Keyword Density Calculator

How exactly is the density figure calculated?

Occurrences of the keyword divided by the total number of whitespace-separated words in the box, multiplied by 100 and shown to two decimals. A multi-word phrase counts once per appearance, so “keyword research” appearing 3 times in a 33-word passage is 3 ÷ 33 = 9.09%. The total includes every token you paste, so markup, bullets and stray symbols raise the denominator.

What counts as a match?

This tool matches case-insensitively and by whole word: the characters on either side of the match must not be letters, digits or underscores in any alphabet. “feed” does not match “feeding”, and “café” does not match “Cafés”. Hyphens and punctuation act as boundaries, so “page” matches inside “on-page”. Spaces inside a phrase match any run of spaces or line breaks, and keywords with symbols such as “c++” are matched literally.

What do Too low, Optimal, Slightly high and Keyword stuffing mean?

Below 0.5% is Too low, 0.5% to 3% is Optimal, above 3% up to 5% is Slightly high, and above 5% is Keyword stuffing. Those four cut-offs are written into this tool. They are not limits published by any search engine, and the tool cannot tell whether your repetition reads naturally.

My short paragraph was flagged as stuffing even though it reads normally. Why?

On short text each occurrence moves the percentage a lot. In a 93-word paragraph about sourdough starters, the word “starter” appears 5 times and scores 5.38%, which lands in the top band, while “flour” appears once and scores 1.08%. Treat the label on a short passage as a prompt to reread it, and run the full page text for a steadier figure.

Does it count plurals, synonyms or related phrases?

No. It counts only the exact word or phrase you type, with the boundary rules above. To measure “starter” and “starters” together, run both and add the counts yourself. It also cannot tell you whether a page covers the related terms a reader would expect.

Should I paste the HTML source or only the visible text?

Paste the visible text. The calculator treats every space-separated token as a word, so a pasted tag such as <h2> or an attribute string adds to the total and lowers the density. It also has no idea which words sit in the title, headings or image alt text; it only sees the text you give it.

Does a result in the Optimal band mean the page will rank?

No. The tool measures how often a string repeats and nothing else. It does not look at search intent, competing pages, links or page quality, and it makes no prediction about rankings.