i've been monitoring the top 10 for my main keywords for some time now. and some one finally beat the guy thats been there for almost 4 years. i checked out his site, its nothing special. not much content, its mostly a 'sales' site. but on his main site, he uses the keyword 5 or 6 times. google/Y/msn doesnt think this is spamming? i was using these terms maybe 3 or 4 times max. whats up? edit: also to top it off, i checked his meta. he has NO meta keywords (i know its not important), but he doesnt even have meta description (i know this is some-what important). all he has is the title tag WHATS GOING ON HERE?!!!
Having a keyword 5 or 6 times on a page is nothing. The search engines won't think it is spamming. The title is important, are the keywords in the title? It sounds like seo is what's going on.
you should focus on your title, that's the place where you should put your target keywords. Another is include it in your anchor text.
Keep monitoring as it may be due to fresh site boost and he will disappear soon. Do a keyword density check of the original top ten, and aim for a similar amount
Put randomly the keywords of the contents it doesn't matter 'coz SE is after what they call density of keywords.. The count of keywords present in certain contents.. The keywords in title play important role also...
I agree they key word in the title is more important than in the body of the text, but to answer your original question I would say if you count the number of words on the #1 ranked sites page & then divide it by the number of times the key word is used, EG 300 words on the page 5 times the keyword is used this gives you 60 so if you use you use the keyword in the same ratio, on your page you will know you are in the correct ball park. So if you have 250 words on your page divide 250 by 60 to get the number of times you should use the keyword (in this case 4) If you do what the number 1 site is doing then you know you will not get accused of spaming the SE, unless the #1 site does too.
search engines love fresh contents... i agree with sweetfunny, maybe it'll disappear soon,, depending on your competitors optimization... just continue build links, do your best to get again into the top... Regards!
it depends on how you used your keyword in your content as long your sentence is relevant to each other...