For all those who wish to create a digital business, SEO is in all respects the lifeblood: positioning the website so that it is easy to find it in the SERPs of the various search engines is, in fact, simply indispensable.
Doing a good SEO is not easy, on the contrary, it takes a lot of time and specific skills to obtain excellent results; surely, relying on some plugins and/or tools that can simplify and speed up the activity can always come in handy.
This is where the extensions for Google Chrome come into play, which allow you to make the most of all the potential of the browser in question. Below is a list of the 18 most used extensions by all SEO specialists:
1. Mozbar
It is undoubtedly among the most useful extensions for Google Chrome for SEO Mozbar: analyze the Google SERP and inbound parameters, provides information about the authority of the analyzed website, supports both on-page and off-page SEO analysis and allows you to analyze any element of the page, from attributes to backlinks.
2. Web Developer
Web Developer ranks among the most practical and performing Google Chrome SEO extensions: presents a drop-down menu that allows you to easily analyze a large number of variables such as CSS and invisible images, in order to evaluate how much these elements affect the positioning of the website and the experience offered to the user.
3. SEO Site Tools
If you want a popup that in great detail provides the status of the website you are visiting then SEO Site Tool is just what you need: provides information about onsite SEO and offsite SEO such as meta tags, social network sharing, HTML and CSS code status, Google cache date, and more.
4. Firebug Lite for Google Chrome
Originally designed for Firefox, Firebug LiteOriginally designed for Firefox, Firebug Lite is also available for Chrome and, once installed, allows you to monitor, modify and debug a web page by acting (if you want) on the HTML code and JavaScript, DOM writing and CSS.
5. WordPress Theme And Plugins Detector
A very useful extension for detecting WordPress themes and plugins is WordPress Theme And Plugins Detector: just access a site to get all the information you need to perform the appropriate analyses.
6. Majestic Backlink Analyzer
Another practical tool is Majestic Backlink Analyzer, an extension that allows you to analyze the backlinks of a site directly from the browser in order to evaluate their relevance related to the external linking system. But that’s not all, because it also provides the list of the 10 most relevant backlinks for the site in question, as well as URL, anchor text, Citation Flow, Trust Flow, date of first detection and eventual cancellation date.
7. Nofollow
To easily find out if a link is nofollow, the No Follow extension is certainly ideal: it consists of a tool that highlights the nofollow links it encounters on the various web pages you are browsing in a red box. Simple and intuitive!
8. SEO SERP
A very simple to use Chrome extension is SEO SERP, which allows you to check the position occupied by the website for a specific keyword. The search can be extended to different search engines and, at the same time, it is possible to compare the position of the website with respect to that of the competitors.
9. PageSpeed Insights
Another indispensable extension for SEO specialists is PageSpeed, which allows you to evaluate the loading capacity of a website by analyzing, among other things, numerous on-page SEO factors and providing a large number of advice and ideas on how to optimize them.
10. Wappalyzer
Another very useful extension is Wappalyzer, able to provide all the technologies used by the analyzed websites. Specifically, it allows you to detect content management systems, platforms used for ecommerce, web servers, JavaScript frameworks and much more.
11. SeoQuake
SeoQuake is undoubtedly among the must haves of SEO specialists, the most used tool ever because it allows you to find extremely useful information such as PageRank, nofollow links, pages indexed on search engines, statistics that connect the site to social networks. And that’s not all: SeoQuake also allows you to export the SERP in excel format so you can work with it very easily at any time.
12. SEO Review Tools for Chrome
SEO Review Tools for Chrome is a very simple extension to use: it checks the positioning of the indexed pages and offers precise information and detailed statistics on the traffic trend on the examined site.
13. Keyword Surfer
With Keyword Surfer it is possible to understand immediately and directly in the SERP the value of the query that is being evaluated for organic positioning. This is a free extension that provides CPC (cost per click), traffic volume and estimates for domains featured in search results, keyword volume, related keyword suggestions, and number of backlinks from each domain.
14. Ayima Page Insights
Among the super simple extensions is Ayima Page Insight, which highlights problems on a page in real time, whether they are technical issues, or common errors. Any relevant errors are divided into Errors, Warnings and Information and, at the same time, the extension suggests various ways to solve them.
15. User-Agent Switcher
Another very simple extension is User-Agent Switcher, which makes it possible to analyze a page from a User-Agent point of view and to identify what is wrong with a site or web page. To clarify, a User-Agent is an application that sends a text string to the server to identify the analyzed technology, so it is very useful for SEOs to fix all the problems related to the Browser + OS + Device combination in use.
16. Lighthouse
To speed up optimization activities, Lighthouse is a real marvel: immediate analysis of performance, PWA, best practices, accessibility and SEO through a simple click on the popup. t is a very convenient tool, which helps those who work with only one monitor and have little space available.
17. SEO Search Simulator by Nightwatch
Finally, here is SEO Search Simulator, a Chrome SEO extension to simulate the Google search result by setting the language, country of origin and presence of the URL to be analysed. It proves to be very useful for monitoring the positioning of a website or competitor rankings, greatly streamlining the work of any SEO professional.
How to install and uninstall Google Chrome extensions
Now that the picture of the best SEO extensions for Google Chrome appears quite clear, a question may arise spontaneously: how are they installed?
The procedure is really very simple:
- you connect to the Chrome Web Store to search for the extensions of your interest;
- once found, click on Add > Add extension.
The game is done! If, then, after some time you want to proceed with the uninstallation of an extension, you can proceed in two different ways:
- point the cursor to the extension with the right mouse button and click on Remove from Chrome > Remove;
- you access the menu > Other Tools > Extensions > Remove.
Either way, the result will be the same. Alternatively, you can simply hide the extension, without deactivating it, by pointing to the icon, clicking the right mouse button and selecting the Hide item in the Chrome menu.