The Top Extensions for SEO Professionals in 2018
One of the reasons that the Chrome browser is so popular is because of the extensions available for download through the Web Store. Grouped into different categories, the extensions provide users improved functionality and tools while browsing the internet.
As digital marketers we spend a lot of time online and using the best extensions helps us make sure we get the most out of each day. To help you optimize your marketing efforts, we’ve put together this list of the top 10 SEO Chrome extensions.
While some of these extensions do the same thing, each one is worth looking into to see if it can make those everyday tasks go a little quicker.
Our List of the Best SEO Chrome Extensions
Presented in no particular order, these extensions are the best of the best in 2016. They provide insight, functionality, and shortcuts that no digital marketer should be without.
If you have any extensions you like to use, make sure to leave a comment below and we’ll check them out.
Mozbar
The Mozbar Chrome plugin lets you create custom searches, compare link metrics, expose page elements, and highlight links and keywords.
Using this extension helps you see how difficult it is to rank for a specific keyword and lets you create custom searches by search engine, country, region, or city.
This extension has been around so long that it’s become a must-have for a lot of SEOs and a great way to get an idea of how powerful a website is.
Unfortunately, the database that Moz uses is famously awful and they scale DA off the websites with the highest number of links. Still, this is a useful plugin for ranking websites and keyword difficulty.
Ahrefs SEO Toolbar
The Ahrefs SEO Chrome add-on is a popular alternative to the Mozbar that uses its own database, which is a huge improvement over the Moz database.
Featuring an in-depth site and content explorer, as well as a rank tracker, the Ahrefs SEO Toolbar gives a lot of insights into your competitors so you can make more informed SEO decisions.
The downside to this plugin is that it’s more expensive than other extensions on this list, also the learning curve is higher than other SEO tools that perform a similar function. Lastly, you’re unable to export data from the SERPs for further analysis.
Majestic Backlink Analyzer
Another popular link intelligence tool, Majestic’s Backlink Analyzer gives users a fast way to see important back link information about a web page.
Using Majestic’s own trust metrics, citation and trust flow, this SEO Chrome extension has three important metric tabs.
According to Neil Patel, these three metric tabs provide the following functions:
The summary tab, which is the only usable tab on free accounts, provides an overall picture of the strength of a website. The backlinks tab shows citation and trust flow, as well as the anchor text and source URL for the 10 strongest backlinks to the page. The final tab called the anchor text tab, displays information about the referring domains and other parameters for the 10 strongest anchor texts.
Check My Links
This SEO Chrome plugin is the best extension for finding broken links. It’s a useful tool that is essential for link building campaigns because it identifies any broken links on a web page information you can use to contact a webmaster to propose an updated link.
Also, this plugin lets you put those broken links into Ahrefs and email everyone who’s still linking to it.
Using this Chrome extension for link building is a great time saver because it takes most of the legwork out of identifying broken links and helps you scan a page quickly to figure out where your time is best spent.
The ROI on this tool is out of this world, providing smart SEOs with an expedited way to contact multiple webmasters at once.
SEO Quake
SEO Quake is a popular Chrome extension that shows important metrics in SERPs. You can use this plugin to get more information about a page’s keyword density, as well as perform a complete diagnosis.
Some of the page factors looked at including the headings, schema, alt attributes, and meta descriptions.
SEO Quake is one of the best ways to get a quick look at a webpage because it pulls metrics from a variety of different sources such as Google, SEMRush, Alexa, etc. This is a great tool that works well with the other extensions on this list.
You can also compare URLs importing the links from a CSV file.
Evernote Web Clipper
Although this isn’t an extension designed specifically for SEO, Evernote Web Clipper is a must-have for anyone who spends a lot of their time working online.
The functionality of this plugin goes beyond simply saving notes, providing users with a way to take screenshots, create images, clip articles, add notations, add highlights to articles, and organize emails and other important information.
One of the best parts of Evernote is its ability to sync notes across multiple devices. So, if you’re spending your time on your laptop and save a website or SERP results for later, you can pull up that information on your smartphone or another computer by logging in.
You’re also able to save important documents and emails to the cloud through Evernote, which is easy to do and feels organic the more you rely on the plugin.
LastPass
The more time you spend working online, the more passwords you accumulate to gain access to various tools and websites. If you’re following smart internet practices, each of these websites is unique and impossible to guess.
This level of security makes it very difficult to remember each log in for every website you visit. Having a password manager installed is essential to avoid being locked out of important accounts and software.
The LastPass Chrome extension is setup and use, with the tool asking if you want to store or update any new information when you enter login information.
Another great feature of LastPass is the ability to share passwords with other people, such as virtual assistants or employees, without revealing them.
Ritetag
Although not something every SEO has to deal with, hashtags are an important part of social media which has a critical role in a website’s ranking on Google. This Chrome plugin automatically finds and inserts hashtags based on how popular they are.
Let’s say you’re writing a post on Twitter, Ritetag will scan your tweet, see which words have the best exposure, and turn them into hashtags. It’s a great tool to increase your reach without much effort.
This extension also works with other social networks that rely on hashtags to sort information. Ritetag also alerts you when new hashtags come up for your topics, helping you to group hashtags together easily to compare them.
For SEOs who work on a lot of different social platforms, this is a time-saving tool that generates the engagement that Google is looking for.
Eye Dropper
A small extension that performs the much-needed task of identifying the colour code on a webpage. By right-clicking on the colour you need to code for, Eye Dropper saves the information for you to use later.
Not only do you have access to the colour code, but the plugin also lets you export your colour history to a CSV file.
Using the Eye Dropper extension saves you time and frustration when trying to find the specific colour code.
While web designers and graphic artists are more likely to take advantage of this plugin, SEOs who work in smaller teams may need to fill in those roles and can use this extension to make this task easier.
Meta SEO Inspector
This extension lets you inspect the metadata provided by search engines. The information collected includes schema.org content, Facebook Open Graph, and Twitter cards.
Beyond just the usual HTML meta tags, this plugin also gives users information about XFN tags, various microformats, canonical attributes, no-follow links, and more.
Meta SEO Inspector is primarily aimed at developers that need to verify the HTML of their website so they can follow the Webmasters’ Google Guidelines.
Anyone who’s curious about the contents of their page can use this plugin to reveal important information.
Other Chrome Extension Resources
We hope you found some useful extensions to help you get those little tasks done quicker and easier. For more great extensions check out this list by Perrin Carrell from Authority Hacker.
In his article, Carrell expands his list to include resources for all aspects of digital marketing and includes some great videos from the Authority Hacker YouTube channel.
You can also browse through the Chrome Web Store to find popular extensions grouped into different categories. Make sure you check out the reviews and latest updates to the versions to learn more about the plugin before installing it.
What’s Next for SEO Experts
Now that you have a bunch of great SEO chrome extensions installed, you need to get out there and try them out. Not every tool will suit your needs but by playing with the resources available, you’ll find those little tasks and annoyances become less of a hindrance.
We’re sure you’ll love getting into the world of extensions as you watch your productivity climb.
Make sure to leave your favourite extensions in the comments below so we can check them out too. If we’ve missed an obvious extension, hit us up below and we may include it in an updated version of this list!