Keyword Density Heatmap: Free, No Sign-Up

A keyword density heatmap shows which words your text repeats most and how much of the whole text each one takes up. Paste your article into this free tool, choose a minimum word length and a keyword limit, and get a ranked list of words with counts, density percentages and frequency labels.

What Is Keyword Density and What Does a Heatmap Add?

Keyword density is the percentage of a text's total words that one word accounts for. Divide the number of times the word appears by the total word count, then multiply by 100. A word used 10 times in a 500-word article has a density of 2%.

A heatmap adds visual weight to that number. Each word in the results is shaded relative to the most frequent word in your text, so the top word gets the strongest tint and rarer words fade. You see the shape of your vocabulary at a glance instead of scanning a spreadsheet.

Google has not published an ideal density. Its Search Central spam policies do describe keyword stuffing, which means repeating words in an unnatural way, as a violation. Treat density as a sanity check on your draft, not a number to hit.

How to Use the Keyword Density Heatmap

You can run an analysis in under a minute. Follow these steps in order:

1. Paste your article or page copy into the Content Text box. Copy only the body text you want to measure, because every word you paste counts toward the total.
2. Set Minimum Word Length. The default is 4, which ignores words shorter than four letters. You can enter any whole number from 2 to 10.
3. Set Top N Keywords to Show. The default is 20, and you can choose any whole number from 5 to 50.
4. Click Generate Heatmap.
5. Read the summary line, which reads like "Top 20 keywords in 800 total words", then review each word's count and density.
6. Edit your text or settings and run it again. Changing any field clears the old results, so you never read stale numbers.

If the text box is empty, you will see the message "Please enter some content." If a number falls outside the allowed range or has a decimal, the tool asks for a whole-number length from 2 to 10 and a keyword limit from 5 to 50.

Worked Example: An 800-Word Coffee Article

Say you wrote an 800-word guide to home coffee brewing and pasted it in with the default settings. The tool lowercases the text, drops the short and common filler words, and ranks what remains. A realistic result looks like this:

The math for the top word is 28 divided by 800, which is 0.035, or 3.50%. Because that is above 3%, "coffee" gets the High frequency label and the strongest shading. For a coffee guide, that is not alarming, since the topic word should lead. The question is whether it reads naturally. If you notice "coffee" crammed into every sentence, swap some mentions for pronouns, "it", "the brew" or more specific terms.

The more useful finding is the gap. If you wanted the article to rank for "coffee grinder" but "grinder" sits at 1.5% while "coffee" sits at 3.5%, you may have room to mention the grinder in a heading or an extra example where it genuinely fits.

How to Read and Act on Your Results

Each result row shows three things: the word, how many times it appears, and its density with a frequency label. The labels are fixed bands, so you can compare drafts consistently.

• High frequency (above 3%): the word makes up more than three of every 100 words. Read those paragraphs aloud. If they sound repetitive, vary the wording.
• Medium frequency (above 1% up to 3%): a common comfortable range for a main topic word in a long article.
• Low frequency (above 0.5% up to 1%): normal for supporting terms and related concepts.
• Very low frequency (0.5% or less): the word appears rarely. That is fine for minor details, but check it if the word is something you want the page to be about.

Note that exactly 3.00% falls in Medium, because High starts above 3%. The same edge rule applies at 1% and 0.5%.

What a healthy page looks like

Your main topic word usually leads the list, followed by related terms and product, place or concept words. A healthy list has a clear leader and a spread of related words below it. A poor one has one word towering over everything, or a top list filled with vague words that say nothing about the topic.

Fixes for common patterns

• One word far above 3%: rewrite some sentences with synonyms, pronouns or more specific nouns.
• Target word missing from the top list: check that it appears in your opening paragraph, at least one heading and a few body sections where it fits.
• Generic words dominate: raise the minimum word length or add concrete details to the draft.

Who Should Use a Keyword Density Heatmap?

This tool suits anyone who wants a quick, objective read on word repetition before publishing. It is most useful in a few situations:

• Writers and bloggers who want to confirm a draft is about its topic without overusing the main phrase.
• SEO editors reviewing freelance copy for stuffing or for missing topic words.
• Site owners refreshing old pages and deciding which terms to add or trim.
• Students and marketers comparing two versions of a product description or landing page.

Because you paste text directly, you can test a draft before it exists on any URL. When you need to scan a live page and see two-word and three-word phrases, the keyword density checker is the better fit. Use the heatmap earlier, while you are still writing.

Best Practices, Common Mistakes and Troubleshooting

The quality of the result depends on the text you paste, so a few habits help.

Paste only what you want measured

If you copy a whole web page, menus, footers and cookie notices inflate the word count and distort every percentage. Paste the article body only. To see how much of a page's code is real content, try the code to text ratio checker.

Pick a sensible minimum word length

The default of 4 works well for most English content. Drop it to 2 or 3 if your topic depends on short words such as "SEO" or "app". Raise it to 6 or 7 to surface longer, more specific terms and hide everyday words.

Compare drafts, not just single scores

Run the tool on your first draft and again after editing. Watching a top word move from 4.2% to 2.6% tells you more than any one reading. Keep your changes natural, since the goal is readable copy, not a perfect percentage.

Why a word you expected is missing

• It is shorter than your minimum word length.
• It is on the built-in list of ignored common words, which includes terms like "people", "would" and many everyday -ing verbs such as "making" and "using".
• It sits below your Top N cutoff. Raise Top N Keywords to Show up to 50.

Why a word looks split in two

The tool treats any character that is not a letter or a digit as a word break. A term like "cold-brew" is counted as "cold" and "brew", and "don't" is broken apart at the apostrophe. Keep that in mind when you read the counts for hyphenated terms.

Limitations to Keep in Mind

The heatmap counts single words only, so it will not report a phrase such as "cold brew coffee" as one unit. The shading reflects frequency, not where words appear on the page, so it cannot tell you whether a term is in your title or your first paragraph. For that, review your outline with the heading structure extractor and your title and description with the Google SERP snippet preview.

Letters outside basic English, such as accented or non-Latin characters, act as word breaks, so the tool works best with plain English text. The density bands are a descriptive guide, not a ranking assessment, and no percentage guarantees a position in search results. Search engines judge pages on usefulness and relevance as a whole.

If you published your Q&A content and want it eligible for rich results, the FAQ schema generator is a good next step. You can find more checks like this in the on-page SEO and meta tags tools.

Paste your next draft into the keyword density heatmap above, click Generate Heatmap, and see within seconds whether your main words lead the page without overwhelming it.