How frequency is counted
The text is lowercased, punctuation other than apostrophes and hyphens is removed, and the remainder is split on whitespace. Each distinct token is tallied and the list is sorted by count, then alphabetically for ties. In “the cat the dog the bird”, the appears 3 times out of 6 words.
The tally runs entirely in your browser, so the text you paste is never uploaded, transmitted or stored on a server — safe for unpublished drafts and client documents.
The character counter covers the same ground with a different mechanism.
Keyword density and what it means
Density is a word’s count divided by total words. For SEO copy, a main keyword usually lands between 0.5% and 2%; much higher reads as stuffing and can hurt rankings. Function words like “the”, “and” and “of” naturally dominate any English text — look past them to the first content word in the ranking.
Worked example: in a 1,200-word article, a keyword appearing 12 times sits at 1% density, which is comfortable; 40 occurrences would be 3.3% and reads as repetitive to both readers and search engines.
Using it to edit better
Frequency lists expose crutch words and unintentional repetition inside a paragraph, which is why editors run them before a final pass. Combine it with the word counter for totals, and with the duplicate line remover when whole lines repeat rather than single words.
Frequently asked questions
- What is the top word in “the cat the dog the bird”?
- the, with 3 occurrences out of 6 words — a density of 50%.
- Are common words like “the” excluded?
- No, every word is counted. Stop words normally top the list, so read past them for content keywords.
- Is the count case-sensitive?
- No. Text is lowercased first, so “The” and “the” are counted together.
- What keyword density should I aim for?
- Around 0.5–2% for a primary keyword; higher values look like keyword stuffing.
- Is the text I paste stored anywhere?
- No. The whole tally is computed in your browser, so nothing is uploaded, transmitted or stored on a server. Closing the tab removes the text entirely.