Keyword Density Checker
Keyword density is the percentage of times a word or phrase appears in your content compared to the total word count. Our free checker counts every 1-gram and 2-gram in your text, shows count and density side-by-side, and flags any keyword above the 3% stuffing threshold in red so you can rebalance before publishing. Paste your text, read the table, edit your content. No signup, no data sent to a server.
Keyword density
Paste your text to see keyword density.
How it works
A short, focused workflow — input, run, read the result.
Paste your text
Drop your article, blog post, or any text into the textarea. The word count, character count, and reading time update instantly. The density table appears as soon as you have at least one word.
Adjust the toggles (optional)
Toggle 2-grams on to see 2-word phrases alongside single words. Toggle Stop words off if you want to see the raw count including words like "the" and "a." Use the Show all rows toggle for long content.
Read the results and look for the red flags
Sort by Density % to see which keywords are most over-represented. Anything in red (>4%) is a stuffing risk. Re-read those sentences and see if you can substitute synonyms or restructure. Anything in green (0.5–3%) is the healthy zone. Anything in gray (<0.5%) may need more presence.
Edit your content, re-paste to re-check
Make edits in your editor of choice, then paste the updated text back into the tool to see how the density changed. Iterate until the table shows the balance you want. No save state. The tool is intentionally ephemeral.
What is keyword density, and why does stuffing still hurt rankings?
Keyword density is the percentage of times a word or phrase appears in your content relative to total word count. Google's John Mueller has said there is no optimal density, yet anything above 3% reads as forced repetition and tanks dwell time. A live density check catches the spikes before you publish.
What this keyword density checker does
Every count, density percentage, and stuffing flag for your text in one table.
- 1-gram counts — tallies every single word in your text, with count and density percentage side-by-side. Sortable by count, density, or alphabet.
- 2-gram counts — tallies every 2-word phrase so you can spot over-represented multi-word keyphrases like 'keyword density checker' or 'best SEO tool'.
- Stuffing flag — highlights any keyword above 3% density in red, per Yoast's canonical keyphrase density check. Clear visual warning before you publish.
- Stop word filter — removes ~120 common English stop words (the, a, and, of, to) so the table shows real keywords, not filler frequency.
- Sortable table — click any column header to sort by count, density, or word. Find the spikes and the gaps in one glance.
- Word and character count — live totals for words, characters (with and without spaces), and reading time, updated as you type.
- Show all rows toggle — switches between a top-20 summary and a full table for long-form content where 50+ unique terms matter.
- Privacy guarantee — runs 100% client-side in your browser. No server request, no logging, no AI training. Your draft never leaves the device.
Who uses this keyword density checker
Writers and editors who need a fast sanity check on repetition before publishing.
You just wrote a 2,500-word pillar post and want to make sure the primary keyword is not over-represented before you hit publish.
Paste the draft, spot any phrase above 3% density, swap a few synonyms, and ship a piece that reads naturally to humans first.
You're auditing 30 freelance drafts this month and need to catch the writers who are padding word count with keyword repetition.
Run each draft through the checker, flag anything above 3.5% density, and send the writer a precise list of phrases to cut.
You publish 3 posts a week and want a quick gut-check that you have not slipped into accidental stuffing on the primary topic.
Run the check in 10 seconds per post, see the table, edit one or two paragraphs, move on to the next draft.
You write SEO content for 12 clients and need a consistent quality bar for on-page optimization across all deliverables.
Standardize on a 0.5-3% density range, run every draft through the checker, and reject the ones that miss the band.
You write for clients who worry about 'over-optimization' and want proof your draft is in the safe zone before delivery.
Screenshot the density table, attach it to your delivery email, and remove the back-and-forth on whether the content reads stuffed.
You inherit drafts from multiple writers and need a fast way to spot the ones that will hurt rankings because of repetition.
Run the checker first, prioritize the drafts with red flags, and spend your editing time where it actually moves the needle.
Related glossary terms
Want a deeper dive? These glossary entries explain the concepts behind this tool.
Frequently Asked
Questions
Everything you need to know about keyword density, stuffing, and on-page SEO in 2026.
Keyword density is the percentage of times a word or phrase appears in your content compared to the total number of words. The formula is (count of keyword / total words) × 100. Per Semrush's keyword-density guide, it's a useful "on-page relevance" signal, even though Google has said it's not a direct ranking factor.
Per Yoast's official keyphrase density check, a density between 0.5% and 3% is the "green bullet" zone. Below 0.5% risks being too sparse for search engines to recognize your topic; above 3% starts to read as forced repetition. Some tools (like behind-the-search.in) use a tighter 0.5–2.5% window, but Yoast is the canonical reference. There is no "perfect" number. Write for humans first, then sanity-check with a tool.
No. Google's John Mueller has stated it explicitly: "no, Google does not have a notion of optimal keyword density" (Google SEO office-hours, January 2023, transcribed on Search Engine Roundtable). Google's systems are sophisticated enough to understand what a page is about even when the keyword is mentioned rarely. However, density is still a useful sanity check: extreme stuffing (3–500+ mentions on a single page, per Mueller) hurts readability, and density above 4% is a reliable red flag for content that needs editing.
Stop words are common English words ("the," "a," "and," "of," "to") that carry little SEO relevance on their own. Filtering them produces a cleaner, more actionable density table. "The" appearing 50 times in a 500-word article is normal, not a 10% density hit on a real keyword. Our tool filters ~120 common stop words by default; toggle the filter off to see the raw count.
Yes, completely free. No signup, no email gate, no usage cap. The whole tool runs client-side in JavaScript, so your text is never sent to a server, never logged, never used to train an AI. You can verify this by opening DevTools → Network while using the tool: no outbound requests are made with your content. (Only Vercel's static-asset fetches and our anonymous analytics fire.)
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