Hi, does anybody know if there is a certain % of keywords that you're supposed to use within your content text to make it most effective?
What River said is an acceptable industry standard. You can also use variation of the same words, as in synonyms and various permutation and combinations. It needn't be exactly the same phrase all the time.
keyword density used to be a big on-page optimization factor before but not anymore. 1%-3% KW density is good enough given that you have enough backlinks from related sites with anchor text. i have even seen sites ranking for certain keyword which doesnt even exist on the site. its all about the power of backlinks
7% is entirely too much. Don't do anything that sounds retarded. I do content writing for people all the time. I try to put the keywords in where it makes sense, but not overdo it. There is an art to it, you have to make the writing look smart, utilize the keywords frequently, but not too much where it doesn't sound right. For example: Some people think you should write like this, which is retarded sounding to be quite honest: In reality, there is nothing wrong with the following. Search engines will still pick up on it and your readers won't be going "huh?".
There is no real "SEO Rule" that is used. We match the competition's density and improve the "text to code" ratio to beat them. But I really don't think Google is concerned about it any longer. Just if you go overboard.
Yep, as others have stated, it is not something to really obsess about. Keyword density is such a small factor, especially compared to the power of backlinks. I get plenty of rankings without using the specific phrase on my website. Using too high a keyword density may get your website penalized, but getting it to exactly 3% or whatever isn't going to push your website to the top of the rankings. I can't remember the last time I bothered checking keyword density for my own websites or my competitors. Just get enough quality backlinks with good anchor text and you'll usually beat the competition.
The correct answer to your question is don't worry about it. Sprinkle them in where it makes sense, and make articles that people will actually read. Then worry about getting incoming links to your pages with variations of your keywords in the anchor text. Well written pages will take care of the onsite optimization for you. You really can not make changes significant (with keyword density) to make any real difference once you are shooting for the first page. So you can tweak it all you want, but you can not measure the significance of the onsite optimization tweaks because there are too many off site variables which make the real difference.