Keyword Density Checker
See which words and phrases dominate your text, with real counts, density percentages and separate tables for one, two and three-word phrases.
| # | Phrase | Count | Density | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Paste some content to see the analysis. | ||||
About the Keyword Density Checker
Keyword density is the percentage of a document made up by a particular word or phrase. It had an outsized reputation in early search engine optimisation, when repeating a phrase enough times genuinely moved rankings. That era ended a long time ago: modern search engines evaluate meaning, related terms and how well a page answers a query, and pages that hammer one phrase read as spam to both algorithms and humans.
The metric is still worth measuring, for two reasons that have nothing to do with hitting a target. The first is catching over-optimisation — if your target phrase appears at 5% density, the writing has almost certainly become repetitive and unpleasant to read. The second is the opposite problem: a 2,000-word article on a subject that never actually states the phrase people search for, because the writer worked around it with pronouns and synonyms throughout.
This checker reports single words, two-word phrases and three-word phrases separately, because multi-word phrases are what people actually search for. Stop words are filtered out of the single-word table by default so the results are meaningful rather than a list of the, and and of. Every count is shown alongside its density percentage and the total word count it was calculated from.
How to use it
- Paste your contentThe article, product description or page copy you want to analyse. Longer texts give more meaningful percentages.
- Choose the phrase lengthSwitch between one, two and three-word phrase tables — multi-word phrases are usually the more useful view.
- Filter stop wordsLeave the filter on to hide grammatical filler, or turn it off to see the raw distribution.
- Read the density columnEach phrase shows its count and its percentage of the total word count.
- Compare against your targetCheck that your intended keyword actually appears, and that nothing else is dominating unintentionally.
- Export if neededCopy the table as CSV for a content audit or a client report.
Features
- Three phrase lengthsSingle words, two-word and three-word phrases, each in its own ranked table.
- Stop word filteringA built-in English stop word list, toggleable, so the single-word table stays meaningful.
- Accurate density mathsPercentages calculated against the true total word count, not an approximation.
- Ranked resultsPhrases ordered by frequency with counts and percentages side by side.
- Full text statisticsTotal words, unique words and vocabulary richness reported alongside the tables.
- CSV exportCopy results in a form a spreadsheet or a client report can use directly.
Who uses this tool
- SEO writersConfirm the target phrase is present and naturally distributed without tipping into repetition.
- Content editorsCatch the crutch words a writer leans on before a piece is published.
- AgenciesAudit an existing page during a content review and evidence the finding with numbers.
- Students and academicsAnalyse vocabulary distribution and lexical variety in a text for a linguistics assignment.
Tips worth knowing
- Aim for roughly 0.5–2% for a primary phrase — and treat that as a sanity check after writing, never as a target to write toward.
- Two and three-word phrase tables are far more useful than single words, because real search queries are almost never one word.
- If a phrase is above 3%, read the piece aloud. Density problems are almost always audible before they are measurable.
Frequently asked questions
What is a good keyword density for SEO?
There is no official figure, and no search engine publishes a target. As a practical range, 0.5–2% for a primary phrase reads naturally. Above 3% the writing usually feels repetitive to a human reader, which is the real problem — search engines stopped rewarding density long ago.
Does keyword density still affect rankings?
Not directly and not for many years. Modern search engines evaluate topical relevance, related entities and how well the page satisfies the query. Density is useful as a writing diagnostic, not as a ranking lever.
What are stop words and why filter them?
Stop words are extremely common grammatical words — the, a, of, and, to, is. They are the most frequent words in any English text, so leaving them in makes a frequency table useless. Filtering them reveals the words that actually carry the meaning.
Why look at two and three-word phrases?
Because that is how people search. “Density” alone tells you very little; “keyword density checker” tells you what the page is genuinely about. Multi-word phrase analysis matches real query behaviour far better than single-word counts.
How is density calculated?
Occurrences of the phrase divided by the total word count, expressed as a percentage. For multi-word phrases the denominator remains the total word count, which is the standard convention and keeps figures comparable across phrase lengths.
Is my content sent to a server?
No. The analysis runs entirely in your browser, so unpublished drafts and client work stay on your device.