Word & Character Counter

Word Count & Readability: A Complete Guide

Whether you are writing a blog post, academic essay, or marketing copy, understanding your text's statistics helps you optimize for readability, SEO, and audience engagement. This tool analyzes your writing in real time and provides actionable insights.

Understanding Readability Scores

The Flesch Reading Ease score ranges from 0 to 100. Higher scores mean the text is easier to read. Most web content should target a score between 60 and 70, which corresponds to an 8th-9th grade reading level and is comfortable for a general audience.

• 90-100: Very easy. Understood by an average 5th grader.
• 80-89: Easy. Conversational English.
• 70-79: Fairly easy. Suitable for most readers.
• 60-69: Standard. Ideal for web content and journalism.
• 50-59: Fairly difficult. College-level material.
• 30-49: Difficult. Academic or technical writing.
• 0-29: Very difficult. Professional or scientific publications.

The Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level translates readability into a U.S. school grade. A grade of 8.0 means an eighth grader can understand the text. For web content, aim for grade 7-8.

Ideal Word Counts for Content Types

• Blog posts (SEO): 1,500 to 2,500 words for in-depth articles. Longer, comprehensive content tends to rank better in search engines.
• Product descriptions: 150 to 300 words. Concise yet informative.
• Landing pages: 500 to 1,000 words. Enough to explain value and include a call to action.
• Social media: Under 280 characters for X (Twitter), under 2,200 for Instagram captions.
• Email subject lines: 6 to 10 words (around 50 characters) for optimal open rates.

Keyword Density and SEO

Keyword density measures how often a specific word appears relative to the total word count. For SEO, a primary keyword density of 1-2% is generally recommended. Over-optimizing (keyword stuffing) can lead to search engine penalties, while under-optimizing may fail to signal relevance. Use the keyword density table above to ensure your target keywords appear naturally throughout your content.