A few years back, before Google Panda’s introduction in February 2011, SEO was simpler than 
Traditional keyword SEO was very straightforward. Select your keywords, insert them into title tags and meta keyword tags, remember them, and repeat them a few times over the content. Add a few links, relevant or otherwise, and watch as your page reaches the top of search engine rankings. Keywords were easy yet exceptionally efficient. It made for easy manipulation of SEO though, as people started deliberately deceiving the search engines through artificial uses of keywords, links, and content.
Google’s first move in fighting the SEO manipulators came during February 2011, in the form of Google Panda. Panda changed Google’s search results ranking algorithm to get rid of low quality sites. This algorithm update alone is credited with changing up to 12% of all search results. Keywords importance strengthened as websites were now being policed accordingly. Consequently, problems started showing up for Google as copycats and copyright infringers were actually ranking higher than original content websites. Such an occurrence forced Google to help original content websites through providing an advisory on its blog, thoroughly explaining 23 bullet points on “what counts as a high-quality site?” in order to help sites owners with original and quality content rank higher with an emphasis on keyword research.
(see http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/05/more-guidance-on-building-high-quality.html).
Constant searches for maneuvering and manipulation by the copyright infringers were eventually successful, as the so-called “black-hat SEO” technique gave cheating websites an easy ride to the top of the rankings. So in came the Google Penguin, yet another Google Algorithm update intended to cleanse the artificial keyword manipulators off the search rankings. Announced on April 24, 2012, Google Penguin significantly decreased the ranking of websites that violated Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.
The third and most sophisticated update though came on 30 August 2014, in the form of Google Hummingbird. A brand new and highly sophisticated search algorithm, Hummingbird came with extraordinary abilities to judge the searcher’s intent through synonyms and determining what they are trying to find out in different ways. Google Hummingbird is built to understand each and every word in an enquiry, taking into account the whole sentence and not just the keyword. Subsequently, keyword importance was claimed to have been reduced deliberately by Google, but that is far from the truth. The only thing Google Hummingbird changed was how the actual search query was processed, but not the keyword accounting. Basically, Google rewrites your search query and takes synonyms into consideration, thus still allowing your keywords to be taken into account credibly. In fact, synonyms and associated expressions will only help increase your relevance in search rankings.
Google’s importance on keywords is best explained through their highly technological Google Keywords Suggestion Tool (https://adwords.google.com/KeywordPlanner), a specialized technique developed to increase keyword efficiency for webmasters. to use it, you must have a Google Adwords account, which takes about 5 minutes to set up. And despite Google’s insistence on limiting its maneuvering space, keyword research is still as essential as ever. However, as a result of a never-ending list of websites vying for traffic, keyword competition has reached a stage where staying on the top of the rankings for long is deemed impossible, especially with one-two keyword optimization. Keyword research has actually come to the point where you must realistically aim for three word keywords in order to have a chance at significant long term success.
In conclusion, it is now well known that Google does not intend to decrease keyword importance. Keywords are an efficient tool for them to control the search ranking results and they will emphasize it for years to come until a way to evaluate original and quality content is available. For now though, their primary goal is to keep on improving the evaluation of content through keywords and their anti-manipulation war. Friend or foe, keywords will remain in our online life for the foreseeable future.
