New Off Page SEO Techniques

Off-page SEO is not just about links.

It goes deeper than that. For example, brand mentions (your site URL or brand name mentioned on another site without a hyperlink) are an integral aspect of off-page search signals.

As smart bloggers and content marketers, we usually start with on-page SEO.

But we don’t stop there. Because, to a large extent, the things that matter to Google often happen away from your site.

Depending on your marketing goals, the time you spend on off-page SEO will vary. Dr. Pete Meyers from Moz observed that many site owners spend about 30% of their time on off-page factors, and 70% on on-page factors. For other site owners, those percentages are reversed.

Off-page SEO simply tells Google what others think about your site. For example, if you’ve got a lot of valuable links pointing to your pages, search engines will assume that you’ve got great content – the type that provides value for users.

Otherwise, why would people waste time linking to it?

People only cite, reference and share content they like. Even in a brick-and-mortar business, if your product is helpful and affordable, you’ll get a lot of word of mouth referrals from your current customers.

SEO can be scary, especially when you don’t know what steps to take to rank your fresh content pages in Google top 10. But, if you can develop a basic understanding of on-page and off-page optimization, you’ll be way ahead of your competition.

If you’re ready, I’m going to walk you through everything you need to know about off-page search optimization.

What is Off-Page SEO?

“Off-Page SEO” refers to all of the activities that you and others do away from your site to raise the ranking of a page in search engine results. Though many people associate off-page SEO with link building, it goes beyond that. Many activities that don’t result in a standard link on other sites are important for off-page optimization. On-page SEO happens within the site, while off-page SEO happens outside the site. If you write a guest post for another blog or leave a comment, you’re doing off-page site promotion.

Preparing a Site/Page for Link Building

Links are still very important to Google. In fact, it’s almost impossible for Google to determine the value of any web page if there are no links pointing to it — no matter how useful, fresh, or in-depth the page content might be.

Site owners are often tempted to skip initial preparations for link building. But it’s important that you give this top priority, because preparing a site will ensure that you’re mindful of the links you sent to them.

Dr. Peter J. Meyers reviewed some of the brands that won (and lost) at Google search in 2015. Sites that lost ground in organic search rankings didn’t have a strong foundation.

Sure, the majority of these sites have strong domains that have been around awhile, but the basic elements that boost a page’s power aren’t there.

So how do you ensure that your web pages are ready for link building?

i). Laying out your internal pages

Optimized internal pages can make a huge difference in your overall rankings. This includes interlinking your pages using random keywords (with more emphasis on your brand name).

According to Brian Dean’s famous post, “Google’s 200 Ranking Factors,”

“The number of internal links to a page indicates its importance relative to other pages on the site. „

More specifically, you should have silo pages that connect to your category pages and supporting pages (posts). That way, when you send a link to the homepage, the juice flows through your category and supporting pages, thus boosting your search performance.

Smart SEO professionals don’t just throw links at a page. Instead, they lay out the pages so that each link will pass SEO juice to other interconnected pages.

None of your internal pages should stand alone. Make each page an integral part of your site and include seamless navigation. This is essential to your site users and your search engine results.

Ideally, pages addressing the same or related topics should be linked together in order to provide a rich experience for the users.

In search engine optimization, internal pages are often overlooked. Most SEOs and site owners don’t realize that much of a site’s “SEO value” flows from how the internal pages are structured.

This is usually made possible when you have links from high-value pages on the same site. Silo your pages properly if you want a healthy link equity between your internal pages.

Ken Lyons shared 3 ways to ensure that your internal pages are well-structured and your links evenly distributed, before going out to get inbound links from external sources:

Remember that it’s no longer only about the quantity of links you have. The quality of links to your internal pages is as important as the structure of the pages themselves.

In fact, sometimes reducing the number of links pointing to your internal pages could help your SEO efforts.

For example, CMS North America, a manufacturer of 5 axis CNC machines, had an established website with 170 indexed pages. Yet, the site wasn’t generating substantial search traffic.

By auditing their site using the Internal Link Juice Tool, they discovered that the site had 168 links pointing to the homepage.

This was more than best practices called for, which is especially a problem when the SEO juice from those links doesn’t flow to internal pages.

They initiated a new navigation structure and removed some of the links pointing to silo pages, while retaining the links that supported usability (such as “contact us” and support pages). In all, 70 links were removed.

After 6 weeks of re-structuring the internal pages’ links and the homepage, most of the fresh pages and links had been re-crawled by Google’s spider.

The company saw improved rankings for 18 of the 21 keyword phrases the site was targeting. Keywords that were already ranking on page 2 improved an average of 3.7 ranking slots.

ii).   Do the basic on-page SEO: On-page SEO is important. After all, you don’t want Google to view your site as a neglected portal.

I’m sure you’ve heard enough about meta tags and keyword density. Yet, there are other important on-page SEO factors that matter and that are often overlooked. This on-page SEO infographic from Backlinko lays many of them out for you:

One of the reasons why many authority sites no longer dominate the top organic listings is because they’ve neglected basic on-page SEO.

You want to link to your internal pages using the keyword that best defines that page.

When you create a landing page that you would like Google to rank highly, you should pass more SEO juice to that page from your important pages.

If Google is seeing a lot of pages on your site for a particular search term, and is unsure of which one to rank higher than the others, you’ll struggle to drive organic traffic no matter how much value you provide.

And that’s what the basic on-page SEO process is all about. There’s no magic secret formula. Just ensure that your pages are well structured, your keywords specified, and signals being sent to Google in the right manner.

Here’s an example: Daily Mail Online, a popular online magazine that ranks highly for several keywords, failed to dominate the top listings during the 2014 World Cup. Other brands took their spots:

The online magazine missed out on this opportunity to attract thousands, if not millions of search users, given the sheer interest in the tournament (with a spike peak around June 18).

With several brands dominating Google’s first page rankings, Daily Mail Online missed out for the term “World Cup.” Each new article published about the World Cup overlapped with Daily Mail’s landing page, which they desperately wanted to rank better than other pages (shown in pink).

What’s happening here is that Google is seeing lots of pages from Daily Mail Online for this search term, and is unsure of which one should be ranked highest.

This has a lot to do with internal page linking — or the lack of it.

To capitalize on the trending search term at the time, Mail Online could have linked back to the hub page from every internal page (especially those related to ‘Word Cup’).

This would have been a strong signal to Google that this page was significant and perhaps useful to users.

Sadly, Daily Mail had lots of opportunities to link back to the hub from relevant blog posts and pages, but they didn’t do so.

iii).   Pick thematic keywords: Although links are still the icing on the cake, the upshot to SEO that controls every other factor is the keywords you choose.

Keywords are the fundamental building blocks for your content campaign. In the diagram below, the more accurate view of on-page SEO shows that use of related keywords and primary keywords accounts for 7.5% and 40% of on-page SEO, respectively.

In his book, Keyword Research: How To Find and Profit From Low Competition Long Tail Keywords, author Nathan George said that to succeed in business, you have to help a lot of people.

So the question becomes, how do you find people to help? The answer: Keyword research.

But not all keywords are created equal. If you want to improve the odds of driving organic traffic to your site, then you need to pick thematic keywords.

The word “thematic” simply means having or relating to a particular subject.

So when you’re picking keywords, focus on those that are related to a particular subject. You can’t afford to spread your net too wide. Here’s an example:

Let’s assume that your business delivers WordPress theme customization services. It’s important to find the right related keywords that you can create content around.

Simply plug your main keyword (wordpress theme customization) into the Google Keywords Planner search bar. Click the “Get ideas” button. Here are thematic keyword phrases:

Remember that you’re in business to help others. By knowing the words, phrases, and search terms they use in search, you can more easily tailor your content to meet their needs.

You can supercharge the power of your keywords by switching towards branded keywords. In other words, instead of targeting “SEO tips,” you could niche down and include your brand or domain name (e.g., Moz SEO tips, Neil Patel SEO).

Domain or brand-oriented keywords usually bring up several results from the same site in Google search results.

Of course, you have to create useful content. When you see several of your pages ranking in Google search results, it doesn’t matter what positions those pages hold – you can pass more link juice to them through any of the link building strategies below:

Branded thematic keywords will give you an edge over the competition. No matter how many top brands are dominating the top 10 organic listings, you can find yourself driving motivated visitors to your site.

When it comes to on-page SEO, the title tag is the most important factor. That’s why it’s important to use your keywords in the right manner in your titles.

Brian Dean did some experiments and found that when you start a title with keywords, you rank better in the SERPs.

In general, the closer you place the keyword in the beginning of the title tag, the more weight it’ll have with search engines.

So let’s assume you chose to target these 3 keyword phrases below:

    - web design strategy
    - WordPress theme developer
    - cost of website design

You can model these titles because they all place keywords at the beginning:

    - Web Design Strategy: How to Finally Design a Website That Converts
    - WordPress Theme Developer: 7 Factors You Should Consider First
    - The Cost of Website Design for Small Business Owners

Starting your title tag with the targeted keyword is important. But, that only applies when you truly want to improve the search performance of a given keyword. There are situations when you create content without focusing on a keyword. Here’s how Brian puts it:

When you’re targeting keywords in on-page optimization, don’t just keep reiterating those primary keywords over and over.

Instead, use synonyms or latent semantic indexing (LSI) terms. LSI keywords have one purpose – to help search engine spiders extract meaning from normal keywords (especially those with more than one meaning). For example, Apple, the computer company vs. apple, the fruit.

Ideally, if you were writing content on a subject related to Apple, the company, Google expects you to mention relevant words and terms that are common to the organization.

In the same vein, if I were writing about Microsoft Windows 10, in order to help Google spiders extract the exact meaning of your page and serve the right users, I’d mention words and phrases such as Bill Gates, Operating System, OS, Windows 8.0, etc.

Stay away from mentioning your primary keyword (e.g., cheap airline tickets) over and over in your content. Google will view that as over-optimization and may well penalize you.

When you mention other synonyms, you can optimize your content the right way (at least in the way Google and users want).

If I were to write an article targeting the keyword “how to get blog traffic,” here’s what I’d do: replace the search term with these LSI keywords:

    - How to get blog traffic
    - how to generate traffic to blog
    - drive web visitors to blog
    - get online blog visitors
    - Attract web traffic to my blog

At a glance, you can see that the above keywords are related to the primary keyword (how to get blog traffic).

In your internal pages, you can use these LSI keywords in your title tags and you’ll be just fine. But, imagine what it would seem like if all your pages are were all targeting one keyword – with no variations.

In Google’s ranking algorithm, the presence or absence of latent semantic indexing keywords go a long way towards determining where your web page ranks, because it’s a strong quality signal to Google.

You might be wondering how you can find these synonymous words. The good news is that there are several tools that you can use to research LSI search terms. Simply follow these steps:

a).   First step: Go to Lsigraph.com and input your primary keyword (e.g., cheap airline tickets). Solve the captcha, then click the “Generate” Button:

b).   Second step: Select LSI keywords from the list. Simply locate the keywords that’ll be ideal for your content. Then use them.

On-page keyword optimization all boils down to researching, choosing and integrating keywords that you can easily rank for. You don’t want to compete with top brands with higher and stronger domain authority.

That’s why you should also focus on long-tail keywords. You already know how to find and use them to improve your search rankings. I generate over 20,000 organic visitors to this blog, specifically from long-tail search.

With only 5 hours of work, Jamie Press turned Google Autocomplete ideas into traffic & rankings. He helped his clients to create useful content that ranked #2 and #3 in search results at the time.

Conclusion

It’s high time to get off your site and to network with other industry bloggers and site owners if you want to increase your search performance.

Understand that Google Penguin and other algorithm updates weren’t primarily targeting search results that didn’t have tons of incoming links.

You should always use white-hat link building strategies to improve your off-page optimization.

However, you need to prepare your web pages to receive authority link juice as you work hard to build and earn links. Make sure your site is easily navigable.

When it comes to creating a better content experience, it all boils down to answering users questions. Start by identifying the questions asked by your ideal customers. You can find these questions on Quora, Twitter and other social networks.

Above all, search engine optimization is not a hit-and-run marketing approach. You should approach it knowing that the efforts you put in today will pay off in the future.

Most of all, be consistent and patient and you’ll gradually climb to the top of Google’s results.

Which other off-page SEO best practices do you think are important for improving organic search rankings?

Article Resource: http://neilpatel.com/2016/01/19/everything-you-need-to-know-about-off-page-seo/

SEO Work Makes Essay with Useful Browser Extensions

SEO Work Makes Essay with Useful Browser Extensions

As an expert SEO, you have to be a jack-of-all-trades.

You need to understand link building, marketing, public relations, psychology, and technology.

At a certain point, there’s just not enough time in the day to do everything you’d like to do.

But you can save quite a bit of time and effort on small things by using browser extensions.

You can install them with one or two mouse clicks and access them with ease to the right of your address bar.

They will help you:

    - analyze website performance quickly
    - examine code behind websites
    - build links better
    - save time by improving your task efficiency

I’ve put together a list of useful browser extensions I consider to be the best. I encourage you to give a few of them a try.

A quick heads-up: most of these extensions are for Chrome, but many also have a Firefox version. Only a few of them will work on less popular browsers such as Internet Explorer, Safari, or Opera.

Analyze websites and backlinks with the click of a button

SEOs have to analyze websites constantly.

The extensions in this section will give you a quick glance at the number of backlinks and social shares a page has as well as its basic on-page SEO.

1. Mozbar. Mozbar was the first of its kind. Even though there are now solid alternatives, the Mozbar remains a popular choice among SEOs.

You can use this extension in two main ways.

The first is when you search for a keyword in Google. It will display statistics below each search result:

You can quickly see the page authority (PA) and domain authority (DA) of the pages to assess the competition. You can also use the button beside the Google search bar to get a keyword difficulty score.

The second way in which you can use Mozbar is when you land on a web page. When you click on the Mozbar icon, you’ll see a bar pop up with the page’s overall stats.

Again, it gives you the PA and the DA scores as well as social sharing stats.

You can also dig deeper by clicking the magnifying glass icon on the left side of the bar, which will expand into a new panel.

In the panel, you can see the page’s:

    - meta text
    - alt text
    - headings
    - page speed load
    - markup
    - and more

You can see most of this with a free account, but if you want full access, you will need a PRO account with Moz.

It’s a beautiful and useful extension, but it has lost a lot of its popularity because it relies solely on Open Site Explorer (OSE) data. Compared to other leading link databases, OSE is smaller (contains less data) and updates slower.

2. Ahrefs SEO Toolbar. This is one of Mozbar’s competitors I mentioned. It is made to fulfill much of the same functionality but with data from the superior Ahrefs database instead.

When the bar is active on a page, it’s very thin at the top and shows you both link and social information of that specific URL as well as the overall domain stats.

You’ll find basic information such as:

    - backlinks and referring domains
    - Ahrefs URL rating and domain rating
    - social shares from the main networks
    - the same info for the root domain

All basic features are free, but if you have an Ahrefs subscription, you can dig deeper.

When you click the down arrow in the top left corner, a panel with more information will expand. You’ll be able to see a graph for the recent backlink growth (or decline) to the page or domain. There is also a handy link to go to the actual Ahrefs site explorer if you’d like to take a closer look.

Finally, you can also activate the plugin when you search for something on Google. You’ll get a small information-packed bar under each URL:

It shows linking and social data for both the URL and domain.

3. Majestic SEO Toolbar. This is the other main competitor of Mozbar. Again, it has all the essential features of an SEO toolbar.

When you activate it on a web page, you can see the:

    - number of links
    - number of root domains
    - trust flow and citation flow
    - link profile chart
    - and more

All the information is drawn from the Majestic SEO database, of course. The information in the main “summary” tab is free. If you’d like to use the other tabs, such as the detailed backlink analysis or anchor text, you’ll need a paid account.

The only potential problem is that, unlike the other SEO extensions here, it does not analyze search results. So if you’re looking for a quick keyword competitor analysis, one of the other tools might be a better option.

4. SEO & Website Analysis by WooRank. This plugin is one of the best all-in-one SEO plugins. The three extensions we’ve looked at so far all focused on backlinks and page authority, but this extension is more focused on on-page SEO and technical aspects.

Click its icon while you’re on a page, and a panel will pop out of the left side. Let it run for about 20-30 seconds (depends on the page):

The first thing you’ll notice is an overall score out of 100. This indicates how many of the basic best practices the page follows.

The real power of this extension is in the small tabs along the top. Each tab will give you different information about the page and site:

    - basic SEO: title tags and meta information
    - mobile optimization: a mobile friendly score and previews on different devices
    - usability: page load metrics and how easy it is to access content
    - technology: what plugins and CMS are being used
    - social: basic social sharing statistics
    - visitors: estimate of traffic level

The great thing about this toolbar is that almost all of this information is free. There are a few advanced options that require a premium account.

5. Check My Links. If you ever do broken link building, you need this extension.

When you’re on a page, just click the extension icon, and it’ll quickly test all the links to see if they’re working.

Working links are highlighted in green, while the broken ones will be highlighted in red with the error code beside them.

The only thing that could be improved here is having a shortcut to quickly copy the URLs and anchor text of the broken links, which could then be pasted into an email or spreadsheet. Still, this is the best broken link checker I’ve used.

6. Domain Hunter Plus. This extension can also be used to identify broken links. However, it was made for a very specific purpose: to find expired domains that already have backlinks and authority.

It’s very simple to use. Go to a high authority page with a lot of links, and click on the extension’s icon to scan the page. It will find all the broken links on the page and show them to you in its little panel.

The cool thing is that it also shows you how many links are pointing to the broken URL as well as how many links point to the domain. Finally, it shows you if the domain is available to register.

If you’re looking to pick up a cheap domain that already has some decent authority, spend a few hours with Google and this extension, and you can probably find what you’re looking for.

7. SEO Quake. Some SEOs don’t want an extension associated with a premium link tool or need something a little more customizable.

SEO Quake is a little more basic than other extensions, but it still gives you the essentials. It’s also one of the few available for all major browsers (including Opera and Safari).

It is designed, just like Mozbar and Ahrefs, to work with search engine result pages (SERPs). With it, when you search for something on Google, you’ll get a bar beneath each result.

It gives you quick estimates of the number of links to the page and domain, page age, alexa rank, and links to whois info. One really cool feature is the ability to save the SERP data and results as a CSV file (spreadsheet).

When you use the extension on a web page (other than a search engine), it will open up a new tab with the results. It’s not pretty, but it does contain:

    - basic meta information
    - basic social shares
    - keyword density
    - backlink information

Be aware that the link data comes from publicly reported Google and Bing/Yahoo links, which aren’t necessarily the most up-to-date or accurate.

Finally, I mentioned that you could customize this extension. It’s possible to add your own parameters if you need non-standard metrics and are not afraid to learn a bit about regular expressions.

8. Meta SEO Inspector. This extension is extremely basic but clearly shows you the meta information of a page. When you click the icon, you’ll get something like this:

The information includes the basic meta tags (title, description, keywords) and open graph tags (important for social media), and it highlights if any important ones are missing.

Most SEOs won’t need this very often, but it might be nice to have if you find yourself needing to find and copy down meta information once in a while.

9. NoDofollow (Firefox) or NoFollow (Chrome). These two extensions aren’t made by the same creator, but they are the leading options for this function for the corresponding browsers. As their names suggest, when the extensions are active, they identify all links as “dofollow” or “nofollow.”

With NoDofollow (pictured above), the good links (dofollow) are highlighted in blue, while nofollow links are highlighted in red.

There may be some value in having nofollow links in your link profile, but typically you want to focus your effort and resources on obtaining high quality dofollow links.

Here is when these tools would be useful: (1) when you’re trying to decide if you should comment on a site or (2) if you’re wondering if links from a new social media site have any SEO value. A quick click of the button gives you an easy answer.

Extract useful information from the web

When it comes to SEO research, most is done on the web. Instead of wasting your time doing everything manually, use the extensions in this section to speed things up.

10. Scraper. If you’re an SEO, chances are that you need to copy down links and written content from pages on a fairly regular basis. Scraper is designed to work on most pages.

When you come across a chart or table you’d like to scrape, you can highlight a few cells/rows and then right-click on the selection and choose “scrape similar.” The tool will find data in the rest of the table, giving you the ability to open it as a spreadsheet.

Watch this short video to see how it works:

One final note about Scraper is that it isn’t going to work 100% of the time. It’s designed to be lightweight and intuitive, which means that it sacrifices the complexity to make it robust enough to handle all situations.

That being said, I think you’ll find it useful in a large percentage of the situations that need a quick scrape.

11. Link Grabber. The first thing you’ll notice about Link Grabber is that it’s extremely fast. When you have a web page open and click the icon, a new tab will open almost immediately with a complete list of links.

These links are clickable, and you could also copy/paste them into a spreadsheet:

Unfortunately, there’s no option to see only external links. If you’d like to only see those, right-click the icon and click on options. Then, you can add the domain you’re on to the blocked domains list so that it won’t show up. It’s not the most elegant solution, but it will work in a pinch.

This plugin is useful if you’re trying to quickly collect a list of sites that a particular domain links to. You can analyze the results together in a spreadsheet to find the most popular linked-to sites and see if you can devise a strategy to get links too.

Additionally, sometimes you just need a quick link count or want to examine the internal linking of a site.

Find out what lies beneath the surface of a web page

Remember that Google doesn’t see what we see when we’re surfing the web—its bots see code. Not all code is visible on a web page itself. SEOs need to be able understand the basics of HTML, CSS, and even Javascript.

These extensions will help you find out what’s behind a particular page.

12. Firebug. This extension is a must for any SEO or developer using Firefox. It allows you to right-click on an element of a page to see its HTML and CSS.

Additionally, you can edit the HTML/CSS to see what the page would look like with different parameters. Developers can use Firebug to debug websites, but SEOs typically don’t need to worry about that.

There’s no way I can show you all the features of the tool in this post, so watch this quick video if this sounds like something you could use:

Chrome has a pretty great built-in code inspector already. However, if you like Firebug on Firefox, there’s also a lite version of it for Chrome. It can do almost everything the Firefox version can minus Javascript debugging and a few other features.

13. User Agent Switcher. Your website’s visitors use all sorts of browsers, devices, and software. In many cases, certain visitors have trouble seeing your website as intended.

If you’re a smart SEO, you’ll dig into your analytics every once in a while to see if a certain subset of users has abnormally poor user metrics (high bounce rate, low time on page, etc.).

Unless you own 20 different phones, laptops, and tablets, it isn’t easy to investigate the issue.

With this extension, you can set your browser to tell any website that it’s a specific browser, device, or operating system. You can even pretend to be a search engine spider.

So when you have a problem with low conversion or poor engagement, you can find the cause and then use User Agent Switcher to confirm that you’ve fixed the issue.

14. Browsec. Depending on the sites you work on, your site may display different content to users in different countries. Alternatively, you may want to access some content that you can’t from your country’s IP address.

Browsec is a simple free VPN that allows you to spoof your IP address and makes websites think you’re located somewhere else. The free version of Browsec has a limited set of options but good enough for most situations:

15. Wappalyzer. I love finding a new tool that helps improve conversion rate or engagement before it gets too popular. One of the best sources of new tools is other websites you frequently visit.

If you visit a website one day and see a new plugin, widget, or other feature that you love, chances are that it’s a WordPress plugin. Sometimes there will be a label on it, but not always.

You can use Wappalyzer to find a ton of information about a website, including:

    widgets being used
    the operating system
    any special fonts
    web server information
    frameworks

Just click the extension icon, and you’ll get a list within seconds.

16. Page load time. Having a fast-loading website is essential not just for search engine rankings but also for marketing in general. If your visitors can’t load a page quickly, more often than not, they’ll leave.

This extension is very simple. It shows how long it took you to load a page in your browser toolbar.

You can expand the results to see a more detailed breakdown:

You can see if any redirects are taking too long to load or if your server response time is too long, among other things. You can use this to see if you need a content delivery network (CDN) or a faster host.

17. Redirect Path Checker. Redirects are an important part of the Internet. As pages and sites get updated or transfer ownership, redirects can ensure that backlink authority is passed through and that visitors can still find you.

This extension will show you all the redirects from the URL you entered to your final URL:

This simple extension can come in handy in a number of ways.

For example, if you’re analyzing your competition, it’s important that you know exactly what you’re up against. You can search for a page in Google and filter out all new results so that any links to that page from these results link to the original URL (if it’s different from the present one).

You can then use the plugin to follow the redirect chain and then find all the backlinks pointing to each URL along the way.

Additionally, you can use this to find any redirect problems you’re having with your own site.

18. Ghostery. This extension tracks all scripts on a page and shows them to you in an attractive little pop-out panel (when clicked).

First, this tells you which widgets, plugins, and other scripts (like advertising networks) are being used on the page.

Additionally, you can block any of these scripts with the click of a button. If you’re running a lot of scripts on your website, this tool can let you test the effect they have on page speed as well as the appearance of your website to visitors.

Stay up-to-date with minimal effort

Many parts of your job as an SEO require you to stay up-to-date. Whether it’s information about SEO, your niche, or social media activities, there are extensions that can help.

I’ve collected them here for you.

19. Mozcast. Here’s another extension from Moz. It quickly shows you what the current Mozcast is in a little bubble on your browser’s toolbar. This can alert you to any big shifts in the SERPs so that you can look into any issues.

If you visit the Mozcast website regularly, you may prefer to use this extension instead to save time. When you click it, a pop-out will show you a graph of the temperatures for the last 30 days.

20. Buffer. Buffer is an amazing tool for scheduling social media sharing. You can set it to share a certain number of posts per day at specific times automatically.

This extension allows you to add posts to share to your personal queue. Instead of having to go back to the main Buffer site, you can just click this extension icon when you come across something worth sharing and add it to your queue:

The share will automatically be populated with your current URL and its title, but you can change it if you need to.

Another great feature of this plugin is that it adds a little Share Image button to the bottom right of all pictures.

Including images in social media shares typically increases your engagement rate. When you click this button, it brings up the same pop-up as before, but it also includes the image you picked.

21. Pocket. In a field such as SEO, you always have to stay up-to-date if you want to be seen as competent. That means you have to read a ton of content on a regular basis.

Pocket allows you to save articles, images, and videos for later. By using this extension, you can quickly “put content into your pocket.”

Note that you can install Pocket on just about any operating system or device. That means you can save content from your computer and read it later on your mobile device when you have free time.

Be a more efficient and effective SEO

Who doesn’t want to free up some time?

These extensions will help you complete common SEO tasks faster and better.

22. Evernote Web Clipper. Evernote is primarily a note-taking software, but it has since become well known for its image editing software Skitch. Skitch lets you quickly annotate images, and it’s a tool I often use to annotate images for blog posts.

This web clipper extension is essentially Skitch for your browser. You can select a full screenshot, an email, or a full page of content or select a specific part of a webpage.

It will open your selection in a new tab and let you edit it before saving it to your Evernote account:

While there are only a few options for editing and annotating, it’s all you need 95% of the time.

23. TechSmith Snagit. If you’re not a fan of Evernote for some reason, no worries—I have you covered.

Snagit is a very similar tool, and in some ways, it’s even a bit better (and a bit worse in others).

I use it sometimes to create images for blog posts, so I don’t think you can go wrong with either option. Snagit is often a bit quicker just because you can download an image directly after editing it instead of going to your notebook and downloading it.

Once you make your selection, it will appear in a new tab so that you can edit it:

It has a few different options when it comes to shape and color, but it doesn’t have the advanced tools such as the marker, blurring, or highlighting.

24. Bit.ly. A big part of your job as an SEO revolves around links. Bit.ly is arguably the most popular link shortener service. It lets you shorten URLs quickly, and it even lets you track stats such as the number of clicks a link got.

Another cool feature is that if you enter a URL to shorten it, if someone has already done it with Bit.ly, you can see how many people clicked it in the past.

When you click this extension icon, it will automatically give you a shortened URL to use. You can also share it directly from the pop-up with your social profiles:

25. LastPass. How many accounts do you have on different websites? For most SEOs, it’s a ridiculous number.

Instead of having messy and unsecured spreadsheets or text files of user names and passwords, you can use LastPass.

It lets you save user names, passwords, and notes for any site you visit, and it will automatically fill them in (securely) when you come back in the future.

Instead of trying to remember 1,394,293 (or however many) passwords, you only need to remember one password for your LastPass account. You can access your data from any computer/device.

Here’s a brief overview of the free tool:

I only talked about convenience, but this is good for security too. You won’t need to reuse passwords since you can create a strong unique password for every account you own.

26. Momentum. If you find yourself getting off track during the day, Momentum could be a useful extension for you. It works by creating a custom “new tab” screen that you see every time you open a new tab.

First and foremost, Momentum shows you your main goal for the day. It also lets you create a handy to-do list.

In addition, the backgrounds are gorgeous, and you can see your local weather as well.

It’s a nifty little tool to brighten up your day and keep you focused.

27. ShareMetric. If you don’t want to use a full SEO bar like I showed you earlier but you still need to know how a specific page has performed on social media, you can use this extension.

When you click the icon, this tool will show you any page’s stats for all major social networks:

    - Facebook
    - Twitter
    - LinkedIn
    - Google+
    - Reddit
    - StumbleUpon
    - Pinterest

In addition, it shows you some basic SEO stats. It includes both Open Site Explorer and Ahrefs stats for URL and domain rank as well as linking root domains to the page.

28. iMacros. Automation is a powerful thing. It’s how blackhat and greyhat SEOs dominated search engine results for years. Now that Google has caught up, automated link building has died out for the most part. However, that doesn’t mean that automation can’t help you in other aspects of SEO.

If you’re doing anything on a daily or weekly basis and it’s the exact same procedure every time, it can be automated.

The power of automation is that even if it’s a small task, saving a few minutes on a regular basis will save you hours of time by the end of the year.

iMacros features full-fledged paid versions, but its extensions are free and good enough for most basic SEO tasks.

Here’s an overview of how the iMacros extension works:

Yes, this is a fairly technical thing to learn, but it’s worth it in the long run. Plus, most SEOs that I’ve talked to find it kind of fun.

If you want to start learning about automating tasks with iMacros, start with this tutorial.

Conclusion

I’ve shown you useful browser extensions that can make any SEO work essay.

I doubt you need them all, but I hope you found at least a few extensions that will help you in the future.

While many of them have a learning curve, I recommend trying them out for a week at a time to find out which ones are really useful to you.

I know that I’ve probably missed some great extensions—don’t yell at me! Instead, leave me a comment below and let me know which extension(s) is your favorite.

Article Resource: http://www.quicksprout.com/2015/07/27/28-browser-extensions-that-make-an-seos-life-easier/