How important is sticking to an exact keyword?

[corp0803]

The latest article I'm writing for my site is "Friends With Benefits Rules"... So the first part of my question is, what does SEOMoz advocate as being the ideal # of times to include the entire key phrase in the article? I know nobody but Google knows for certain, but is 4 (including in H1's etc.) generally considered enough, other than in the page title?

Second part is, what is the consensus about how important is it to stick to the exact keyword? For the example I gave, is it just as good to include a comma, E.g. "...friends with benefits, rules..." or a hyphen "Friends with Benefits - Rules for..."? One thing I'm unclear about on this topic is stop words and plurals. I've been told before that Google ignores stop words, but results for searches with or without the word "how," for example produce very different results... Same thing with plurals.

In any case, all of the above is assuming that the quality of the content would not be affected in either case...

[Gustav-Northclick]

Ok Forget keyword density, it only affect the site in a non user friendly way.

This is what you should focus on(in my opinion), I call this the three simple keyword rule.

Here we go:

1. The title must have the keyword in it. eg: title: Rules for Friends with Benefits
2. The heading shall reflect the title but in a more focused and detailed way, eg: These are the rules for friends with benefits.
3. The content delivers the answer to the heading. eg: You will naturally include the keyword in the text content since you structured the article around the heading. Make sure that you start with a summary that reflect the title.

Let's break this down in a descriptive way:

• The title describes the heading and content in a summary way with no more than 65 characters. this keeps it focused and relevant.
• The heading explains the title in a more detailed way.
• The content reflects the title and heading in a descriptive and informative way that has a summary that reflect the title and the full length article reflects the heading.

There we are, now try to follow these rules and you don't need to wonder about the keyword density and you'll automatically create good content that is visible and often better than the competition in the SERP.

Best,

Gustav