Need advice on Adsense, Keywords and other things like Tags

Hi Blackhatworld, I have been browsing this forum for a short amount of time and it's helpful to me and I have found a lot of valuable information from this place. I recently lost my job and I always knew you could make serious money from the internet, but I could never balance the two things, so here I am. I wish to make my website my only source of income and become master at what I do..

I started blogging again (my first adsense site was when I was 16 in 2007 and it was different then but I shut it down in the same year) so I have started again after realising the possibilities!

I have a few questions though:

1) How do I use Keywords to get the right ads on my website?
Because in '07 I could select the keywords myself in the adsense part and then get ads that are suitable to my viewers, but now I am a little confused. I read a recent book on my Kindle where the writer describes using 'Google Keywords Tool' to get the right keywords and implement them onto your website to get the right ads for your viewers.

How would I use these keywords on my site? I think I am supposed to use those keywords in my articles? Am I right here? Please correct me if I'm wrong!

2) Kind of related to question 1.. What is the benefit of TAGS in your posts?
I know they are helpful in finding posts on your site but do they make a difference in search rankings or does having good tags attract more traffic?

2) Lastly, what are Meta-tags and Header-tags or similar terms?
I hear these a lot but I don't have any idea what they are or how to use them to my benefit. A spotlight on that would be great!

Thanks! SV.

1. Adsense will do it for you.
2. Good content. Forget the tags.
3. http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo

I think good tags help in rankings

Yes, you should use those keywords in your articles. Adsense detects those and sends ads related to that. However, if you still get some ads that are unrelated, you can go into your adsense account and disable those through the "Allow and Block ads" tab.

Tags are not that important for articles. They are important for images. They just tell google what your article is about so that you rank for the right keywords. But, Google has other ways of determining that, so you can ignore it

Hmmm, starting to understand now, I've been researching all night and day.
Just to be sure, the best thing any blogger can do is to produce good content, then everything else will follow?
I've learnt that a good post should have more than 500 words so I have started that and put more effort into them (am I right?)

Now here's the real question, I'm going to discuss my niche here a little, I have blog where I post random things like 10 most expensive things, 5 craziest things..and so on but I also get all of my views through FB alone. I have a group right now with just under 15,000 fans though they don't really engage so what I do is upload a funny picture to my blog and share that on FB.

My concern is related to keywords, if I have random articles not related to funny stuff but to more of the 'I'm bored, time pass genre', will my ads all become mixed and my site rank less?

Cheers for the advice guys, last thing I want to do is work my a$$ off for a long time only to find out I had been doing it wrong all along lol!