9 SEO FireFox Plugins I Can’t Live Without

March 24th, 2008 by Ann Smarty | 27 Comments

Yes, I know there are much more great FireFox plugins but I am sharing only those I am using myself and find really useful.

Before I start, here is an overview of what I am going to talk about:

Plugin	Most useful feature	How often I use it
SEOQuake	Any page instant SEO analysis	A few times a day
SearchStatus	Google, Alexa, Compete Rank Toolbar	Multiple times a day
Google toolbar	Google search and suggestions	Multiple times a day
Rank Checker button	Instantly checks a site SE rankings	Once a week
User Agent Switcher	Change the user agent	Once a month
SEO for FireFox	Exhaustive SEO analysis within search results	A few times a day
Compete.com	Site traffic information	Once a week
Web Developer	Instant access to image and link information	Once a day
Page Age	Get the page age	Once a day

1. SEOQuake.

Most useful features:

Get instant access to any information about the page you have opened: Google index, Yahoo! backlinks, Alexa Rank, archive age, Del.icio.us mentions, subpages, source, Whois, keyword density and many more.
Integrate all the above data in your Google, Yahoo and MSN search results page. Sort the results by any of the parameters.

seoquake

Fully customizable: add/exclude any of the parameters; make the tool work faster by showing all the info only by request; add your own features.

2. SearchStatus

Most useful features:

Google PageRank, Alexa Rank and Compete.com Rank toolbars for every page you visit.
Highlight nofollow links, access any page matatags with one click, view the link report and robots.txt info.

SearchStatus

3. Google toolbar

Most useful features:

Search Google and see your search history and Google suggestions;
Access your mail with one click.

4. SEOMoz Rank Checker button - allows you to check rankings of any page by one click (the tool was also described here).

5. User Agent Switcher - check your website with the user agent being Googlebot, for example.

user agent switcher

6. SEO for FireFox:

Most useful features:

an exhaustive SEO report on each page integrated within your search results page: Google PR, Google cache date, age, Del.icio.us mentions, Y! links, Y! .edu links, Y! .gov links, Y! page links, Compete.com Rank, Compete.com uniques, number of cached pages, Dmoz/Yahoo directory/Botw presence, Whois;
an instant access to other great SEO research tools: keyword research, GoogleAdwords tool, traffic estimator, Google trends;
export to CSV function.

SEO for FireFox

7. Compete.com toolbar - the one I don’t use too often but I like the site profile feature.

Compete

8. Web Developer plugin has plenty of great features; I will mention only those I use most often.

Most useful features:

shows image Alt text;
Java disable option;
shows image and link titles.

9. Page Age shows age for the page you are located at.

Comments

27 responses so far ↓

Ken savage on Mar 24, 2008 at 9:14 am

PageAge is new to me but yea I agree these are classics and a must for any good SEO.
thx Ann.
seo bristol on Mar 24, 2008 at 1:07 pm

Hi Ann
Useful list - thank you.
I’m currently experimenting with the Live PageRank Plugin - it occasionally throws a different (and in my opinion more credible) PR to the Google Toolbar.
Another good Plugin if you comment a lot is InFormEnter…
Internet Marketing on Mar 24, 2008 at 1:26 pm

I wonder if anyone has the same problem as I have.
I can’t download seo-for-firefox because the link does not work. The seobook website says :
“Click Here to install the SEO for Firefox extension”
But when I click it just puts a # in the url.
Please help!
Raghavan R P on Mar 24, 2008 at 2:13 pm

I am not sure whether all these tools provide me the right details than a manual check
Ann Smarty on Mar 24, 2008 at 4:11 pm

@Internet Marketing - make sure your browser allows pop-ups (just checked again and it works for me)

@Raghavan R P - most of them do nothing more than just giving you instant access to the data for your manual check :)
Joe Williams on Mar 24, 2008 at 6:15 pm

Good list, for checking out the source code, I am a big firebug fan.
arun kamath on Mar 24, 2008 at 10:32 pm

Thanks for the list. Ann Smarty are there any similar plugins for Safari for windows
insert lots of keywords here on Mar 24, 2008 at 11:33 pm

not an seo tool but essential: adblock
Gary Storm on Mar 25, 2008 at 1:53 am

Thanks for the list Ann, fantastic stuff. I’m a beginner at this trying to see if I can help spread the word about my wife’s free music. These tools are a great help…. now I just need to learn how to use them :)
Marc on Mar 25, 2008 at 8:35 am

my favs,

inFormEnter for fillling forms,
noScript for preventing malicious site scripts, IeTab for rendering page in IE,
Foxmarks for saving browser bookmarks and settings across different pc’s,
SnapLinks for easily opening multiple links,
compete.com toolbar is highly useful multiple times a day to see a good estimate of how many actual humans visit sites I run across.
Malte Landwehr on Mar 25, 2008 at 9:15 am

When you use SEOQuake, what do you need Search Status for? As far as I see it doesn’t provide anything that is not included in the SeoQuake Toolbar.
Ann Smarty on Mar 25, 2008 at 9:20 am

@Malte - all I want from SearchStatus is its toolbars which are small and can be placed at the bottom of the browser.

Besides, SEOQuake is almost always off with me (as it makes my FF work slower) - so unless I need some detailed page info, I might use SS to quickly the data…
Rob Montalbine on Mar 25, 2008 at 10:42 am

I may have to replace SEO for Firefox with SEO Quake. Thanks for the list
Raghavan on Mar 25, 2008 at 1:25 pm

Sometimes the tool doesn’t give me the exact detail when compared to a manual work. There are some variations which is what I meant their apart from that the plugins that you have given is a real worth. Search Status is a new one for me :-)
Alison on Mar 25, 2008 at 11:23 pm

does alexa’s information really correct?
Varun on Mar 26, 2008 at 1:01 pm

@Ann, check out Shareaholic(.com) as well. I use it to check Digg and Del.icio.us counts often. Think you’ll like it.
LazyInvestor on Mar 26, 2008 at 1:43 pm

Great list of SEO related plugins. Very usefull. Thank you.
goodnewscowboy on Mar 27, 2008 at 6:22 pm

Hi Anne:

Thanks tons for sharing this. It has saved me a lot of time and energy.

Quick question: The rank checker button. Is that a Firefox Plug In, or a site service?
Ann Smarty on Mar 28, 2008 at 2:50 am

@goodnewscowboy - The rank checker button will bring you to SEOMoz site where you will be able to actually check rankings; that’s nothing more than a fast access to the tool.
Vern on Apr 1, 2008 at 11:22 pm

Hi Ann,

This is awesome stuff. Between all
the ones you highlighted I agree
that SEOQuake and SearchStatus
are quite extensively being used
by most marketers.

I’m going to bookmark your page
so I can learn more from you.

Great stuff here Ann… ;)

Vern
Text on Apr 16, 2008 at 2:07 am

Wery best. Отличные ссылки :)
Cliff Posey on Apr 18, 2008 at 5:58 pm

I would would really liks someone to provide a tools that shows if a blog site uses nofollow or dotfollow.
Dan on Apr 21, 2008 at 2:56 pm

I found that the Compete.com add-on slowed my Firefox down (the browser itself and loading web pages)… I had to get rid of it because it annoyed me so bad.

The rest of your suggested add-ons are great!
Marc Beharry on Apr 21, 2008 at 3:27 pm

zemanta plugin is one of the most useful i have seen. it came out recently and is worth a try. it helps you add relevant images and links to your blog posts almost automatically
Ann Cummings on Apr 29, 2008 at 2:02 pm

Thanks for this list of tools. I like what I see re: SEOQuake and the others. This is all fairly new to me, so have been exploring which tools would be the most beneficial at this point. Your list is going to be a great help to me.

Thanks again!
Edward Beckett on May 6, 2008 at 6:09 am

Great List SEO Smarty!

Here’s a few to consider too …

seolinkanalysis

LinkChecker

Web Developer Toolbar

Firebug

Excellent work SEO Smarty!
Ann Smarty on May 6, 2008 at 6:34 am

@Edward: great additions - thank you!