Word count is simply a count of the total words in a given area, not including HTML tags. Some engines may rank pages more favorably based on whether they have a certain number of words on the page. Sometimes the fewer words the better, and on other engines, more words are sometimes better. In the case of TOTAL word count for a page, this refers to the total words on the entire page counting words in meta tags and other hidden areas, but not counting the HTML tags themselves.