What Is Keyword Density?
Keyword density is the percentage of times a specific keyword appears in your content relative to the total word count. For example, if your article is 1,000 words and your target keyword appears 15 times, the keyword density is 1.5%.
Is There a Perfect Keyword Density?
There is no single magic number. SEO professionals generally recommend keeping keyword density between 1% and 3%. Going above 3% risks being flagged for keyword stuffing — a practice Google penalises. Going below 0.5% may mean the page is not focused enough on the topic.
The more important concept is topical relevance. Google uses a sophisticated understanding of semantics and related terms, so a naturally written piece covering a topic thoroughly will tend to include the right keywords at the right frequency without deliberate manipulation.
Keyword Stuffing: What to Avoid
Keyword stuffing means using a keyword unnaturally many times to manipulate rankings. Classic examples include:
- Repeating the keyword in every sentence
- Hidden text with keywords (white text on white background)
- Filling the alt text of images with keywords only
- Jamming keywords into page titles that are already keyword-rich
Google identifies this easily and will demote or issue a manual action on pages that use it.
How to Check Your Keyword Density
Paste your content into our free Keyword Density Checker to see the top words by frequency and their density percentage. Use it before publishing every piece of content to catch unintentional stuffing or under-optimisation.
LSI Keywords and Related Terms
Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) keywords are conceptually related terms. If you are writing about "content marketing", related terms include "blog posts", "editorial calendar", "content strategy", and "audience engagement". Including these naturally improves topical authority without forcing exact keyword matches.
Keyword Density vs Word Frequency
Keyword density focuses on a specific target keyword. Word frequency analysis shows every word in your content ranked by occurrence. Use our Word Frequency Counter to get a full picture of your content vocabulary and spot unintended repetition.