Is my keyword density too high?

In looking at the Google results for Northeastern State University, www.nsuforum.com is not where I think it should be. It's not even on the first 5 pages of results. It's on the first page of msn and Yahoo. It has a toolbar PR of 5. It's been in Google for quite a while, and used to be on the first page of Google results.

I'm wondering if my keyword density for "Northeastern State University" is too high and I'm being penalized for it. It is there quite a bit on the main page. If you have the Google toolbar, go the www.nsuforum.com, type Northeastern State University in the toobar search, and click on the highlight button and you'll see the page light up like a Christmas tree!

Should I cut down on the keywords? If I do, will my site eventually rise back up, or is it permanently tainted?

As far as we know there is no penalty for high having high keyword density. There are simply too many sites that have a high ranking that repeat the keywords over and over.

It's more likely down to LocalRank. Have you got backlinks from sites that are already within the first few pages of google for your keywords? If not, then that's what you need to do as a first port of call.

Thanks chromate. Stupid localrank. So is it definite that localrank has been implemented? If so, do links from the same site count torwards localrank?

No one's really certain about LocalRank. It's hard to tell. Though from most observations LocalRank or a variation of LocalRank does seem to explain a lot.

I can't remember exactly, but I think links from the same site would count towards LocalRank, but according to the patent at least, google will try to detect affiliations between pages. Therefore, if page A is affiliated with page B then the links between them will be de-valued.

So reciprocal linking is frowned upon by Google?

I always suspected it... but I've never really heard of it being discussed.
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I don't think reciprocal linking is frowned on by google if the pages are on topic and it's not being done solely to boost PR etc.

Many top ranked sites on google have a long list of reciprocal links. There's no logic behind punishing reciprocal links.

Not punishing, just simply devalueing the effectiveness of the links which are found to be reciprocal. In other words, giving them less importance compared to non-reciprocal links.
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I really doubt Google is devaluing reciprocal links.

1. If you're doing link exchanges for nefarious purposes, you'll adapt and make it a three site chain or something.

2. If you're not doing link exchanges for nefarious purposes, you'll be affected by this.

So the end result is the cheaters keep on cheating, the rest get punished.

It doesn't make alot of sense to me.

Plus, most link exchanges do very little to help you (in terms of search engines). Since you are both sending and recieving PR, and because of the dampening factor, most people will probably end up with less PR after the exchange.

There simply is no need for Google to be concerned with link exchanges.