i built my site with wordpress and i'm getting concerned about the number of mentions of "website design" on my portfolio/categories page you see here. and i have more categories too that i want to add. should i be concerned about search engines getting pissed off because the keywords are mentioned too many times??? please advise. thanks in advance!
Search engines don't get pissed off. What you are referring to is called keyword stuffing and you are probably doing it. Yes it will harm you more than help you because it is unnatural and an obvious attempt. Just write naturally. Write for people not search engines. Use your terms where they naturally fit in and move on. Every little thing doesn't have to be an SEO trick.
well yes, i was referring to keyword stuffing and seo, but just using less technical terms. anyway, again these terms are category headings. i'm not actually overusing the term "website design" within the actually postings. that being said, will the search engines still think its keyword stuffing if the term is not overused in the specific postings??? Do they know the difference between a categories (or a search results page for that matter) vs. a posting???
Yes, spiders know the difference. Not all SE"s index the same way nor use the same algorithm, so what may work for Google may not work for Bing or Yahoo. Just write the article naturally.
It could be alright for a high or low density. What more important is if your site's write up looks natural and relevant to the keywords.