How To Count The Number Of Words On A Web Page

Have you ever been in the middle of writing an amazing blog and wanted to know how many words you’ve typed? Or maybe you’ve been on a competing website and wanted to know how many words they’ve typed? We’ve all been there. The good news is there are tons of technologies to help you count words on a website effortlessly.

How to easily count the number of words on a blog

What’s the best tool to count the number of words on a web page? The easiest tool to count words on a website is with a simple Google Chrome plugin called Word Counter Plus. You highlight the text, right-click, and it shows you how many words you’ve highlighted. It’s simple and effective. And the best part is that you can do this on any page as long as you’re in Chrome.

Most people are blogging in one of four places: WordPress, Medium, LinkedIn, or SquareSpace. There are others, but these are the biggest names right now. And of these platforms, only a few have built-in word counters. What a shame!

There are a few great tools that you can use to count words as you are typing depending on which platform you are blogging in. Personally, I like using plugins either in a blogging platform or from the chrome store. I want to be sure that my words aren’t being tracked or copied—but that’s just me (i.e., I don’t want to copy and paste my words in a random website to count).

At this point in the world of website builders, word counters should be mandatory, but they aren’t. Either way, we’ve got you covered. Let’s dive into the most popular website builders and see how to keep track of your word count.

How to count the number of words on a page in WordPress

If you are blogging in WordPress, you can use the built-in word counter at the top. You can easily press the “i” at the top of the page in the post editor to reveal the total words count, paragraph count, and a nifty page outline.

I like this feature in WordPress because it tells me how many headings I have as well. This gives me a quick status update on my progress.

The page outline is very cool too. It quickly shows me how my documents are formatted with headers. I often use this feature when I brain-dump onto a document and I need to look at the entire picture of article formatting without scrolling up and down on the page a million times. I know you know what I’m talking about.

How to count the number of words in Medium

In Medium, counting the words on your page is SUPER easy. In order to find your word count, simply copy any amount of text, and then the word count will appear at the top of the page.

How easy is that?

I like Medium’s decision to make this really easy. No buttons, menus, or weird right-clicking needed. I found this by accident the first time I selected all of the text.

Be aware that it will only start counting after you have written a few sentences.

Improvements: I think Medium would do well to show the outline of your blog like WordPress does when highlighting text. It’s a small nitpick, but I believe this is a really helpful feature.

Overall, good job Medium 🙂

How to count the number of words in LinkedIn

LinkedIn isn’t as easy as WordPress or Medium because it doesn’t have a built-in word counter. I think this is a huge oversight, but I’m also not the CEO of a billion-dollar company, so there’s that.

My advice is to use the handy chrome plugin I mentioned earlier (Word Counter Plus). Highlight your text, right-click Word Counter Plus, and bingo–counted words.