Content and snippets
Keyword density checker
Count every one, two and three word phrase in your text or on a live page, check how often your target keywords appear, and spot the words you lean on too hard.
Free · No signup · Runs in your browser
Counts update as you type. Your text stays in your browser.
Separate them with commas. Up to 10. Counted as exact phrases, ignoring capitals.
How it works
Paste your text, or switch to From a URL to read a live page's main content.
Add the keywords you're targeting, separated by commas, if you want them counted.
Read the repetition check first, then the phrase tables. Download any table as a CSV.
There is no ideal keyword density
Keyword density is the share of a text taken up by one word or phrase. Old SEO advice put the "right" density at 1 to 3%. That number never came from Google, and it doesn't describe how search works today. Google matches pages to searches by topic and meaning, so a page about heat pumps can rank for "heat pump running costs" without repeating that exact phrase a set number of times.
What Google does say is that stuffing keywords in is against its spam policies. So the useful question isn't "have I hit the number?" but "have I repeated myself so much a reader would notice?". That's what this checker is for: a repetition check, not a target to hit.
How to read the results
- The repetition check flags any word or phrase that takes up more than 3% of a text of 100 words or more, and appears at least four times. In a long article that's a lot of repeats.
- Share of words is the phrase's count times its length, divided by all the words. A two-word phrase used 10 times in 1,000 words takes up 2%.
- The phrase tables skip phrases that start or end with a common word like "the", "of" or "and", so "of the" never tops the list. Two and three word phrases appear only if they're used more than once.
Short texts exaggerate everything. In a 60-word product blurb, using the product name three times is already 5%, and that's normal. The checker doesn't judge repetition below 100 words for that reason.
Checking your target keywords
Add the phrase you want the page to rank for and the checker counts exact matches, ignoring capitals. It also shows where the phrase is first used. Mentioning the topic in the opening paragraph helps people who arrive from a search see straight away that they're in the right place.
Exact matching is strict on purpose. "Heat pumps" and "heat pump" are counted separately, as are hyphenated versions. If a keyword shows zero, check whether you used a variation. That's usually fine: varied wording reads better and search engines understand plurals and synonyms.
Fixing repetition without losing the topic
- Keep the main keyword where it does the most work: the title, the H1, the first paragraph and one or two headings.
- In the body, use "it", "they" or a more specific term once the reader knows what you mean.
- Replace filler repeats with detail. "Our heat pump" three times in a paragraph can become a model name, a size or a price.
- Look at the two and three word tables for phrases you didn't mean to repeat, like a sign-off or a call to action pasted into every section.
What this checker can't see
It counts the words you give it. In URL mode that's the page's main text from its HTML before JavaScript runs, with menus, headers and footers left out. The title tag, meta description, image alt text and URL aren't counted, and text that only appears after JavaScript runs won't be either.
It can't tell whether a page covers a topic well. A text can have a perfectly balanced density and still miss the questions people search for. For that, compare your page with the pages that already rank, or look at the related searches Google shows.
Questions people ask
What is keyword density?
The share of a text that one word or phrase takes up: how many times it's used, times the number of words in it, divided by the total number of words.
What is a good keyword density for SEO?
There isn't one. Google doesn't use a target density. Use your main keyword where it reads naturally and check that no word takes up so much of the text that a reader would notice. Above about 3% in a long text is worth a second look.
Can too many keywords hurt my rankings?
Yes. Google's spam policies list keyword stuffing, meaning repeating words unnaturally to rank, as a practice that can lower a page's ranking or remove it from results.
Why does my keyword show zero?
Keywords are matched as exact phrases. A plural, a hyphen or a different word order counts separately. Try the variation you used, or add both, separated by a comma.
Which words are skipped?
Common English words such as "the", "and", "of" and "with". Phrases that start or end with one are left out of the tables, but they still count toward the total words.
Is my text sent anywhere?
Pasted text is counted in your browser and isn't sent to us. In URL mode we fetch the public page to read its text, the way a search engine would.
Want it done for you?
Romeo writes for the topic, not the counter
He looks at what people search for around your keyword, finds the questions and terms your pages don't cover yet, rewrites passages that lean on one phrase, and sends every change for you to approve.
