SEO toolbars are highly useful utilities providing us with:
- Lots of useful SEO info at a glance;
- Quick access to more SEO tools and resources;
Why do you need to choose?
Toolbars take much space and also slow down your FireFox. Therefore I can afford to use no more than one SEO toolbar per FireFox profile.
How to compare?
I’ve compiled a quick comparison table (you knew I would) and added some notes below. You are more than welcome to share your own take.
Note: this comparison table is not meant to determine which one is better / worse. Instead, it aims at helping you choose the one that best fits your needs.
Note: I am describing features available by default. The tools can be configured to some extent, for example SEOquake allows to add almost any data (if you have at least some technical skills).
| Major features | SEOBook SEO toolbar | SEOmoz toolbar | SEOquake toolbar | |
| Quick page SEO report | Yes (with export feature) | No | Yes (with ‘print’ option) | |
| 2 or more sites comparison | Yes (with export feature) | No | Yes (with export feature) | |
| Google PR | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Link to Google cache | Yes (and to text cache) | No | Yes | |
| Link to Google index | No | No | Yes | |
| Backlinks | Yahoo backlinks to the page and to the domain | Number of back-linking pages and domains per Linkscape | Yahoo backlinks to the page and to the domain | |
| Outbound links | No | No | Yes (detailed report when clicked) | |
| Dmoz, Yahoo directory, BOTW | Yes | No | No | |
| Competitors’ research | Quick access to Quancast, Compete, Alexa, SEMrush, Google trends | No | No | |
| Archive.org data | Yes | No | Yes | |
| Traffic | Compete.com uniques and SEMrush traffic value | No | Alexa rank and SEMrush traffic value | |
| Whois info | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Link to source | Yes | No | Yes | |
| Export | Yes (both site report and site comparison) | No | Yes | |
| Nofollow visualization | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Access to internal tools | To all SEObook tools (including keyword research and search engine position tracker) | To all SEOmoz tools (including Crawl Test, Rank Checker, Trifecta, Term Extractor, etc) | To SEMrush and Adspy reports | |
| Additional info: | SEO Xray report; quick search option to many keyword research tools, IP, server headers, user-agent change | SEOmoz dashboard access | Delicious bookmarks, | |
SEOBook Toolbar
SEOBook SEO toolbar: the recent creation by Aaron Wall is impressive (as well as most of his tools) – the only issue I noticed was that my FireFox seemed too overwhelmed with it sometimes.
SEOmoz Toolbar
SEOmoz toolbar is only available for SEOmoz registered members but it is really quick and contains essential information. It is mostly based on SEOmoz internal tools and metrics.
SEOquake Toolbar
SEOquake is the first toolbar I started with. It can slow FireFox down but I like it because it is turned off with the click and can be configured in multiply ways.
I’ve had some good luck with SEOQuake. I like it because it’s FREE… and … it can be used to help me see what posts I want to comment on. I use the site:domain.com and inurl:domain.com and then rank the posts by PR. Doesn’t always produce results, but does let me find a gem once and a while.
Of course, I do try to leave well thought out comments!
I used SEOQuake, but used to get a lot of captchas from Google and the company’s IP blocked, had to give it up. I use SEOMoz toolbar, but newly created terminology is a drag, don’t get much out of it.
I tried couple of SEO Toolbars but IMO SEOBook is the one that got the best and most useful features. It is also very user-friendly.
But it definitively has some stability issues. Once in a while I need to restart my browser because it crashed down using the SEO bar.
I use SEOBook’s toolbar, Its quiet useful, but SEO moz, well most of the features are available to only pro-members there by wouldn’t be as effective for new users or outsiders.
I would recommend SEOBook’s toolbar to any one, It helps me a lot……
And thanks for the comparison Ann..
Wow.. great comparision Ann… I have started using SEO toolbar with SEOBooks’ toolbar. I like its features. But I will try SEOquake!
Thanks.. As always awesome article!!
Great overall analysis of these toolbars.
FYI Though. SEO quake has a compete.com plugin now. Just go into preferences and click to activate it.
I like to use “SEO for firefox” which is also from seobook. Doesn’t come up as a toolbar and only shows added information on Google and Yahoo search listings. I find this sufficient, non instrusive and it can be turned on and off very easily.
I am frequently asked about both SEOBook Toolbar and SEOQuake so I was glad to find this great comparison chart. I’m going to link to it and share it on Social Networks hoping that will generate some current comments on whether everything here is still accurate. (You know how fast tools can change.)