Website Word Counter: Count Words on Any URL
A website word counter fetches any URL and counts the words in its main content — leaving out menus, headers, footers and forms. Enter a URL to get the word count, the number of headings and paragraphs, and an estimated reading time.
We fetch the live page and count words in the main content area, the same way a reader would see the article. Free, no signup. Updated Oct 24, 2026 by the AEOeye team.
Word Counter Website Tool: Body Text vs Menus
Copying a page into a word processor counts everything: the menu, the cookie notice, the footer links, the newsletter box. On short pages, that noise can double the count.
This counter finds the main content — the main or article element when the page has one — and strips navigation, headers, footers, sidebars and forms first. We report which area we counted, so you know whether the number reflects the article or the whole body.
Webpage Word Counter: How Long Should Your Page Be?
As long as the question needs. Google is blunt about it: its helpful content guidance asks whether you're writing to a particular word count because you heard Google prefers one — "No, we don't."
Length follows intent:
- Tool pages answer fast and let the tool do the work.
- Comparisons and guides need room for evidence and trade-offs.
- Product pages need specifics, not filler.
A better benchmark than a number: count the words on the pages that already rank for your query, then cover what they miss.
What else does the counter show?
Headings and paragraphs (a quick read on structure), average sentence length, reading time at 238 words per minute, and the count for the whole page including navigation — plus the boilerplate share between the two. A long page with two headings is hard to scan; a page with a heading every 80 words is choppy.
How long are our own pages?
We write our tool pages to answer in a few hundred words and our decision guides in 1,200–1,500, because those are the lengths the questions need. When we checked our own live pages with this counter, menus and footers made up 4% to 15% of all visible words — 15% on our llms.txt generator page, where the main content is 443 words.
Compare the counts with the analysis in the keyword density checker, or grade the whole page with the on-page SEO checker. Writing for both people and machines starts from Google's SEO Starter Guide.
One page checked. What about the rest of your site?
The free SEO audit crawls your site and scores ~90 checks across 7 areas — with the evidence and the fix for each problem.
FAQ
How do I count the words on a web page?
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Enter the URL above. We fetch the page, remove menus, headers, footers and forms, and count the words in the main content, with headings, paragraphs and reading time.
Does word count affect SEO?
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Not directly. Google says it has no preferred word count. Longer pages can rank when the topic needs depth, and short pages rank when they answer the question fully.
Why is my count different from Microsoft Word?
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Different tools split words differently around hyphens, numbers and symbols, and we exclude page furniture such as menus. Expect small differences, not large ones, on the same text.
Sources
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