Keyword Density for Generic Keywords

As long as you use your keyword "shoes" in normal way, there is no problem at all.

Ignore keyword density per se, think about a small webpage of 500 words, it's easy to get to say 2% keyword density (keyword used 10 times), now try the same with a 5,000 word webpage (keyword used 100 times).

Google is highly unlikely to use keyword density per se, obviously you need the keyword used, but work on does it read/look OK, if so use it, if not cut back.

So to answer your question it's OK to have lots of links etc... using something shoes....

Have a really good example of how being a tad spammy works, unfortunately it's a racist jokes page: Mexican Jokes

The page has around 1,600 words, is top 5 in Google for Mexican Jokes with a keyword density of 5% with 7% KD for Mexican.

What you should be looking at keyword density in anchor text off the page and possibly for headings. Though I don't mean literally checking the density, just keep in mind anchor text is more important than body text so make sure quite a high density of links off a page use relevant phrases to that pages SERPs: in your case that would be lots of links using something shoes etc... as anchor text.

David

Something you may want to be aware of: Keyword Cannibalization (admittedly, new to me).

It's the multiple use of the same keyword(s) throughout a site and its affect on SEO. And it suspected to 'confuse' Google:

This page can explain it much better: How to Solve Keyword Cannibalization - SEO Tips - Moz

After you have chosen the keywords that describe your site and are supposedly of interest to your users, the next step is to make your site keyword-rich and to have good keyword density for your target keywords. Keyword density although no longer a very important factor in SEO is a common measure of how relevant a page is. Generally, the idea is that the higher the keyword density, the more relevant to the search string a page is. The recommended density is 3-7% for the major 2 or 3 keywords and 1-2% for minor keywords.

I don't really monitor keyword density in the articles or title tag as it doesn't really seem to matter.

Keyword density is only important if you exaggerate. If you use the word way too many times, then you might be in trouble. However, try reading your whole text, does it sound 'natural' to you? If you think the word "shoes" is repeated too many times it seems annoying, then just modify your text.

I think you don't have any idea what you're doing considering you're counting words.