Counting options
| # | Density |
|---|
How to check keyword density
- Paste your text into the box, or open a .txt, .md, .html or .docx file. The numbers update as you type.
- Type the keywords you're targeting into Target keywords. Each one gets its count, density, where it first appears, and whether it's in your headings and first 100 words.
- Look through the Words and phrase tabs to see what your text is actually about. The terms at the top are the ones a reader, or a search engine, sees most.
- Click any term to highlight every use of it in the text view, then step through them with the arrow buttons.
- Copy the table or download a CSV if you want to compare drafts or share the numbers.
Everything runs in your browser. Your text isn't uploaded or saved anywhere.
How keyword density is calculated
Keyword density is the share of a text taken up by one word or phrase. For a single word, it's simple:
Density = times the word appears ÷ total words × 100
A 1,000-word article that uses “skillet” 15 times has a density of 1.5% for that word.
Phrases are where tools disagree. If “cast iron skillet” appears 8 times in the same article, one method counts the 8 uses (0.8%). The other counts the 24 words those uses take up (2.4%), since each use is three words of the text. This tool uses the second method by default because it answers the more useful question: how much of the page is this phrase? You can switch to the simpler method under Counting options.
Total words always means every word in the text, including common words like “the” and “and”, even when those are hidden from the table.
What's a good keyword density?
There isn't a number to aim for. The old advice of 1 to 3% came from early search engines that leaned heavily on word counts. Google has said for years that it doesn't use a target density, and repeating a keyword past the point where it reads naturally can count against a page as keyword stuffing.
Density is still a useful check, just in the other direction. Use it to catch problems:
- A term that's too high. If one word or phrase is above about 3% and used at least five times, the tool marks it High. Read those sentences aloud and see whether they sound natural. On very short texts, a few uses can push the percentage up, so weigh the count too.
- A keyword that's missing. Drafts drift. If your main keyword appears once in 1,500 words, the page may not be clearly about it.
- The wrong topic winning. If the top phrases are about something other than your subject, readers and search engines may read the page differently than you intended.
- Keywords only at the start. The strip under each target keyword shows where it appears from the start of the text to the end. A keyword crammed into the first paragraph and never used again often shows a page that wanders off topic.
Placement matters more than repetition. A keyword in the title, the H1, a subheading or two, and the first paragraph tells readers what the page covers more clearly than a higher density does.
Checking a live web page
You can analyze any published page by pasting its HTML source:
- Open the page and view its source. Press
Ctrl+Uon Windows or Linux, orCmd+Option+Uon a Mac. - Select everything (
Ctrl+AorCmd+A), copy it, and paste it into the box above.
The tool recognizes HTML and counts only the visible text. Scripts, styles and tags aren't counted. It also reads the page title, meta description and headings, and checks your target keywords against each of them.
Main content only is on by default. It uses the page's <main> or <article> element and skips menus, sidebars and footers, which would otherwise add words that aren't part of the content. Turn it off to count the whole page.
The source view shows the HTML the server sent. On sites that build their content with JavaScript, some text may be missing from it. In that case, copy the text straight from the page instead.
How words and phrases are counted
- Words are runs of letters and numbers in any alphabet. Hyphenated words (client-side) and contractions (don't) count as one word.
- Phrases don't cross punctuation or paragraph breaks. “Red, blue” isn't counted as the phrase “red blue”, and the last word of one sentence isn't joined to the first word of the next.
- Common words like “the” and “of” are hidden from the Words tab. In phrases, they're allowed in the middle but not at the start or end, so “cost of living” is kept, while fragments like “of the” are dropped.
- Group plurals merges words like “tool” and “tools” when both forms appear in your text, and notes which forms it merged under each word. Words that only look plural, like “news” and “series”, are left alone.
- Links and email addresses are skipped so they don't show up as keywords.
- Markdown and Word files keep their headings. Pound signs, link addresses and code blocks in Markdown aren't counted.
Frequently asked questions
Is keyword density a Google ranking factor?
Not directly. Google doesn't reward a specific percentage, and heavy repetition can hurt. What matters is that the page clearly covers its topic, which usually means the main keyword and related terms appear naturally in the title, headings and body.
What's the difference between keyword density and keyword frequency?
Frequency is the raw count: how many times the term appears. Density turns that count into a percentage of the total word count, so you can compare a 500-word post with a 3,000-word guide.
What are 2-word and 3-word phrases?
They're sequences of words that appear together, also called bigrams and trigrams, or n-grams in general. Most searches are phrases, so the phrase tabs often show what a page is about better than single words do.
Why don't my numbers match another keyword density tool?
Tools count differently. Some count a hyphenated word as two words. Some remove common words before building phrases, which creates phrases that were never in the text. Some join words across sentences, or use the simpler density formula for phrases. Small differences between tools are normal; big differences usually come from one of these.
Can I analyze a Word document or PDF?
Word files (.docx) open directly, and their headings are kept for the heading checks. Older .doc files and PDFs can't be read here. Copy the text out of them and paste it in instead.
Does it work in languages other than English?
Yes, for any language that puts spaces between words, including accented letters and non-Latin alphabets. The list of common words to skip is English only, so for other languages turn off Skip common words or add your own under Also skip these words. Languages written without spaces, like Chinese and Japanese, aren't split into words correctly.
Is there a length limit?
No fixed limit. Files up to 25 MB open, and a full-length book analyzes in a second or two on most computers. The text view shows the first 200,000 characters, but counts always cover the whole text.
Is my text private?
Yes. The analysis runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you paste or open is sent to a server or stored.