Orpheus

Keyword Density Checker

Single words and phrases, ranked by how often they appear.

Options
Count
Ignore common words
Result

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Every tool runs entirely in your browser. Your files are never uploaded to a server.

Keyword density is how often a term appears as a percentage of total words. It is a description of your writing, not a target — search engines stopped rewarding a specific density long ago.

How to use Keyword Density Checker

  1. Paste your copy. The body text of the page, not the whole HTML.
  2. Choose words or phrases. Two- and three-word phrases usually say more about a page than single words.
  3. Read the ranking. Counts and percentages, highest first.

About checking keyword density

Keyword density is the number of times a term appears divided by the total word count. It was genuinely a ranking factor in the earliest era of search, when engines counted terms and little else, and the era ended a very long time ago — the practice it produced, keyword stuffing, was among the first things search engines learned to detect and penalise. Modern ranking systems work on meaning: they interpret synonyms, related concepts and the structure of a document, so a page can rank for terms it never uses verbatim and fail to rank for one it repeats thirty times. The consequence is that there is no target density, and any tool offering one — two percent is the figure usually quoted — is repeating advice that stopped being true before most current websites existed. What the measurement remains useful for is editing. Counting terms across a draft reliably surfaces repetition the writer cannot see, particularly after several rounds of revision where the same phrase has been reached for repeatedly. It also provides a quick check on subject: if the most frequent meaningful phrases are not what the page is supposed to be about, something has drifted. Phrase counts are considerably more informative than single words here. A page mentioning "insurance" and "travel" often is not necessarily about travel insurance, and only the two-word count distinguishes the two cases.

Frequently asked questions

What is a good keyword density?
There is no correct figure, and any tool quoting one is selling a number rather than describing search. Modern ranking works on meaning rather than term frequency. If a term appears often enough to read as repetitive, that is the real signal, and it is a writing problem rather than a percentage problem.
Is keyword stuffing still penalised?
Yes. Repeating a term unnaturally to influence ranking has been an explicit violation of search engine guidelines for two decades, and detection is straightforward. The practical effect now is more often that the page reads badly and people leave.
Why look at phrases rather than single words?
Because phrases carry meaning that individual words do not. A page can mention "insurance" and "travel" frequently without being about travel insurance. Two- and three-word counts show what the page actually discusses.
Should I remove common words?
For single words yes, or the list will be dominated by "the" and "and". For phrases the option is narrower: a phrase containing a stop word is often meaningful, so only phrases made entirely of stop words are dropped.
What should I use this for?
Spotting unintentional repetition, checking that a page emphasises what you meant it to, and finding the terms you have overused after several rounds of editing. It is an editing instrument, not an optimisation target.

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