"the two links you just gave proved me right."
You read what you wanted to read. That thread gave a link directly to matt cutts blog that explained that density is no an issue, but I guess you missed that.
"Your second link had this quote "I’d recommend thinking more about words and variants (the “long-tail”) and thinking less about keyword density"."
I would take this as a strong hint from Matt "thinking less about keyword density" He all but spelled it out for anyone that density is NOT a concern, so do not worry about it, so, again, you read what you wanted to.
Here is the big one. "So, to all other readers of this forum, density may not be as important as it used to be, but it's still a factor in
SEO."
more specifically "but it's still a factor in
SEO" If this were the case, then the next example I will give would not be possible.
Go to google and do a search for "Click Here" , here I will do it for you. here is a link to the search thread of click here
click here - Google Search
Now, the number 1 site does not have click here anywhere on the page that ranks number 1, it is a page on adobe.com
Click here is nowhere on the page or the source code, so it is not hidden, yet the sites below it have at least of of the two keywords in the title or content of the ranking page (you can see them in bold on the search thread ). So, since density is important as you say, how does a site that has NONE of the targeted keywords on the page outrank the other pages below it that do have it in title or content?
Guess that blows your theory, ya think? The sites below have more "density" because the winning page has NO density at all. Hmmmm...
Now, let me give you some information. Google, yahoo and MSN are all link popularity engines, they all use LSI or a similar character string analysis system for content, but links are the basic infrastructure for rankings and account for about 80 % of top rankings.
then you have onpage, which accounts for the other 20 some odd % of rankings, and onpage factors start with titile, h tags, bolding, highlighting, underlining, keyword zones, link zones, outbound links and about 60 other factors, so with this much info on onpage alone, and onpage accounting for 20 % or less of rankings in Google, just how important could density be anyway?
Please do not make absolute statements when you are giving false info and proving that you follow the crowd instead of leaving the crowd and making a difference.