keyword density and SE optimization

the right density weightings for a page?

[eatapeach]

I've been reading a lot about how to optimise a page for the SEs and now that i'm putting together a page that i'm trying to rank as high as possible for a 3 keyword phrase i have a few questions.

According to Brett you should use a keyword (phrase) once in the title, description, heading, url, once bold, once italic, and hit the density between 5 and 20%.

when i use these instances of the keyword phrase in a 450 word page and then run it thru the keyword density anaylyzer [searchengineworld.com...] with 4 occurrences i'm getting a 50% density on the 3-word keyword phrase i'm optimizing for, and a 37% on a 2 word phrase for 6 occurrences, whereas the single keywords top out at around 11%.

i am only using these phrases 3 times in the visible text, once in the H1 and twice in the body.

so my questions are:

1) can i combine a tags like the H1 and bold, or bold and italic and get the same benefit?

2) at what level do the SEs consider a high keyword density to be spam? are different length phrases weighted the same?

3) is the anchor tag text counted toward the total word count on a page? i'm reading about using outgoing links to improve the receiving page, but if i use a keyword phrase in the link i'm just adding to the keyword density of the page.

thanks in advance for your input.

take it easy,
eatapeach

[eatapeach]

oh well, nevermind.

i guess it was a silly question anyway.

[claus]

Interesting figures. With a base of 450 words, the only way the percentages can be so high is because too many "stop-words" are filtered out before the calculation is made. With no stop-words, the highest theoretical density you would be able to get with just four repetitions of three words would be:

12/450 = 3%

The 47 percentage point difference is all your filler words. You can lower the density by using more "real" words. Here are the words you should avoid using too many of - it's practically impossible to avoid them all and still have text that makes sense to a human reader: [searchengineworld.com...]

Otherwise, you can add more text that does not contain your keywords.

>> is the anchor tag text counted toward the total word count on a page?

Yes. Anchor text in outgoing links is text just like any other text.

>> can i combine tags

Imho, it's more beneficial if you don't. It's just my personal take on this, perhaps others have other views or even evidence.

>> at what level do the SEs consider a high keyword density to be spam?

50% sounds high to me. I don't think anyone knows the exact borders, but Brett's advice is worth following, imho.

/claus

[eatapeach]

thanks claus.

after i made the post i started messing with the options on the keyword analyzer and i think i'm closer than i thought to having the sites somewhat optimized.

I also ran some of the top ranking sites through the analyzer to compare and some #1 - #3s on google for keywords i'm targeting were fairly similar in keyword density.

since i'm going for keywords without a lot of competition i think i'll do well if i try to follow brett's guidelines.

take it easy,
eatapeach