You can find keywords in any website by inspecting the page’s HTML source code, using free browser tools, or pulling ranking data from platforms like Google Search Console. The right method depends on whether you’re analyzing your own site or someone else’s.
Check the HTML Source Code
Every web page stores keyword clues in its underlying HTML. To view a page’s source code in most browsers, right-click anywhere on the page and select “View Page Source,” or press Ctrl+U (Cmd+U on Mac). Once the code is open, press Ctrl+F (Cmd+F) to search for specific terms. This lets you see exactly where and how a keyword appears in the page’s structure.
The most revealing places to look are:
- Title tag: The HTML element that sets the page’s title, which typically appears as the clickable headline in search results. Search for
<title>in the source code to find it. - Meta description: A short summary of the page that often shows up below the title in search results. Search for
meta name="description"to locate it. - Heading tags: The H1, H2, and H3 tags organize the page’s content into sections. These headings almost always contain the page’s target keywords. Search for
<h1,<h2, and so on. - Image alt text: Code that describes each image on the page, used for accessibility and by search engines to understand visual content. Search for
alt=to find these descriptions. - Media file names: The actual file names of photos, videos, and GIFs often contain keywords too. Look at image URLs in the source for terms like
best-running-shoes.jpgrather thanIMG_4032.jpg.
This approach works on any website, yours or a competitor’s. It won’t tell you what the page actually ranks for in Google, but it reveals exactly what keywords the site owner chose to target.
Use Your Browser’s Built-In Search
If you don’t want to dig through raw code, the simplest method is pressing Ctrl+F (Cmd+F) on any live web page. This opens a search bar that highlights every visible instance of whatever word or phrase you type. It’s useful when you already have a keyword in mind and want to see how often and where it appears on the page.
This only searches the visible text, not the underlying HTML. So it won’t catch keywords hidden in title tags, meta descriptions, or alt text. But it’s a quick way to gauge whether a page is built around a particular topic.
Try a Browser Extension for Keyword Density
Browser extensions can automate the work of scanning a page for keywords. Keywords Everywhere, available as a Chrome extension, offers an on-page analysis feature that scans any URL and returns a list of keywords found in the content along with how frequently each one appears (its “keyword density”). This saves you from manually reading through source code or counting terms yourself.
Keyword density tells you what percentage of a page’s total words are made up of a given term. If a 1,000-word page uses the phrase “home insurance” 15 times, that’s a 1.5% density. High-density terms are almost always the keywords the page is deliberately targeting. Extensions surface this data in seconds, which is especially useful when you’re analyzing multiple competitor pages.
Find Your Own Ranking Keywords in Google Search Console
If you own the website, Google Search Console is the most reliable way to see which keywords are actually sending you traffic from Google. It’s free, and the data comes directly from Google’s own search results.
Log into Google Search Console and select your website property. Click on “Performance,” then “Search Results.” Scroll down to the “Queries” section. You’ll see a list of every search term that triggered your pages in Google results, along with how many clicks and impressions each term received. You can also see your average position for each keyword, which tells you roughly where you appeared on the results page.
This report is powerful because it shows you keywords you might not have intentionally targeted. A blog post you wrote about budgeting tips might be getting clicks for “how to save money on groceries,” a phrase you never specifically optimized for. These accidental rankings are opportunities: you can update the page to better serve that search and potentially move higher in results.
Discover Any Site’s Ranking Keywords with SEO Tools
When you want to find what keywords a competitor ranks for, you need a third-party SEO tool. Google Search Console only works for sites you own. Tools like Moz Keyword Explorer, Semrush, and Ahrefs maintain massive databases of search results and can show you which keywords any domain or URL currently ranks for, along with estimated monthly search volume and how difficult it would be to compete for each term.
Moz’s Keyword Explorer, for example, draws from over 1.25 billion keyword suggestions and lets you enter any site to discover its current ranking keywords. You can sort by search volume, filter by ranking position, and identify “striking distance” keywords where a site ranks just outside the top 10 results. These are terms where a small improvement in content or optimization could push the page onto the first page of Google.
Most of these tools offer limited free access. Moz allows three searches per day on its free tier. Semrush and Ahrefs have similar trial options. Paid plans unlock full data, but the free versions are enough to get a snapshot of any site’s keyword strategy.
Combine Methods for a Complete Picture
Each approach reveals a different layer of keyword information. Checking the HTML shows you what keywords the site owner intentionally placed. A browser extension tells you which terms dominate the visible content. Google Search Console reveals what Google actually associates with the site. And third-party SEO tools fill in the gaps for competitor sites you don’t control.
For your own site, start with Google Search Console to see real ranking data, then inspect individual pages to make sure your target keywords appear in the title tag, headings, and alt text. For a competitor’s site, run it through an SEO tool first to get the broad keyword list, then visit specific pages and check the source code to understand how they structured their content around those terms.