I'm new to creating webpages/seo'ing, but the first impression i get from it is that keywords are one of the most important factors to rank. Yet i've read in several sites today that meta-keywords are just not important at all anymore, but ive also read on different sites that this is not the case and that keywords are important. Can someone enlightenment me about it? For me it takes a lot of time to do keyword research, yet if it is not important why do it??? Even google suggestions "suggests" me that keywords are dead: Im so confused right now, what is the big importance of finding relevant(lot of searches) keywords if its not taken in account at all???
It's 2013, not the 90s. SE's can now programmatically understand the content of a page. Meta keywords are absolutely redundant, except as a potential spam indicator for Bing. Obviously you do keyword research. You wrote content to target particular keywords and use these within the content and/or as anchor text. Understand? Content != meta keywords. Meta keywords are dead, useless, pathetic, pointless, spammy, unimportant, etc.
Alright, so as long as my keywords are in the content i dont need to worry about putting them on the meta, etc. Thanks
No. Meta keywords are utterly redundant. Meta description is used as your sales pitch in search results (or you can skip doing one and let Google select a snippet), so you could use the keywords in there. But it's to draw the human eye's attention and not for search engines.
Another thing i keep reading is that keyword density is also useless, this is also true? As long as i use my keyword in my content at least once i have the same probability to rank for that keyword as if i put it more times(lets say 1-3% my total words)?
Yes, it's another idiotic myth. Just write for humans, for your visitors. It's irrelevant how many times your keywords occur. Write content naturally... for humans. They are who will visit your site and keep returning. Humans are how you will get organic links. Who wants to link to a pile of crap article written for a search engine with the same keywords repeated x amount of times? No one. Good luck!
Most people out there use meta keywords and meta description as one of the purpose for search engine to detect their website.. However, as the Google Algorithm is been updated rapidly the importance of natural backlinks and human friendly content is at the highest priority!