SEO Question about listing keywords in page title

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions G+ community.

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  Scott Cohen: ALWAYS make sure everything about the page is designed for humans, not search bots. Just jamming all the keywords into the title will not only be confusing but will likely adversely affect SEO.
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  James Sparks: I agree. But to play devils advocate, in theory those keywords listed are telling users what the page is about. If the landing page is marketing books, for example, and the title has Books, hardcover books, paperback books + Company brand, then isn't the company hitting two birds with one stone i.e. having all keywords in the title tag and telling the user what the page entails?
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  Scott Cohen: A jumble of keywords doesnt really tell the user much...so its a book site. Great. It should have keywords, for sure, the more the better, but make it flow and seem natural. Plus Search Engines are able to tell if your purposely stuffing your title with keywords, and they don't like it.
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  Scott Cohen: But also remember to get creative with keywords. Instead of &quot;paperback, hardcover) use keywords to make it flow...&quot;Acme Books: AcmeVille&#39;s Book, Magazine, and Game Shop&quot;<br />or something...
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  Ian Dixon: Agreed  ;when you say that pages should be designed for humans. I do that all the time because I want the content to be of value to my visitors.<br />From a human point of view, the page title seems to have less importance to a real user in these days of tabbed browsing. I know that I rarely see them when browsing and just look for the favicon in the tabs<br />&lt;title&gt; is still important so your premise is wrong  ;<br />The search engines will frequently (not always) pick up on what is included for the text to use in SERPs. So it should be a short but accurate description of the page
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  Tony McCreath: I&#39;m an advocate for human titles but a recent example showed me that a keyword stuffed title can get a page ranking for a term that is not present on the page itself. <br /><br />Not only that but Google was nice enough to not use the spammy title and write a better one in place.
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  James Sparks: All interesting points. I appreciate the feedback. I too am for natural titles, but was curious to hear what others think it.