There are plenty of ways to spread the word of your website, from social media marketing to paid advertising. However, given that the majority of your customers are searching for your website using Google, you can’t afford to neglect search engine optimisation (SEO).
SEO is exactly as it sounds – it refers to the process of optimising your website to appear high on the list of Google’s search results. Unfortunately, there are many aspects to SEO, none of which can be ignored.
You might now be starting to realise that SEO is a daunting and ongoing process, but it is one that can be made much more straightforward thanks to the hundreds of extensions available for Google Chrome.
Google Chrome is now – by quite a margin – the world’s most popular web browser, and that’s largely down to the fact that it’s so customisable due to the sheer number of plugins. There’s even a plugin that makes every website adopt a Nicholas Cage theme. However, for the purposes of SEO, that plugin won’t prove very useful.
Below, we’ve listed our favourite Google Chrome extensions that are easy to use and invaluably useful. More importantly, the following extensions will help you optimise your website for the search engines, which could help you take your company to new heights.
Before we delve into our list of extensions, we should remind you that SEO really is an ongoing process that requires your constant attention. Therefore, if you want to make things as straightforward as possible, you might want to work with a team of SEO experts who can take a multitude of tasks off your hands.
Nevertheless, accustom yourself to these extensions, use them frequently, and you will see results.
1. MozBar
MozBar is arguably the most essential extension for anybody that’s serious about SEO. Developed by Moz, a leading name in the SEO industry, MozBar gives you instant insights about search engine results pages (SERPs) or individual websites. You don’t even need to leave your web browser to use it.
You can use MozBar to analyse backlink metrics, page authority and a website’s domain authority. If you want to see how well your website performs and compare it with your competitors, you simply need to add the MozBar extension to your Google Chrome web browser.
2. SimilarWeb
SimilarWeb offers a wide variety of SEO insights, but it’s perhaps more useful for finding out a website’s sources of traffic. SimilarWeb finds out where users are located by analysing clickstream data from thousands of different internet service providers, client data and its own web crawlers.
Using the data provided by SimilarWeb, you can get reliable statistics on a website’s audience demographics, the countries their visitors come from and how much they interact with and spend on paid media.
SimilarWeb is available for free, but the paid ‘pro’ version offers more detailed data.
3. User Agent Switcher
We have now officially entered the mobile-first age – 60% of people use their smartphones to search for local businesses. Needless to say, if you haven’t already optimised your website for mobile devices, now’s the time to do so, and User Agent Switcher can help.
User Agent Switcher gives you the ability to view web pages exactly as they would appear on a broad range of operating systems and devices. This means you can easily find out whether your website looks just as good on a smartphone as it does a desktop.
Even today, most developers create websites while prioritising how they look on desktops. Of course, your website needs to look striking on the big screen, but its appearance on the little screen simply can’t be ignored.
4. Impactana
Impactana is primarily used for social media analysis. It’s a content marketing extension that displays share counts for pages on social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.
Plenty of extensions offer that kind of functionality, but we’ve chosen Impactana as our favourite due to its standout features. It uses proprietary metrics to determine the ‘Buzz’ and ‘Impact’ of each piece of content on social media. For example, in addition to finding out whether a post has been shared, you can also see whether people interacted with it, making it a useful tool for comparing the effectiveness of your campaigns against your competitors’.
5. Scraper
Sometimes, it’s necessary to pull a range of elements from individual websites or pages to conduct a detailed SEO analysis. While you could do this by importing structured data from websites to Excel or Google Sheets, you could save a lot of time and make life much simpler by using Scraper.
Scraper uses the XPath query language to export a variety of HTML elements from a webpage. Admittedly, it’s a tool that takes a bit of time and effort to get used to, but once you’re familiar with it, conducting in-depth technical SEO audits will become a breeze.
6. Page Load Time
In the modern era of SEO, you need to make sure your website loads quickly. Websites that load slowly tend to have a high bounce rate because users simply can’t be bothered to wait for your page to load when there are so many other sites they can browse instead. Therefore, slow loading times can adversely affect your search ranking.
Page Load Time is an unobtrusive tool that lets you know how many seconds it takes for a webpage to load. It also highlights the elements needed to load your page’s content. This extension is a great starting point if you want to find out how to improve your website’s loading speed.
7. Keywords Everywhere
There was once a time when earning a high position on the SERPs meant inserting keywords in the right places at the right density. While those days are way behind us, it’s still crucial to know what terms your customers search for when trying to find your products or services.
Keywords Everywhere pulls data from the Google Search Console, UberSuggest and Google Keyword Planner. It then uses this data to display approximate search volumes within results pages. Using this data, you can determine which queries and terms to optimise your page for.
We don’t recommend relying on Keywords Everywhere alone to conduct keyword research, but it’s a useful tool that you can use in conjunction with other keyword analysis techniques to find out how to optimise your website for the search engines and increase your traffic.
8. Link Research Tools
Link Research Tools is an extension purposed to help you improve and analyse your backlink profile. Backlinks refer to links to your website from other websites, and Google uses them to determine how authoritative you are. Earning high-quality backlinks is one of the best ways to improve your position on the SERPs.
The free version of Link Research Tools has limited features – you’ll have to pay to access advanced features, such as the quality of your backlinks. Still, it’s a handy tool to find out how many backlinks you have compared to your competitors.
10. Spark Content Optimiser
Backlinks and page loading speed may be important ranking factors, but nothing is more essential than ensuring your website is filled with high-quality, useful content that provides answers to search queries. Spark Content Optimiser assesses how well you cover a topic, providing you with the information you need to optimise your content and make sure it’s useful for your target market.
Creating quality content is a tricky aspect of SEO. You need to avoid keyword stuffing at all costs while ensuring the correct terms are included and your content is worth reading and sharing. Spark will give you some useful insights to help you improve your written content, making it a handy tool for web developers, copywriters and SEO experts.
11. Majestic Backlink Analyser
Another tool which helps you generate backlinks as well as assess the quality of the ones you already have is Majestic Backlink Analyser. You do have to pay for this extension, but because Majestic’s index is more robust that Moz’s – its primary competitor – it’s a worthwhile investment.
11. Page Analytics by Google
Google itself has created its fair share of extensions for its Chrome web browser, and Page Analytics is one of the most useful. Using this extension, you can find out how customers interact with your website and content. You can see where users click, what they read, how much time they spend on a page and how many visitors you have in real time. You can also gain an insight into a page’s bounce rate, unique page views, and more.
12. Mangools SEO
Mangools SEO Extension is a useful tool that allows you to perform a quick SEO audit on a website. It’ll give you insights into how authoritative Google thinks a website is. You can also use this extension to perform backlink analysis and rank tracking as well as view your URL profile.
The Easiest Way to Boost Your SEO Ranking
You might now be starting to realise that making a success of your business on the internet is challenging, time-consuming and labour-intensive, even if you have all the tools detailed above at your disposal. Getting used to Chrome’s extensions can be a challenge in itself, and using them daily may require you to concentrate on tasks that have very little to do with your core business.
If you don’t have the time to get used to the tools detailed in this article, you might want to consider simply letting our highly experienced SEO experts do the hard work for you. At Smart Traffic, we’re a leading SEO agency in Sydney, specialising in PPC advertising, social media marketing, content marketing, backlink generation and much more.
If you’d like to find out how we can take your company to new heights while taking a huge number of tasks off your hands, we welcome you to get in touch. We’ll gladly let you know how we can help you remove the stress from SEO.
About the author
Michael Holder
A specialist in Google Ads, and with a wide range of SEO skills and experience, Michael has a particular interest in Local SEO strategies for small to medium sized businesses. When Michael is not working hard increasing conversions for clients Paid Advertising campaigns he enjoys traveling, dining out and watching Formula 1 and football.