Keywords are "dead, dead, dead?!"

But they still make me Number One!

[tourist]

I've been lurking for a couple of weeks - in this & other forums - and I've managed to pick-up that keywords "don't help," "are virtually useless" and the Search Engine Watch proclamation that they are "dead, dead, dead." Despite this, this is certainly a hopping forum where everyone seems terribly concerned about keywords. What gives?

(Yes, I've caught that Inktomi & second-rate SEs still pay attention, but we all want to be #1 at Google, right? And Google doesn't care much for keywords, right?)

So, to my genuine question...

I have a travel-related site and on it I offer some software from a multinational company. This company has a main web site, as well as country-specific sites (like google.com, google.co.uk, etc.). They're not small, chances are good someone reading this has some of their products.

My site, on the other hand, is nothing to get excited over. I've NEVER submitted to any SE and you could put one hand behind your back, count the number of sites that link to me, and still have fingers left over.

So how is it that if you search for "blue widgets" I'm the number one (woo-woo!) result if not for keywords?

Some numbers:

Search for -

widgets - 1.8 million results
blue - 8000
fuzzy - 1 million ("fuzzy" = company name)

blue widgets - 87
fuzzy blue widgets - 48

Keyword density (via Brett's analyzer):

Me / "Fuzzy" Corp.
widget 6.42% / 6.48%
blue 3.96% / 0.00%
fuzzy 3.77% / 5.85%

(Hmm, "blue" WAS on the Fuzzy Corp. page until VERY recently - Google cache still has it.)

I wish I could mention the PR of the pages, but when I went to get the toolbar from Google, I was quite suspicious when there was no security certificate, but downloaded it anyways, and that's when my antivirus software started screaming nasty things. Message to Google about this has gone unanswered... :(

Regardless, I imagine that I have a PR0. The linking (to me) sites are also rather small, with a limited number of inbound links as well - I don't think they'd be any high PR.
(And they don't link to the software page, just my home page.)

I'm just lost... I can't understand how a real backwaters site like mine can be the world's number one source for the software, especially if searches include the company name (and the company offers the software for download as well).

<horn-tooting>
Could it be the care I've taken with my keywords? My meticulous attention to good HTML including creating a site that meets W3C Priority 2 accessibility compliance (and Priority 3 if I really wanted to)? My dashing good looks? Selfless altruism? :)
</horn-tooting>

It seems I've done something right, now I just want to know what it is so I can bottle & sell it!

[Brett_Tabke]

I think we were all referring to Meta Keywords - not keywords in text.

[tourist]

Oh, I understood that "everyone" was talking about keywords in the META tag, and that's also what I was referring to. (But, these in-the-text keywords are being stuck into the META still, yes?)

Both "Fuzzy Corp." and I have fuzzy & widgets in the META, along with me adding blue to the META. Both of us use fuzzy blue widgets a number of times in the page copy. (While my page is larger, the densities are smaller.)

Fuzzy Corp. has thousands of links to it... My site? Um, two. :)

So, having blue in my META ranks me better than the manufacturer & every e-commerce site that sells Fuzzy Corp. products?!

I'm just confused, as this scenario seems to fly in the face of everything I've read here. It's a smaller scale, but it's akin to searching for "windows" and coming ahead of Microsoft. I've done no SEO - on this page - had no plans to try and come out #1 on the SERPs, and, in fact, I would much prefer if I WASN'T first.