Keyword density checker free
Paste an article and see exactly which words and phrases dominate it, and at what percentage.
Runs entirely in your browser. Your article is never uploaded.
Enter your target phrase to see its density called out separately with a plain verdict.
The frequency table appears here.
How to use the keyword density checker
- Paste your whole article, headings included. Analysing only the body misses the headings, which is where over-optimisation usually shows up first.
- Pick a phrase length. Single words tell you the topic; two and three word phrases tell you what the article is actually about, which is far more useful for SEO.
- Add your focus keyword if you have one. Its density is calculated separately and given a plain verdict rather than a number you then have to interpret.
- Press Analyse article and read the table. Anything appearing far more often than everything else is worth a second look.
What you can use it for
Catching accidental repetition is the most honest use. Writers repeat their own phrasing without noticing — the same connector, the same adjective, the same product name in every second sentence. Seeing it in a frequency table is uncomfortable and immediately actionable.
Checking whether an article is genuinely about its target keyword works better with two and three word phrases than with single words. An article targeting "image compression" that never uses the phrase, only the separate words scattered apart, is a weaker match than the writer thinks.
Auditing a competitor's ranking page tells you what they emphasised. Paste in the text of the page currently at position one and look at the top phrases. You are not copying them — you are checking which sub-topics they covered that you did not.
Content briefs benefit from it too. Run three or four top-ranking pages on a topic through and note the phrases they all share. Those are usually the concepts a comprehensive article is expected to cover, and it is a more grounded approach than guessing.
Things to know about keyword density
There is no target density that helps you rank. The idea that 1 to 2% is optimal is a rule of thumb from an era when search engines really did count word frequency. Modern ranking uses semantic relevance across the whole document, so writing naturally about a topic beats hitting a percentage every time.
Density is still useful as a warning signal rather than a target. A focus keyword at 5% or more usually means the phrase has been forced in awkwardly, and that reads badly to humans as well as looking like manipulation. Treat a high number as a prompt to reread, not as a score to lower mechanically.
Stop word filtering changes the picture completely. Without it, "the" and "and" top every table and tell you nothing. With it on, you see the words that carry meaning. It is on by default for that reason, but turn it off if you are checking overall writing style rather than topic.
Percentages are calculated against total word count including stop words, which is the standard way SEO tools report it. That means filtering stop words out of the display does not inflate the percentages you see — the denominator stays honest.
Frequently asked questions
There is no target worth aiming for. Write the article properly and the density lands wherever it lands, typically somewhere between 0.5 and 2% for a natural focus keyword. If you find yourself adding the phrase to hit a number, you are making the page worse. Use the tool to catch over-use, not to chase a figure.
Yes. Google's spam policies name keyword stuffing explicitly, and it can trigger a manual action or algorithmic suppression. The practical damage is usually simpler than a penalty though — stuffed text reads badly, people leave, and the page never earns the engagement that would have helped it rank.
Phrases, in most cases. Two and three word combinations reveal what the article actually discusses. Single-word counts are dominated by generic terms and tell you much less about whether the page matches a search intent.
Yes, everything you paste is counted equally. That is deliberate — headings carry disproportionate weight for both readers and search engines, so a keyword crammed into every H2 should show up in the numbers rather than being excluded from them.
No. All the counting happens in your browser. That matters for unpublished drafts, client work under NDA, and anything you would rather not paste into a service that logs it.