Keyword Density Checker
Check how often a keyword appears in your text and what percentage of the copy it takes up.
Keyword density is the share of your text that one word or phrase takes up. Type the keyword you care about into the checker, and it reports how many times the keyword appears and what percentage of the copy it occupies. The table further down lists every repeated word and phrase, so patterns you stopped noticing while writing become visible.
Two groups of people tend to need this. SEO writers run a draft through it before publishing to confirm the target keyword shows up enough without tipping into stuffing. Editors use the same table to catch crutch words - the "actually" or "really" that somehow appears forty times in a 2,000-word piece.
How the Percentage Is Calculated
The formula is occurrences multiplied by the number of words in the phrase, divided by total words. If "word counter" appears 6 times in a 600-word article, that's 12 keyword words out of 600, or 2%. Single words skip the multiplication: "counter" appearing 6 times in 600 words is 1%.
Is There an Ideal Keyword Density?
Honest answer: no. Google has said for years that it does not use keyword density as a ranking factor, and chasing an exact percentage is wasted effort. What still matters is the failure mode at each end. A page that never mentions its own topic struggles to rank for it, and a page that repeats the same phrase in every sentence reads as spam to both visitors and search engines.
In practice, most well-ranking pages land somewhere between 0.5% and 2.5% for their main keyword without the writer ever counting. Use the percentage as a smoke alarm, not a target. Under 0.5% and the topic might be buried; over 3% and the copy probably sounds repetitive when read aloud.
Phrases Tell You More Than Single Words
Switch the phrase length to two or three words and the table gets more interesting. Single-word counts are noisy - "best" appearing 14 times means little. But "best running shoes" appearing 14 times in a 900-word review is a real signal. Multi-word repetition is also where awkward SEO writing shows first, because nobody repeats a full phrase that often in natural speech.
Using the Table as an Editing Pass
Ignore SEO for a moment. Sort through the top single words with stop words excluded and you get a fingerprint of your writing habits. Most writers lean on a handful of pet words without realizing it. If "just", "simply" or "leverage" sits near the top of the table, that's the editing to-do list. Replace half the occurrences with nothing at all - these words usually delete cleanly.
How to Use
- Paste your draft or page copy into the editor.
- Type your target keyword or phrase into the "Check a keyword" field to see its count and density.
- Switch the phrase length between single words and two- or three-word phrases to find repeated patterns.
- Export the full table as CSV if you want to compare several drafts.
Frequently Asked Questions
What keyword density should I aim for?
There is no magic number, and Google does not rank pages by density. Most readable, well-ranking pages land between 0.5% and 2.5% for their main keyword naturally. Treat anything above 3% as a sign to reread the copy out loud - it usually sounds repetitive at that point.
Is keyword stuffing still penalized?
It remains one of the oldest spam signals there is, and modern search systems are good at spotting it. The bigger cost is usually the reader: stuffed copy is unpleasant to read, and people leave.
How is the density percentage calculated?
Occurrences times the number of words in the phrase, divided by the total word count. So a two-word phrase used 5 times in a 500-word text gives 10 keyword words out of 500, which is 2%.
Should I check single words or phrases?
Phrases, mostly. Single-word counts include too much noise to act on. Two- and three-word phrases match how people actually search and reveal repetitive phrasing much faster.
What are stop words and why exclude them?
Stop words are common words like "the", "and" or "of". They always dominate any frequency count, so the table hides them by default. Untick the option if you want the raw list.
Can I use this to find overused words in my writing?
That might be its best use. Exclude stop words, look at the top of the single-word table, and you'll see which words you lean on. Most drafts have two or three filler words that can be cut with no loss of meaning.