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[ExtraB]

I have a question about the keyword density of a page.

When a search engine looks at the keyword density what exactly does it look at? Is it just the actual text in the body of the document that the surfer sees, or does it include other things like the title tag, image alt tags, comment tags?

Also is there really an optimum keyword density ( i have read from various resources that it is best to keep it around 3 to 5% and others say 15 to 20%)... is any of this true? Personally I used to keep it around 5% but have a feeling that rule has changed over the last year or so.

I was also wondering if you use the keyword too much will it be considered spamming or be a possible factor causing a drop in ranking? The reason I am asking is because I recently designed a site for a client. We focused on a couple of keywords per page of the site. They were placed in the title tag, meta tags (for engines that use them), image alt tags where appropriate, heading tags, anchor text in links, etc.

I want to figure out which of these instances of the keyword I should use to calculate the keyword density and figure out if I over used it.

If appropriate I can even include the keyword and URL.... let me know if this ok and thanks.

Eric B