Odds are what was effective in those days is likely changed. The search engines (okay Google) is always revamping their algos. So it is likely the "tricks' used in the past are now no longer effective.
It is a matter of finding the new ones.
That said, linked content still seems to be one of the keys.
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Yes, keywords are constantly changing. The tension is between writing creatively for human readers and writing for the machine. I am not sure if this is true. Due to SEO abuses done in the past, I heard someone say that SEO now is more organic. Literally, during those days you can read articles, in which keywords are properly placed but the following sentences in the paragraphs have nothing to do with the topic itself. It has been a long time since I stopped writing SEO articles. The challenge now is how to maintain both SEO and creativity, writing for both human readers and the machine.