Brian,
A while ago I put this page up:
http://www.internet-marketing-resear...opywriting.php
It has "seo copywriting" as the first words in the page title; in H1 tags; appearing once on the page as link text; and with less-than-abusive KWD density in the body copy.
I immediately gave the page several dozen links with the anchor text "seo copywriting".
But it stayed in the #2 position for that kwd phrase (PhilC was #1).
The optimization ogf the on-page factors was perfect. The only thing that increases ranking in situations like that is anchor text.
I've pretty much discarded on-page elements SEO. Why even bother with it when anchor text is so powerful?
Short answer:
Get more links with the right anchor text.