An honest note on keyword density
Keyword density is the share of a text taken up by a word or phrase. It was an early-2000s SEO metric, and it’s not how Google ranks pages today. Google’s spokespeople have said repeatedly that they don’t target a density, and modern search systems match meaning, synonyms and related terms, not exact repetitions.
So this is not a tool for hitting a percentage. It’s a mirror. It shows which words and phrases your text actually leans on, which is useful for two things.
1. Spotting stuffing
If one phrase sits far above everything else in the list and the paragraphs where it appears sound forced when you read them aloud, you’ve probably repeated it for a search engine rather than a reader. Google’s spam policies name keyword stuffing explicitly. Replace some mentions with pronouns, synonyms or a more specific phrase. We flag a single word above 5% of the text as worth a look. That’s our rule of thumb, not a Google number.
2. Spotting missing topics
This is the more useful check. Paste your draft and look at the top two- and three-word phrases. Do they match what the page is supposed to be about? Now compare with the pages that rank for your query. If every one of them talks about “pricing”, “free plan” and “integrations”, and none of those appear in your list, your page is missing things searchers want, whatever your density says.
How to use the tool
- Paste the body text only. Navigation and footers add noise.
- Keep “hide stop words” on to see content words. Turn it off to see the raw counts.
- Switch between 1, 2 and 3-word phrases. Two- and three-word phrases are listed once they repeat.
- Add your target keyword to see how often it appears as an exact phrase and where it first shows up. If it isn’t in the first paragraph or two, readers and search engines have to work harder to tell what the page is about.
What to do next
Put the main phrase where it matters most: the title tag, the H1 and the opening paragraph. Preview the title and description with the SERP preview, and check sentence length with the word counter.