How do I avoid "Keyword Stuffing"?

[TadWaxpole]

Suppose I have a site about Fishing, for example, and I want to attract people through the search engines to my site. I have different pages of my site dedicated to different states in the country(California Fishing, Wisconsin Fishing, Florida Fishing. etc.) and I have a link to each of the sites on each page.

Example...each page would have a link to every other state's page like this...

Alabama Fishing
Arkansas Fishing
California Fishing
yada, yada
Wisconsin Fishing
Wyoming Fishing

If I want to do this to my improve text links and page rank to each of these sites, might this also get me in trouble for stuffing the word "fishing" over and over again, even if it's related and pertinent to a slightly different topic (different states?)

Or does the fact that each link is a little bit different help prevent the engines from viewing this as stuffing, even if one key word is repeated several times.

[eragon]

IMHO it does seem to be a bit much to have "fishing" listed that way. Since it's a fishing site, your readers will know that, so you can get away with something like "fishing in these states:..." and then list the states themselves. Just an idea.

I recommend focusing on your body copy to sprinkle keywords like "fishing".

Other experts here may have other ideas. :)

[lots0]

Just a suggestion,

Why not analyze the keyword density on the top ten pages for your keyword in the top 4 search engines?

Would that not be a much more realiable source of information than asking this question in a open forum?

[St0n3y]

If your keyword is "california fishing" you don't have to have both "california" and "fishing" together for the search engines to find you relevant for your phrase. The strategy mentioned by eragon is a good one.