I think the word count for my target page is incorrect.

There are few different reasons that POP is displaying a word count number that you aren’t anticipating.

The first possible reason is that there is more text on your page than you can see. Website templates often add extra text that you might not know about that is counted in your word count. To double check POP’s word count, we highly recommend installing the free Chrome Extension from SEMRush, SEOQuake. POP and SEOQuake use a similar method in counting words on a page.

Here is the link to the Chrome Store to install SEOQuake:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/seoquake/akdgnmcogleenhbclghghlkkdndkjdjc

Here’s how to use SEOQuake:

1. Go to your target URL

2. Click to open SEOQuake

3. Click “Density” from the top navigation area in SEOQuake

4. The word count from SEOQuake will be at the top of the next dashboard.

If you see that the number in SEOQuake, and the number in POP are relatively the same, then there isn’t any issue with POP’s number. If the SEO Quake number and the POP number are significantly different, continue on to the next possible reason.

The next possible reason is that the page you are trying to optimize and the URL that you inserted into POP are not the same page.

Another similar possibility is that the page you are trying to optimize is currently redirecting or going to a 404 page.

Here’s what to do to check:

1. Go to the Summary Tab in your PageRun report

2. Double check the URL that you put into POP. Is it the correct URL with no misspellings or missing parts?

3. Click on the URL from the Summary Tab. Are you taken to the correct page? Make sure you aren’t redirected to another page, or that the page doesn’t go to a 404 error page.

If there are problems with the URL or you are taken to an incorrect page, you simply need to correct the URL and re-run the report. If the URL is correct and there aren’t any issues, continue on to the next possible reason.

The last possible reason is that the target URL page wasn’t crawled correctly all together. In addition to the word count being significantly off (e.g. a word count of 3) you will see 0’s for the other signal areas.

If this is the case, the best solution will be to use the POP Chrome Extension. You can find a detailed guide for the POP Chrome Extension here.