Free Keyword Density Checker

What the keyword density checker shows

Paste a page address and the checker reads the text a visitor sees, without the menus, footers, scripts and filler words that would drown out the real topic. It then counts:

How to check keyword density in four steps

1. Paste the page address and run the check.
2. Read the two-word phrases first. The top one or two should describe the page's topic. If they don't, the page may be drifting.
3. Look at the "also in" column. Your main phrase should appear in the title and H1. If it only lives in the body, the page's headline signals point elsewhere.
4. Scan for anything unusually high. A single word above about 4% of a long page usually reads as repetitive. Swap some uses for synonyms and related terms.

The keyword density formula, with a worked example

Keyword density = (number of times the term appears ÷ total words on the page) × 100. On a 1,200-word page that uses "running shoes" 9 times, that's 9 ÷ 1,200 × 100 = 0.75%.

There are two ways to count a phrase, and tools don't agree on which to use, which is why the same page can score differently in two checkers:

We use the second method because it puts single words and phrases on the same scale: it tells you what share of the text the phrase actually takes up. To work it out by hand in Google Docs, use Tools → Word count for the total (see Google's word count help), then press Ctrl+F (⌘+F on a Mac) and type the phrase: the search box shows how many times it appears.

What is a good keyword density?

There isn't one. Old SEO advice quoted targets like 1–2% or "no more than 3%", and many checkers still do. Google has never published a target, and when it was asked directly, in a 2011 Google Search Central video titled "What is the ideal keyword density of a page?", Matt Cutts, then head of Google's webspam team, didn't give a number. What Google does publish is a warning: its spam policies define keyword stuffing as filling a page with keywords "in an attempt to manipulate rankings", including "repeating the same words or phrases so often that it sounds unnatural".

So treat the numbers as a mirror, not a goal. If the mirror shows your main phrase barely appears, the page probably doesn't say clearly what it's about. If it shows one word everywhere, the page probably reads like it was written for a robot.

Is keyword density a Google ranking factor?

No, not as a number. Google's SEO Starter Guide says its "language matching systems are sophisticated and can understand how your page relates to many queries", and that varying your words naturally gives you "more chances to show up in Search". Since 2019 Google has used language models such as BERT to understand what words mean in context, so a page can match searches worded differently from its own text. Repeating the exact phrase more often doesn't make that matching any better.

What still matters is where your main phrase appears and how clearly the page covers the topic. Google's guide to title links asks for a descriptive title and notes there's "no reason to have the same words or phrases appear multiple times" in it.

Keyword density vs keyword placement vs topic coverage

Three ideas often get mixed up. Only the last two are worth working on:

Check the phrases against what Google actually matches

The checker shows what your page says. Search Console's Performance report shows what Google thinks it's about. Compare the two:

1. In Search Console, open Performance → Search results, add a Page filter for the page and open the Queries tab.
2. Note the five queries with the most impressions.
3. Run the same page through this checker and compare its top two- and three-word phrases with those queries.
4. If they match, the page is focused. Work on the title and description to win more clicks.
5. If Google shows the page for queries the page barely mentions, add a section that answers them properly. That's often the quickest ranking gain a page has.

Real result: our image SEO guide

We ran the checker on our own image SEO guide (2,690 words). The top single words and phrases were:

This is what a focused page looks like: "image" and "image seo" appear everywhere the page signals its topic, and "alt text", a key subtopic, has its own headings. "Image" at 2.83% is high but natural for a guide about images, and the checker didn't flag stuffing. One useful find: "screen readers" comes up six times without a heading, a hint that an accessibility section might help readers scanning the page.

How to lower or raise keyword density the right way

To lower it, cut repetition, not meaning. Most over-used words come from a few habits:

• Swap in synonyms, pronouns and specific terms: "it", "the pair", "trail shoes" instead of a fourth "running shoes" in one paragraph.
• Merge repeated calls to action. "Buy running shoes" buttons in every section add up fast.
• Remove keyword lists, such as a block of every town you serve. Google's spam policies give exactly this as an example of stuffing.
• Trim boilerplate repeated on every section or product card.

To raise it, add substance, not repeats. A main phrase that barely appears usually means the page doesn't answer the search clearly:

• Put the phrase where it signals the topic: the title, the H1 and the first paragraph, written naturally. The Meta Tag Checker shows how the title will look in Google.
• Answer the questions people ask about it, each under its own heading. The phrase then appears naturally in headings and answers.
• Link to the page with descriptive anchor text from related pages on your site, not "click here".
• Top phrases unrelated to the topic? The page may cover two subjects. Consider splitting it, or tightening the off-topic part.
• Very short page? Short pages can rank if they fully answer the search. Check what's missing rather than adding filler.

What a keyword density checker can't tell you

• It doesn't know what people search for. Pair it with Search Console's queries for the page, or our guide to SEO competitor analysis.
• It reads the HTML your server sends, not text added later by JavaScript. Google can render JavaScript (Google's JavaScript SEO basics), but Vercel's 2024 study of AI crawlers found that the major AI crawlers it measured don't, so text that only appears after scripts run may be invisible to them.
• It counts exact words. "Image" and "images" are counted separately, even though Google treats them as two forms of one idea.
• It can't judge quality. A page can have perfect numbers and still not answer the question. The SEO Page Checker covers the other on-page basics.

Keyword density on one map

Your next step

Pick the one page you most want to rank, run it through the checker, and compare its top two-word phrases with its title, its H1 and its top queries in Search Console. Fix the mismatch you find first. Writing a new page? Draft its title and description with the Meta Tag Generator, then check the live page with the SEO Page Checker.

Sources

1. Spam policies for Google web search: keyword stuffing, Google Search Central, 2026
2. SEO Starter Guide, Google Search Central, 2026
3. What is the ideal keyword density of a page?, Google Search Central on YouTube, 2011
4. Understanding searches better than ever before (BERT), Google, 2019
5. Influencing title links in Google Search, Google Search Central, 2026
6. Performance report (Search results), Search Console Help, 2026
7. Understand the JavaScript SEO basics, Google Search Central, 2026
8. The rise of the AI crawler, Vercel, 2024
9. See the number of words or pages in a document, Google Docs Editors Help, 2026