5 Reasons Why I Switched to Chrome
Back in December my colleague Charlie wrote about the Google Chrome browser and if it was time to switch from Firefox. His conclusion was that although the browser was great, some of the SEO tools weren’t as polished as the browser name suggests.
I’ve been using Chrome for a number of months now and find that I’m now only occasionally using Firefox. The SEO tools I’m using with Chrome are great, some of which I couldn’t live without. The browser itself is much faster and about to get faster still when the full version 10 arrives soon. A spell check and inspect element tool are built in but the 5 extra tools or extensions I’ve listed really help speed up my SEO workflow.
SEO Site Tools
This one extension is packed with metrics and deserves a blog to itself. Page Rank, MozRank or Moz Authority can be displayed on the extension icon.
- External Page Data displays metrics from Google, Yahoo, Bing, SeoMoz, Alexa and more.
- Page Elements displays CSS and XHTML validation, meta info and on page tags.
Social Media as you would expect, displays metrics on Facebook, Twitter, Buzz, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Digg and del.icio.us - Page Terms / Tools links a number of sites like Pingdom Tools to test page load times and Keyword Eye for keyword search volume.
- Server / Domain Info includes WhoIS data.
- Suggestions displays a handy overview of missing on page SEO such as img alt tags, meta description / keywords and link quantity.
It’s worth giving Chrome a try just for this extension alone.
Mozbar
This extension allows you to display the traditional mozbar but also gives you the useful option of displaying it for each site in the SERP.
SEO SERP
This extension allows you to enter a keyword and one or more sites and it will find the position on the SERP.
Note Anywhere
This is my favourite extension for Chrome. Adding a note to a page may not seem to be that useful but I’ve been using it to keep track of what sites I’ve added to which directory. Just put a note on the directory home page and list the sites as you add them. It’s also useful to note which directories failed to list.
I’m a firm believer that Chrome is a better browser than IE and Firefox and with an increasing market share I’m not the only one. With the selection of SEO extensions available it really can save you time.
If you have any SEO extensions you’re using I’d love to hear about them.
Google Similar Pages
As the name suggests a click on this icon gives you a snapshot of four similar pages to the one you’re looking at.
