Free Keyword Density Checker

Keyword density is how often a keyword or phrase appears in a text, as a share of all its words: density = keyword occurrences ÷ total words × 100. Type the keyword, paste your text, and this checker shows the number of matches, the total word count, the sentence count and the density to two decimal places, updating as you type.

How words are counted. Total words means every space-separated item in the text, numbers included, so the keyword's own words count toward the total. Matching ignores capitals. A one-word keyword matches whole words only, and punctuation stuck to a word doesn't get in the way: "SEO," and "(SEO)" both count for SEO, but "SEOs", "SEO's" and "SEO-friendly" do not. Characters other than the letters a–z and digits are ignored when comparing, so the checker is built for English text.

How phrases are counted. A keyword of two or more words must appear as that exact phrase, in that order, as whole words. Each occurrence counts once against the total word count, so a three-word phrase used 9 times in 1,200 words has a density of 0.75%. Plurals, reordered words and phrases split across a line break are not counted. Some checkers multiply by the number of words in the phrase instead, which would report the same text at 2.25%. Neither is wrong, but it is why two keyword density checker tools can disagree by a factor of three on the same page.

Reading the result. 0% shows Keyword not found. Below 0.5% is labeled Too Low, 0.5–2.5% Optimal, and above 2.5% Too High. Those bands are a writer's rule of thumb, not a Google number: they are a prompt to re-read, not a target to hit. A text at 3% that reads naturally is fine, and a text at 1.5% where every mention is forced is not.

Why there is no Google threshold. Google publishes no ideal density. Its spam policies define keyword stuffing as filling a page with keywords or numbers in an attempt to manipulate rankings, with examples such as repeating the same words or phrases so often that it sounds unnatural. Its SEO Starter Guide adds that excessively repeating the same words, even in variations, is tiring for users. Both describe how text reads, not a percentage, which is why this tool's labels are worded as cues rather than verdicts.

Common mistakes. Pasting the whole page, with navigation, footer and comments, changes the word count and the density with it; paste the body copy you wrote. Short texts exaggerate every mention: in a 150-word product description one use is already 0.67%. Exact-match counting misses the variants and synonyms readers and search engines both understand, so a low number on a long, on-topic article rarely means the keyword is missing. And density says nothing about placement. A keyword in the title tag, the first paragraph and one subheading tells a reader more than ten extra mentions further down.

Use it alongside the rest of the workflow: pick the phrase with the keyword research tool, then run the finished draft through the word frequency counter to see which other words you lean on without noticing.

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