Which counts for more inter – or intra site links for search optimization?

Question: If you have a family of keywords/phrases but they all share one core keyword. Is it the density of the core word or the long tails that should be 5-7%
Question: Relative to tag value, what is the relative value of plain text. Sometimes italic or strong tags in text sections look funny to people and make page look awkward.
Question: Which count more intra or inter site anchor link text links? (from within the site vs from another site)

Answer: I don’t look at the numeric density. I am more interested in a) are the target keywords in the appropriate tags, starting with the all important TITLE tag, b) does the page have good VISUAL keyword density (the CTRL+F / PINK Text), and c) is the page written in NATURAL syntax. Real sentences with subjects and verbs vs. just strings of commas, commas, commas. That said, you’ll find densities of about 5-7% vs. a target keyword, for the CORE and not all the derivations of a keyword.

As for the visual of the page – yes, overdoing ITALIC (EM) and BOLD (STRONG) can make the page not read well for humans. That’s just a trade-off you have to make. One workaround is always put the HUMAN content towards the top and the Google content towards the bottom, with the knowledge that humans won’t read down below the fold.