[newbie] why are keywords so important?

Hey

I've read that google don't use keywords anymore because earlier people keyword spam it etc..

But still people spend hours to calculate the perfect keywords, ie keywords with few competing pages and are searched for many times.

So why spend all that time finding the perfect keyword when mr G don't use it?

Hi Buddy,

What people mean is G doesn't use the "keywords" meta tag but you still need to optimize your pages for your keywords, but as a rule of thumb i (and i'm sure other guys here to) use the keywords meta tag for the smaller search engines

Graham

Google certainly does use keywords. The robots and spiders crawl your site but now can detect keyword spam sites pretty easily.
Valuable, intelligent web content with proper keyword phrases are the best way (besides inbound and outbound linking) to get your google rankings to page 1.

as pointed out earlier, meta keyword is no longer a valid ( but still need ) for search engines. Also by setting your meta keywords, you are keeping yourself focused on the project.

I normally work with 3 key word phrases per page.