Do keywords still matter for SEO?

Keywords still matter, but their role has shifted. They matter as a signal of what people actually search for and want to know, not as an exact phrase to repeat a specific number of times across a page.

Google's language understanding has improved enough that it recognizes synonyms and related concepts without an exact keyword match, which is why keyword stuffing has been a losing strategy for years now.

The practical use of keywords today is deciding what to write about and what question to answer first, not obsessing over exact wording once the page is written.

An SEO automation platform uses keyword data to decide topics, not to force exact phrase repetition.