Is keyword stuffing relative to total copy length or an absolute rule?

[Brocberry]

My seomoz report has warned me about 38 occurrences of a keyword on a page, is that always too many? 19 of them are in my reviews tab, "I love KEYWORD", etc. I expect to get more reviews and more keyword mentions. If I had to keep that page to 15 or fewer, I would have no reviews tab.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

This is a 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' scanario with no quick and simple answer.

I understand fully where you are coming from and the way Keyword density / stuffing comes from is a total count of all words on that page, and seeing, as a percentage, how many times a particular word or phrase occurs.

I can only suggest that reviews are as close to the end of the page as possible, and place copy around there that explains these are reviews - perhaps append / prepend a name with the word 'review' or 'reviewer' etc. Might help alleviate the situation somewhat.

Andy

[donford]

This is one, I think people worry about way to often. I understand SEOMoz will warn you if you use anything over then 15, but like most tools that should only serve as a heads up not a chiseled in stone rule.

Technically, you would look at percentages and not just the occurrences.

Take for example Wikipedia's Beaver Page and the keyword Beaver or Beavers

Total Keyword Usage for this Page = 274Which is about 8% of the words on the page. That is a little higher then I expected but still in what I would call an acceptable range.That said, you shouldn't get hung up on keyword density either.The best advice, keep the text natural sounding. Reviews have a tendency to not always follow this rule. Amazon has a great solution for this, which is to allow a review rating system. Then only show the highest rated reviews unless the user request otherwise. You'll find that your better written reviews are the ones that also sound natural and thus get top spot and displayed on page.Hope that helps,
Don

[kadesmith]

I think the solution to this in your case is to place microdata around your reviews (see schema.org).  The search engines are smart enough to recognize the perceived "keyword stuffing" as reviews when you markup your code content.  Not only will it help with avoiding a keyword stuffing penalty, your rankings may begin to show up with enhanced listings in the SERPs increasing CTR.

[Brocberry]

I will continue to add keywords to the page in the natural way I have been, and add markup to reviews section to make it clear that's what it is. I will cut scema markup from my want list and paste it to my need list.

[Brocberry]

Amazon appear to use a different url once the reviews link is clicked which perhaps detracts from the seo efforts of the product page?