Readability and keyword density checker

How to use the checker

Paste the text only, not the whole page. Leave out the menu, footer, cookie notice and button labels, because they add short fragments that drag the averages around. Keep the paragraph breaks: the checker uses blank lines to spot paragraphs that have grown too long.

If the page is meant to be found for one phrase, type its core in the optional box: up to three words, such as “plumber in Leeds” rather than “emergency plumber in Leeds”. Longer phrases, or ones that begin or end with a common word such as “the” or “for”, are not counted and will show as 0%. The checker reports how often the phrase appears and what share of the words it takes up. Everything runs in your browser. The text you paste is not sent to me or stored anywhere.

Reading the results

Flesch reading ease

This is a score built from two things: how long your sentences are and how many syllables your words have. Higher means easier. The checker labels the bands, from “Very easy” at 80 and above, through “Plain English” in the 60s, down to “Very hard” under 30. A score in the 60s suits most pages written for the general public. A page for finance directors or engineers can score lower and still be the right page for its reader, so judge the number against who the page is for, not against a fixed pass mark.

Grade level

The grade figure uses the Flesch-Kincaid formula, which reports an American school grade. Add five or so to get a rough reading age: grade 8 is roughly a 13- or 14-year-old, around Year 9 in England. It measures the effort the sentences demand, not the intelligence of your audience. Busy, well-educated people still prefer text that asks little of them.

Reading time

Reading time assumes about 220 words a minute. It is useful for an email or a guide where you want to tell people up front how long it will take.

Repeated phrases and keyword density

The list of most repeated phrases is usually the most useful part of the results. It shows up to ten one-, two- and three-word phrases you use more than once, skipping phrases that start or end on common words like “the” and “and”, with how often each appears and its share of the text. If “bespoke” turns up nine times in a 600-word page, that is a habit, not a choice.

Keyword density is the share of the text taken up by your phrase. There is no figure Google rewards, and I would not aim for one. Treat it as a warning light. The checker flags anything above 3%, because by then a person reading the page notices the repetition, and repeating a phrase until it sounds forced is what keyword stuffing means. If the phrase never appears at all, that is worth fixing too: a page that answers a query should be able to say it once, naturally, near the top.

When two of your pages keep repeating the same phrase, the issue is usually structure rather than copy. My keyword clustering tool helps you give each page its own search intent before anyone starts writing.

Sentence and paragraph length on a phone

Many of your readers will be on a phone, where a 150-word paragraph fills the screen with no break. The checker flags any paragraph past that length and any sentence past 30 words. Splitting your longest sentences is the quickest single edit you can make. Look for “and”, “which” and “because” in the middle of a long sentence: that is often where it wants to become two.

Short is not the same as simple. Swap a vague word for a specific one, cut the throat-clearing first sentence, and say who the page is for early. The glossary entries on readability and plain English go into the habits that make text easier to scan.

What the checker cannot tell you

A formula counts syllables and full stops. It cannot tell whether the page answers the question the reader arrived with, whether the facts are right, or whether the offer is clear. A short, easy page can still say nothing. Use the score to find the hard paragraphs, then read those paragraphs aloud and fix what you trip over.

Syllable counts are estimated from spelling, so names, acronyms and figures can nudge the score. Bullet points without full stops count as one long sentence, so a list-heavy page may score harder than it reads.

When the copy is not the real problem

If the text reads well and the page still is not found, look at the brief behind it. My SEO content brief template sets out what each page should cover before it is written, and the guide on writing a service page that ranks and converts shows how that comes together on a commercial page. Once the body is right, run the title and snippet through the title tag and meta description checker.

If you would rather someone looked at your pages for you, my on-page SEO work covers the copy, headings and structure of existing pages, and content SEO and strategy plans what to publish next. If you are not sure which you need, request a free SEO audit and I will tell you what I would fix first.