Keyword density checker
Count words and phrases, check a target keyword, and see where it appears. A repetition and readability check, because Google publishes no ideal density.
| Phrase | Count | Density |
|---|
Density = occurrences ÷ total words × 100. Top 25 shown. With the option on, phrases that start or end with a stopword are hidden. The target keyword count also matches across sentence breaks, so it can be slightly higher than the table.
4 steps, no signup
- 01
Paste your text or HTML
Paste a draft, or the HTML source of a page. Tags, scripts and styles are stripped before counting.
- 02
Add a target keyword
Type the word or phrase you are writing about to see its count, density and where it appears.
- 03
Read the phrase tables
Switch between one, two and three-word phrases. Stopwords are hidden by default so the real topics surface.
- 04
Fix what reads badly
If one phrase dominates, rewrite for the reader: use synonyms, pronouns and related terms instead of repeating it.
What is a good keyword density?
There is no target number. Google publishes no ideal keyword density, and its spam policy defines stuffing by intent and unnatural repetition, not by a percentage. Use the density figure to spot a phrase you have repeated more than a reader would expect, then rewrite those passages so they read naturally.
What this keyword density checker does
Paste a draft or a page's HTML and the keyword density checker counts every word, then lists the most repeated one, two and three-word phrases with their counts and density. Add a target keyword and it tells you how often that phrase appears, its density, and whether it shows up in the title, the headings and the first 100 words.
Most density tools stop at a percentage and then grade it against a cutoff such as "2.5% is stuffing". Those cutoffs are the tool maker's opinion. Google has not published one. This page treats the number as what it is: a quick way to spot a phrase you have repeated more than a reader would expect.
What Google actually says
Google's spam policies define keyword stuffing as "filling a web page with keywords or numbers in an attempt to manipulate rankings", and give examples like repeating words or phrases so often that the text sounds unnatural. There is no percentage in that policy. The guidance on helpful, people-first content asks whether content is written for people first, and the SEO Starter Guide suggests thinking about the words your readers would use to search.
So the useful questions are: does the page name its topic clearly, and does any phrase repeat so often that the writing sounds forced? The checker helps with both.
How the counts work
| Step | What happens |
|---|---|
| Strip HTML | If the input looks like HTML, script, style and tags are removed. The title and h1 to h6 headings are read separately. |
| Split words | Runs of letters and digits, keeping apostrophes and hyphens inside words. Lowercased. |
| Count phrases | Every 1, 2 and 3-word sequence is counted. Sequences do not cross sentence breaks. |
| Density | Occurrences divided by total words, times 100. |
| Stopwords | Common words like "the", "and", "of" are hidden from the single-word table, and two and three-word phrases that start or end with a stopword are hidden from the others. |
How to read the results
- Your topic should be near the top of the one-word table once stopwords are hidden. If it is missing, the page may not say clearly what it is about.
- One phrase far ahead of everything else is the pattern to look at. Read those passages aloud.
- Two and three-word phrases show your real topics. Related phrases (for a recipe page: "baking time", "oven temperature") are a sign the page covers the subject in depth.
- Placement: the keyword in the title, a heading and the opening paragraph tells a reader they are in the right place. It is a good habit, not a documented ranking rule.
Fixing repetition
- Replace some exact repeats with pronouns ("it", "this tool") where the meaning stays clear.
- Use the words your readers use for the same thing. Search the topic and look at the related searches.
- Cut sentences that only exist to fit the phrase in.
- Never hide repeated keywords in white text, tiny fonts or alt text. Google lists hidden text as spam.
Worked example
Paste a 600-word article about sourdough with "sourdough starter" as the target. Suppose the phrase appears 18 times. The checker shows 18 occurrences and a density of 3% (18 ÷ 600 × 100), ticks it as present in the first 100 words, and lists the two-word table with "sourdough starter" far ahead of "feeding schedule" and "rye flour". That gap is the signal: read the paragraphs where the phrase clusters, swap some repeats for "the starter" or "it", and paste again. The number on its own proves nothing; the reading does.
Troubleshooting
- Headings show as "not checked": you pasted plain text. Paste the HTML source to check the title and headings.
- Menu and footer words dominate: page source includes navigation. Paste only the article HTML, or the visible article text.
- Keyword count is 0 but it is there: check spelling and plurals. "Shoe" and "shoes" are counted separately.
- Non-English text: counting works for any language that uses spaces between words. The stopword list is English only.
Related tools
To group the keywords a page should cover, try the keyword clustering tool. To check how your title and description will look in results, use the SERP snippet preview, and for the headline itself, the headline analyzer.
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