High Links-High On-Page Optimization--Low Rank

Re-Optimized and Dropped in Ranking

[WebMistress]

Looking for feedback and experiences with similar situation to mine:

I was and have been ranked #2 for a keyword term for some time. But this month a competitor outranked me and dropped me to #3. So, I did a keyword density analysis of our 2 sites, and raised my keyword density up to be in line with theirs. I dropped to #6.

~Here are other factors:
~My PR: 5
~My site backlinks: 497
~The other sites (other than #1, see below) backlinks now ahead of me: between 24-50
~PR of other sites now ahead of me: PR4, and one PR5
~allinanchor: I'm #2
~allintext, allintitle: I'm #3

Did I over-optimize when I increased my keyword density (which to match my competitors, I raised to around 10% and 8% for each word in the keyphrase)?

#1 for the keyword phrase has makes sense with:
~over 1,000 backlinks
~PR6,
~zero keyword density
~allinanchor, allintext (though nowhere on site--and clean site), and allintitle: #1

Today, I under-optimized on-page factors to see what happens on next crawl.

[inventio]

>Out of curiousity, after you tweaked the keyword density, did the page also read better?

I would say yes. It didn't read badly but it was not how I would have naturally written it.