Keyword Density Checker

What this tool does

This tool reads your content and shows how often your words and phrases appear, as a percentage of the whole. Paste in an article and it breaks down the most common single words, two-word phrases, and three-word phrases, and if you give it a target keyword, it reports that one too. It is a quick way to see what your writing actually emphasises.

How to use it

1. Optionally enter a target keyword you want to track.
2. Paste your article or page copy into the box.
3. Tick Ignore common stop words to filter out filler like "the," "and," and "of," so the meaningful terms rise to the top, then read the density breakdown.

How it works

Density is a simple proportion: how many times a term appears, divided by the total number of words, as a percentage.

Keyword Density (%) = (Times the keyword appears ÷ Total words) × 100

So a keyword used 8 times in a 400-word article has a density of (8 ÷ 400) × 100 = 2%. The tool runs this for single words and for two- and three-word phrases, and the stop-word option removes common connectors first so they do not crowd out the terms that matter.

What density is actually good for

This is the honest bit, and it matters: keyword density is not a ranking factor, and there is no ideal percentage. Google's own people have said as much repeatedly, and modern search does not reward a page for hitting some magic number. Writing to a density target almost always produces stiff, repetitive text that reads worse, not better.

So use this tool as a diagnostic, not a goal. It is genuinely useful for catching two problems. The first is over-use, where the same phrase appears so often it looks like keyword stuffing, which Google treats as spam and can penalise or even deindex; anything climbing past roughly 3% is worth a second look. The second is under-use, where your main topic barely shows up, leaving search engines unsure what the page is about. Between those extremes, write naturally. What actually ranks is covering the subject well, including the related ideas around it, with genuine expertise, rather than repeating one phrase. A rough 1 to 2% is a fine sanity check, not a target to chase. The SEO audit checklist sets this in the wider picture, and the meta tag generator and length checkers handle the on-page tags.

Questions people ask

References

1. Google Search Central. Spam policies for Google web search (keyword stuffing). https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/spam-policies