or impressions (the # of times that a word(s) was actually typed into Overture's search engine as well as its affiliates: MSN, Yahoo, Lycos, AltaVista, InfoSpace, etc. last month). It will also provide a rank order of related key words that were also used the past month. Note that Overtures search figures are NOT for the whole Internet (and probably represent no more than a 20%-40% of total searches done on the Internet during any one time period; Google and hundreds of other engines are not included in the Overture statistics).

But these are real numbers and invaluable market research in that they show relative rankings of what web surfers truly type into search engines. If you want to increase quality visitors at your site, you must apply this key word information and then incorporate the best key words into your site (the next Debunker).

Grandma decides to start with the word mayonnaise. Using Overture's Term Suggestion Tool, Grandma discovers that there are several dozen other related words that might be even more targeted to the prospect audience that that might be intrigued by a really new and different mayonnaise. Here are just a few of those:

It may be unclear right now exactly what types of folks type one word, "mayonnaise," into search engines, but it definitely belongs on the initial list. For kicks, Grandma then types "mayo" into the Overture tool, but virtually everything seems to be related to the Mayo Clinic. But when she tries "mayo recipes" there were indeed 98 monthly searches done last month. And this process continues...These ideas will likely spawn other possibilities of attracting people who might give Grandmas' Famous Mayo a try.

In this very simple example, Grandma (who is pretty shrewd and open to new ideas) has already learned a few very valuable things--in addition to a few initial key words that she will build into her new web site:

1) While there may not be hundreds of thousands of possible Internet customers for her mayo, there are potentially several thousand Internet customers per month. That's still a lot of Grandma's Famous Mayo.

2) Grandma realizes that the word "mayo" is not necessarily the best to describe her product. "Mayonnaise" is a must, and she's starting to think that it might be wise to change the name of her mayo.

3) Also, its clear to Grandma that it might be a very good idea to offer her own special mayo/mayonnaise recipes (for free) on her new web site because there are always folks looking for mayo recipes--who might give Grandma's Famous Mayo a shot.

Like Grandma, make your laundry list of key words, and then start grouping them according to similar words, service types, product types, and prioritize them--not how you think they should be, but according to actual data from Overture. If you have lots of products and services, you may have a ton of key words possibilities.