Word frequency and keyword density: useful counts and limits

Word frequency shows how often a word or phrase appears in a text. Relative frequency expresses that count as a share of the words being analysed.

Use the word frequency counter to spot repetition and compare drafts. A percentage describes the text; it does not tell you how well the page will rank in search.

Start with the counting rules

Two tools can count the same passage differently. Apostrophes, hyphens, numbers, case and word boundaries all affect the result.

ToolsNow treats letters, digits and Unicode marks as parts of words, retaining internal apostrophes and hyphens. You can choose whether to include numbers and whether upper- and lowercase forms count together. This is a token-counting rule, not a full language parser; languages without spaces may need a more specialised word segmenter.

Before comparing two drafts, use the same settings for both.

Counts and percentages answer different questions

If a counted list contains 200 tokens and a word appears 10 times, its share is 10 ÷ 200 × 100 = 5%. That is a description of the counted tokens, not a recommendation to use the word ten times.

The denominator matters. In this tool, filtering common words or numbers changes the tokens being counted and can therefore change percentages even when you have not edited the original text.

Common words and phrase counts

A stop-word filter removes selected common words such as “the” and “and”. This can make topic words easier to see. Leave it off when those words are relevant to your analysis, and remember that the built-in list is for English.

Two- and three-word counts can reveal repeated phrases that single-word totals miss. ToolsNow builds these sequences after applying its token filters. Removing a word may therefore join terms that were not neighbours in the original sentence. Keep that in mind when quoting a phrase count as evidence about the source text.

Is there a good keyword density for SEO?

There is no universal percentage to aim for. Adding a phrase solely to hit a target can make a page harder to read. Google’s helpful-content guidance focuses on useful, reliable answers, and its spam policies address excessive keyword repetition.

Use the terms that make the topic clear, especially in a descriptive title and relevant headings. Then check whether the page answers the reader’s question. A frequency score cannot make that judgement for you.

A useful editing routine

1. Paste the draft and review its most common words.
2. Look at two- and three-word phrases for expressions you repeat without noticing.
3. Read those passages in context. Keep repeated technical terms when they make instructions clearer.
4. Edit the sentences that need it, then compare the result using the same counting settings.
5. Use the word counter for overall length or text comparison to review what changed.

Some repetition is helpful. An instruction that consistently says “page range” may be clearer than one that replaces it with several synonyms just to lower a count.