Utilities February 25, 2025 · ~5 min read

Word Frequency Counter: Analyze Word Usage for SEO

Word frequency analysis tells you how often each word appears in a piece of text. It is an essential technique for SEO keyword density analysis, writing research, and content optimization. This guide explains how to use it effectively.

What is Word Frequency Analysis?

Word frequency analysis counts the number of times each unique word appears in a text and typically presents the results as a ranked list — most frequent words first. This gives you an instant view of which words dominate your content.

Use Cases

  • SEO keyword density: Check how many times your target keyword appears relative to total word count. Ideal density is 1–3%.
  • Over-optimization detection: Keyword stuffing (density over 5–7%) can lead to Google penalties. Use frequency analysis to stay balanced.
  • Content analysis: Understand what themes dominate a large document or article.
  • Academic research: Analyze frequency of terms in research papers, speeches, or literature.
  • Writing improvement: Find overused words in your own writing and replace them with alternatives.

How to Analyze Word Frequency

1Open the Word Frequency Counter tool.
2Paste your text — article, blog post, essay, or any content.
3Enable Hide stop words to filter out filler words (the, and, is, a…) and focus on meaningful keywords.
4Read the frequency list — each word shows count and percentage of total words.
5Change the sort order to find the most or least common words.
💡 SEO Formula: Target keyword density = (keyword count ÷ total words) × 100. For a 1,000-word article, your main keyword should appear 10–30 times for optimal density without over-optimization.

What are Stop Words?

Stop words are extremely common, low-value words that appear in almost every piece of text: "the", "a", "an", "is", "and", "or", "of", "in", "to", "for", etc. Filtering them out with the "Hide stop words" option reveals the genuinely meaningful keywords in your content.

FAQ

What is a good keyword density?

Most SEO experts recommend 1–3% for the main keyword. Secondary keywords should be under 1% each. Avoid going over 5% for any single term — it looks spammy to search engines and readers alike.

Can I use this for multiple languages?

The word tokenizer uses space and punctuation as word boundaries, so it works with any Latin-script language. Stop-word filtering only works for English stop words by default.

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