I read in a few places that Google and other top search engines don't use meta keywords anymore. If that's true, what are the benefits of spending the time to create a keyword list?
Basically, search engines used to rely very much on meta tags of a webpage. However, since it was so easy to stuff keywords into the meta tag, and SE algorithm got a lot more complex, most search engines now concentrate a lot less on the meta tags when analysing the SEO of a website. Optimising your website for the desire keywords is still important, IE Placing your keywords in URL, Title, H1 Header, and relevant keyword-rich content. It's just meta tags are not so important, but it's always good to include them since it only takes a minute and many search engines still use them.
It doesn't hurt to add meta tags, though google doesn't count it that much nowadays. Just put more effort optimizing your titles and h1 tags, then spend less time on the others.
No, it's not as important as it once was. HOWEVER, there are still older search engines and crawlers that utilize meta tags. It only takes a few minutes to enter the key prahses you've selected for each page. Every little bit helps. There's no reason why not to do it.
When you are entering your keywords into the meta tag, should you start with the most desired first, and should you use it more than once like if you were going after man cold for instance -man, cold, man cold, and so on or does it have more value to just put waht your are asking for?
The keywords meta tag may or may not be used by Google, but there are still other sites that use it. Frankly, the last time I checked, it seemed like Google didn't like sites that have the same meta keyword tag on every page of the site. I don't know if that is still true or not. But you NEED to make a good keyword list of things that people are searching with, so that you can have the same thing on your site and be found for what people are looking for.
You don't need an ebook to understand keywords and SEO. There is a TON of good free information out there. How to tell what is good and what is not good? Read as much as you can and where you see most people saying the same things, that is the advice you should try for yourself and see if it works. For knowing what "percentage" of keywords to use, use as many as possible, but make sure what you write is proper English (or another language) and that will keep you usage acceptable.
sprinkle keywords within the text, not as meta tags. However, make sure you dont exceed 7% keyword density.
Keywords use to help you rank for the mos part, but over time, keywords aren't as important now. There's many other things that factor in like descriptions, content, links, and much more. It doesn't hurt to still make a list of good keywords though!