If you work as as an Search Engine Optimiser (SEO) chances are that you use Firefox as your main Browser (2nd - Chrome for quick research assignments/social networking, 3rd – Internet Explorer for backwards compatibility browser testing).
As we all know the power of a great application lies in it’s ability to be fully customisable and extended to however the user requires – Firefox doesn’t disappoint here. For SEO’s those extended requirements are to be able to see key information about clients, competitors websites – there is no other browser on the market that comes close to be able to review/research sites, links, code etc for SEO’s. FireFox is the browser of choice for the professionals in the industry.
A couple of days a go Mozilla introduced Add-on collections. Add on collections are a way to share your favourite plugins with the community and help highlight the best extensions out there…
Watch this cool introduction video on how to browse, create, install collections.
The purpose of this post is to share with you my collection of SEO tools for Firefox that I use daily when working on clients sites. Below I’ve highlighted a few of my favourite plugins from the collection…
Outwib Hub
OutWit Hub contains dozens of recognition and extraction features to ease your Web searches and organize your collections. Automatically browse through pages, collect and format the information you seek, display full screen slideshows on any topic in a single click. Download >>
User Agent Switcher
Adds a menu and a toolbar button to switch the user agent of the browser. Download >>
NoDoFollow
A simple extension to highlight links in a page according to nofollow / dofollow status. Nofollow is/was used for page sculpting – Google recently changed course on Nofollow still in debate how effective this technique is going to be moving forward. Download >>
SeoQuake SEO extension
Seoquake allows to obtain and investigate many important SEO parameters of the internet. The #1 SEO Tool. Download >>
Google Global
Google Global is an unobtrusive Firefox extension that allows you to see what the Google search results that you are viewing look like from different geographical locations. Becoming one of my most used plugins when checking US SERPS results running of local data centres. (Googling this site for “Google Consultant in the US shows different results from simply searching the .com results. Listings being pulled from different data centres as we all know give different SERP results.) Download >>
Firebug
Firebug allows you to edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page. Great tool for reviewing onsite code. Download >>
FlagFox
FlagFox displays a country flag depicting the location of the current website’s server and provides quick access to detailed location and web server information. Server location is an integral part of the mix when it’s comes to onsite optimisation. Download >>
You can check out, install the complete collection of SEO Tools over at the Collection Directory. Browsing through the sets a couple of other tool collections look very interesting…
Let me know if I have missed any essential SEO tools out from the collection?
Also check out the mix of web based tools, FireFox plugins listings over on my continually updated SEO Tools page.
I have been using SEOquake for a while now and I love it. There is a warning about possibly being banned form search engines when trying to collect too much info. Can you expand on that?
Also, I appreciate the clarification on link sculpting and that fact that the page rank evaporates instead of being transfered to other links and pages. There has been a lot of hype about that in some of the paid (expensive) seo tutorials (I won’t name anyone or any company but I am sure you know who I am talking about). It seems that was all a big waste of time.
@Atlanta SEO I have never had any problem with SEOQuake myself – your best bet is to make sure you only load parameters “by request” rather than “on load” (preferences, seobar/toolbar).
Regards page sculpting I wouldn’t make any major changes in the wake of recent announcements. Run some tests first (just not on your cash money sites).
i have not tried this just yet but with all your feedback, i think im gonna do it now. thanks for the heads up, sean!
.-= Google Local Searches´s last blog ..Reach Local Customers Using Google Local =-.
SEO Quake will experience problems after using it for several hours in a row. Too many google API calls and google stops returning results. I’ve seen where people suggest rebooting your computer to correct this, but I’ve found that killing and restarting the firefox.exe pid, will take care of it and SEO Quake starts functioning properly again.