You're right that Google pretty much ignores meta tags. There are two main things you should always consider when writing content:
* Keyword Phrases
* Density
Here (http://google.about.com/od/searchengineoptimization/qt/improverank.htm) is a brief article on both.
The density of "pressure" will probably be higher than "pressure cooker" simple because "pressure" occurs more times than the actual phrase "pressure cooker" - but you want to have phrases, because people will not search on Google for just "pressure" (because they will get millions of hits) they will search for maybe "buy pressure cooker" or "best pressure cooker" - so as long as you have those words legitamtely represented (don't repeat the words back to back, don't have invisible text with sentences including the word), you should be squared away. Try to have a page just talking about pressure cookers or whatever you want to talk about... then that page will be the 100% focuses on that and off all the words, all of them will be relevant.
It's still a secret on how Google excatly ranks and chooses the keywords, but following the article mentioned above, should get you started!
~Sovereign
I'm writing content for a website and have a question. Take, for example the phrase "pressure cooker." I use a kw density checker and it tells me the density in a short article is 2%. BUT the density of the separate words "pressure" and "cooker" is much higher, 5% amd 4%. We're going to submit to Google, which I know requires no more than 2% density. How does Google know what your keywords are? Sorry if this sounds naive, but this is the first time I've done this and want to get it right. I read that you should put your keywords in meta tags, but that Google doesn't use meta tags. TIA.
Jainagirl

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