To vent some of my frustration with Google and SE's in general I've just written this blog post. I know it won't help my SE ranking, but I feel all the better for writing it. Your comments most welcome.
I tried and still am trying to do both, that is repeat kws a little more than necessary but still offer useful content. But apparently, google thinks spam sites are better than mine, even if the keyword in question is my friggin' site's name. I just tore an article I wrote a year ago that was praising Google. Now, that made me feel better. Wonder when google will decide to unflag my site. It's been since February that my site sucks at google while it does well in MSN and Yahoo.
Are you sure it's not this? http://clsc.net/research/google-302-page-hijack.htm Help stop this: http://www.darrinward.com/google302/ There are several good threads here and elsewhere on the subject.
google is a bit frustrating. i see a lot of spammy sites for keywords im interested in. a close inspection of these sites reveal that they are doing a lot of things many seo's are telling you not to do. guess we have to keep experimenting til we get it right...
spammy sites will always rank, they will do what ever's necessary, collect the money then when G changes the algo and drops them they just move on to another domain and start again. All you can do is continue putting in the work and get your site so powerful that it ranks regardless of the spam.