Keyword Density Checker
Analyze how often keywords appear in your content, check your target keyword density, and catch over-optimization before you publish.
Analyze how often keywords appear in your content, check your target keyword density, and catch over-optimization before you publish.
| Keyword | Count | Density | Frequency |
|---|
Paste your full page or post content into the text area. Optionally enter your target keyword for a specific density analysis. Click Analyze and you'll see a full breakdown of the top keywords by frequency, plus a density percentage for each one.
Keyword density is the percentage of times a keyword appears in your content relative to the total word count. A density of 1% means the keyword appears once for every 100 words.
There is no perfect number, but most SEO practitioners recommend keeping your primary keyword between 0.5% and 2.5% of total word count. Below 0.5% and Google may not clearly associate your content with the keyword. Above 2.5% and you risk keyword stuffing penalties. The most important thing is that your content reads naturally, Google's algorithms are sophisticated enough to detect forced keyword usage.
The working range for a primary keyword is 0.5% to 2.5% of total word count. Below 0.5%, your target phrase barely appears, fewer than 8 mentions in a 1,500-word article, which is worth noticing if the keyword is genuinely what the page is about. Above 2.5%, you're entering stuffing territory, where repetition becomes visible to readers and algorithms alike. The crucial framing: this range is a diagnostic, not a target. You don't write toward 1.8%. You write naturally, then check the number to catch surprises in either direction. Competent natural coverage lands inside the range on its own most of the time.
Google has spent two decades getting better at detecting unnatural keyword patterns, and what was once a ranking trick is now a spam signal. But the algorithmic risk is arguably the smaller cost. Keyword-stuffed writing reads badly, sentences bend into unnatural shapes to fit one more exact-match mention, and readers feel it even when they can't name it. They respond by leaving, which produces exactly the engagement pattern that suppresses rankings anyway. Stuffing loses twice. Modern search is semantic: variations and synonyms reinforce your topic just as well as the exact string, and writing that varies naturally signals fluency rather than automation.
The frequency table of your top 30 words often tells you more than the density percentage. First check: is your target keyword near the top? If your supposed primary term ranks fifteenth in your own content, the page may effectively be about something else, worth knowing before Google reaches the same conclusion. Second check: does the surrounding vocabulary match the topic? A page genuinely about keyword density will naturally feature words like content, SEO, search, and optimization. That semantic neighborhood signals topical completeness. Third check: watch for an unrelated word dominating unexpectedly, it usually marks a tangent that grew larger than you realized while drafting.
Where your keyword appears matters more than how often. The high-value placements: the title tag, the H1, the first 100 words, at least one subheading, and the URL slug. A page hitting those five positions with modest body density outperforms heavy repetition buried mid-page, because search engines weight position and context far above raw frequency. The density check then earns its keep as a smoke detector, including for spotting keyword cannibalization, when two of your pages compete for the same term. The full breakdown is in our keyword density guide.