Search engine optimisation (SEO) is much easier to tackle with the right browser extensions. The great news is that there are many SEO add-ons available for a variety of browsers to help gauge SEO effectiveness.
There are add-ons for most every SEO tasks from measuring rankings, analysing traffic and website performance to identifying competitors and keywords, and more. Read on to find out which browser add-ons to use for the most common SEO tasks and what insights each can provide to help you with your search engine optimisation efforts.
Let’s get started.
Search engine marketing
SEO Book – SEO Toolbar
This is a popular tool that provides a wealth of marketing data directly in the search results. After you’ve installed it, you’ll get an overview of the authority of a website including: Page Rank, number of domain and page links, whether they’re listed in recognised directories like Dmoz, the age of the site and estimated traffic stats.
Excellent for: Competitor research to help you understand how authoritative a site is as well as spotting opportunities for your own websites.
Account required: Yes
Price: Free
Compatibility: Firefox
Link: https://www.seobook.com/seo-toolbar
Quirk – Search Status
This add-on gives you access to a variety of useful tools. For example, it will show you an overview of Page Rank, Alexa and Compete Rank, highlight on page NoFollow links, view Meta tags, other domains on the same IP, Whois data and more.
Excellent for: Quickly checking important site elements and finding out what your site could be missing.
Account required: No
Price: Free
Compatibility: Firefox and SeaMonkey
Link: https://www.quirk.biz/searchstatus/
Other good tools for search marketing that you might want to try are:
- SEO for Firefox – Free, only available for Firefox
- Foxy SEO Tool – Free, only available for Firefox
- Website and SEO Analysis – Free, only available for Chrome
Check rankings
SEO Book – Rank Checker
This extension allows you to check your website rankings in Google (US and international), Bing and Yahoo Search.
Excellent for: Finding out where your website ranks in the search results.
Account required: Yes
Price: Free
Compatibility: Firefox
Link: https://tools.seobook.com/firefox/rank-checker/
RedFly – Google global Firefox and Chrome extension
This add-on allows you to see how Google search results look in specific countries as if you were in that location. So, if you want to see how Google organic search results appear in any location around the world, this extension is spot on. If you’re running an AdWords campaign and are targeting potential customers in different countries, you will also be able to see how your ads look in those other locations.
Excellent for: Seeing how your site rankings and ads appear in different locations around the world.
Account required: No
Price: Free
Compatibility: Firefox and Chrome
Link: https://www.redflymarketing.com/internet-marketing-tools/google-global/
Website development
Firebug
Firebug integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of development tools at your fingertips. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page, or even just admire the beautiful code on other websites. For many this add-on has become an indispensable part of website design, development and maintenance.
Excellent for: Debugging websites.
Account required: No
Price: Free
Compatibility: Firefox
Link: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/firebug/
Web developer
With this browser add-on you get loads of tools right in your browser that are useful for development work as well as for getting an idea of the structure of a website. Among the most useful tools are HMTL and CSS validation tests, accessibility tests, script and image blocking features, quick links for viewing the source code as well as layout information displays such as code structure and block sizes.
Excellent for: Testing and quality-checking your web pages.
Account required: No
Price: Free
Compatibility: Firefox, Chrome, Opera
Link: https://chrispederick.com/work/web-developer/
Here are some other add-ons you might want to try:
- Greasemonkey – Free, only available for Firefox
- User Agent Switcher – Free, only available for Firefox
- Google Analytics Debugger – Free, only available for Chrome
HTTP Headers
Live HTTP Headers
This tool is an effective debugger for HTTP header data. It helps debug web applications, see which kind of web server the remote site is using and also the cookies sent by the remote site.
Excellent for: Viewing the HTTP headers of a page while browsing.
Account required: No
Price: Free
Compatibility: Firefox, Seamonkey
Link: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/live-http-headers/?src=search
Backlink analysis
SEO Link Analysis
If you’re looking to get more link data than Google Webmaster Tools can provide, you might want to install this browser add-on. You will have access to extra information including the anchor text used on the link and whether the link is nofollow.
Excellent for: Doing a quick link analysis of a website.
Account required: No
Price: Free
Compatibility: Firefox
Link: https://yoast.com/tools/seo/link-analysis/
Two other good add-ons that you can use for analysing backlinks are Majestic Backlink Analyzer and Check My Links. They are both free and compatible with Chrome.
SEO Toolbars
MozBar
A great tool for SEO that allows you to create custom searches by search engine, country or city, see how difficult it is to rank for a specific keywords, view social metrics for Twitter, Facebook and more.
Excellent for: Accessing important SEO metrics at a glance as you surf the web.
Account required: No
Price: Free
Compatibility: Firefox and Chrome
Link: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mozbar/eakacpaijcpapndcfffdgphdiccmpknp
SEOquake
SEOquake is quite nice as it gives you access to tons of SEO parameters including Google index, Alexa Rank, nofollow links, and keyword densities. It allows you to do a full page analysis and also to download SERP results into Excel.
Excellent for: Getting valuable SEO information about any webpage and stats about websites directly in the search result pages
Account required: No
Price: Free
Compatibility: Firefox, Chrome and Opera
Link: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/seoquake/akdgnmcogleenhbclghghlkkdndkjdjc
Another good choice is SEO Book’s SEO Toolbar, a popular add-on that is free and compatible with Firefox.
On-page analysis
NoFollow
A simple tool that shows you nofollow links as well as nofollow and nonindex meta tags on web pages. It supports search engine specific meta tags: googlebot (Google), bingbot (Bing), slurp (Yahoo) and msnbot (Bing). Best of all, it also works offline.
Excellent for: Finding links with rel=”nofollow” attribute and links on pages with nofollow or noindex robots meta tag.
Account required: No
Price: Free
Compatibility: Chrome
Link: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/nofollow/dfogidghaigoomjdeacndafapdijmiid?hl=en
Word Count Tool
Great Firefox add-on that allows you to select a block of text and get details on the number of sentences, paragraphs, words as well as keyword density.
Excellent for: Getting an overview of a web page’s content.
Account required: No
Price: Free
Compatibility: Firefox
Link: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/word-count-tool/?src=search
Competitor analysis
SEO SERP Workbench
This is an interesting tool that allows you to quickly check the position of multiple sites for a particular keyword. It basically shows you the rankings for a specific query.
Excellent for: Keeping track of the progress of optimising your site without having to check everything through Google searches.
Account required: No
Price: Free
Compatibility: Chrome
Link: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/seo-serp-workbench/ehbgolklgacemnfnmkkpgekngaaggjjl
Wappalyzer
Great for keeping an eye on what technologies your competitors are using, from content management systems and ecommerce platforms to analytics tools and more.
Excellent for: Detecting the technologies that your competitors are using on their sites.
Account required: No
Price: Free
Compatibility: Chrome
Link: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/wappalyzer/gppongmhjkpfnbhagpmjfkannfbllamg?hl=en
Website performance
YSlow
Yahoo!’s page performance tool will analyse the page you are on for speed and give it a grade. It will give you many suggestions as to where you can improve the speed of the page looking at content, cookies, CSS, images, Javascript and the server.
Excellent for: Finding new ways to improve your site’s performance.
Account required: No
Price: Free
Compatibility: Chrome
Link: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/yslow/ninejjcohidippngpapiilnmkgllmakh
AdSense
mincus.code – Adsense Notifier
This add-on allows you to see your earnings at a glance without having to log in to your Adsense account multiple times a day. It updates stats automatically and you will be able to see things like clicks and earnings directly in your browser’s status bar.
Excellent for: Anyone who needs to check their stats often to see if they have gotten any more clicks.
Account required: No
Price: Free
Compatibility: Firefox
Link: https://code.mincus.com/3/adsense-notifier/
Yellowpipe – Google Adsense Preview Tool
A good tool if you’re undecided about using Adsense on your site as it gives you the chance to test things out visually. You will be able to see what ads may appear on your web pages if you do decide to add Adsense to your website.
Excellent for: Seeing what Google ads may show on any web page and making an informed decision.
Account required: No
Price: Free
Compatibility: Firefox, Internet Explorer
Link: https://www.yellowpipe.com/yis/tools/adsense-preview/
Password manager
LastPass Password Manager
This awesome add-on allows you to generate secure passwords and it will then save all your usernames and passwords so that you can autologin to your favourite sites with just one click. It will save everything from usernames and passwords to credit card and shopping profiles.
Excellent for: Generating strong passwords, saving and organising your login information for all your sites so you can access them securely from any device.
Account required: No
Price: Free
Compatibility: Firefox
Link: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/lastpass-password-manager/
An alternative to LastPass is 1Password, which works in a similar way but it’s also compatible with Chrome, Safari and Opera.
Keyword analysis
KeywordSpy
A reliable browser extension that helps you do your keyword research and competitive tracking for SEO and PPC as you browse the web. You can use it to get keyword ideas both from the search results pages as well as from the site pages that you visit.
Excellent for: Researching keywords and finding new keyword opportunities.
Account required: No
Price: Free
Compatibility: Firefox and Internet Explorer
Link: https://labs.keywordspy.com/plugin/?n=
Two good alternatives to KeywordSpy are:
Scout – Free, available for Chrome
Wordpot – The Keyword Finder – Free, available for Firefox
Block ads
Adblock
This cool add-on helps you to block all those annoying ads, banners that pop up when you browse the web. All you need to do is to install it and add some filters so that next time a webpage loads, Adblock will disable the elements matching your filters.
Excellent for: Blocking the ads and pop ups on a web page.
Account required: No
Price: Free
Compatibility: Mozilla Firefox and Firebird
Link: https://adblock.mozdev.org/
Your turn now
These are just a few SEO add-ons that can make your life easier and there are many more available. It depends on your needs and requirements. One important advice that we can give you is to not install every SEO extension that you might find interesting as it can slow down your browser. Instead, pick a handful of the most necessary and relevant extensions that you actually need depending on what you want to analyse and optimise your website for.
Do you have any other recommendations for great SEO browser extensions? Share them with us in a comment below.
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