12 1/2 Essential Firefox Extensions for SEO

Firefox is one of the most useful tools for SEO. Here are a few Firefox extensions that should be in the toolkit of every SEO:

Search Status Firefox Extension

The Search Status Firefox Extension shows Google PageRank, Alexa Rank, and Compete Rank in the Firefox status bar. It also has an option to highlight all rel=nofollow links on Web pages so you can see which links on pages have been rel=nofollowed.

Web Developer Toolbar

The Web Developer Toolbar should be installed on everyone’s computers. There are too many features to list here, but I will mention a few. The first thing to do after installing it is go to Disable -> Referrers. That not only increases your privacy when browsing online; it also prevents you from sending referrers to your own site when visiting it from the SERPs which may distort your stats if you visit your site often. Another useful tool is the ability to turn off cache and CSS. The shortcut to turn off stylesheets is Ctrl-Shift-s. The Images and Information menus also have many useful functions.

Customize Google Firefox Extension

Customize Google give you increased privacy from Google, as well as adds links to other search engines on the Google SERPs so that you can search across Google, Yahoo, and MSN with just a few clicks. The screenshot below shows the extra links that Customize Google puts on the Google SERPs:

Live HTTP Headers Firefox Extension

A great tool for checking headers on Web sites is the Live HTTP Headers Firefox extension. To open Live HTTP Headers in the sidebar just hit Ctrl-l (lowercase L). Then visit the page you want to check. You will be able to see whether the URL is sending 200 OK headers, or is doing 301 or 302 redirects. It will also tell you whether a site is sending Google’s new X-robots header.

User Agent Switcher Firefox Extension

If you want to see whether a site is cloaking and sending different content to Google than to human visitors, install the User Agent Switcher Firefox extension. You can add new user agents with the convenient user agent import file.

HTML Validator Extension Firefox Extension

The Firefox HTML Validator Extension will point out errors in Web pages’ HTML code. It also gives you detailed information about the errors when you view the source (keyboard shortcut: Ctrl-u).

Show IP Firefox Extension

To see if sites are hosted on the same or similar IP addresses, install the Show IP Firefox Extension. The IP address of all sites will then show in your Firefox status bar. Extra IP tools can be found by right clicking on the IP address in the status bar.

X-Ray Firefox Extension

The X-Ray extension overlays HTML tags on top of Web pages. It’s a quick way to check if sites are using <h1> elements or other SEO-related HTML elements.

No Script Firefox Extension

Search engines cannot read JavaScript. If you are doing SEO full time and want to view sites more as search engines view them, install the NoScript Firefox extension. It turns off JavaScript, but allows you to enable it on a site-by-site basis.

Firebug Firefox Extension

The Firebug extension may look complex at first, but it’s one of the greatest tools available for Web developers. There is a Firebug tutorial here. The screenshot below shows how in the HTML tab you can hover over an HTML element (in this case a div) and have that section highlighted on the Web page with padding and margins shown in different colors. The CSS is shown in the lower-right sidebar. The HTML and CSS can be edited to help find tricky CSS bugs and other useful information.

ScreenGrab Firefox Extension

The Screengrab Extension takes several different kinds of screenshots of Web pages, and it has the ability to capture entire Web pages even when they scroll off the screen. It is especially useful for taking screenshots of client sites.

Scrapbook Firefox Extension

The Scrapbook Extension allows you to save and annotate Web pages and read them offline. It is especially useful for saving online tutorials to your hard drive. The screenshot below shows a saved page with some added highlighting and a note.

Firefox Profiles

This post refers to “12 1/2 Firefox Extensions” because this last one is not really an extension but a feature of Firefox. When you use Firefox all of your settings, extensions, bookmarks, and other data are stored in a profile folder. You can create several profiles, each with different settings, bookmarks and modules. So you could create one Firefox profile for regular surfing, and another Firefox profile for viewing sites as search engines see them (e.g., with JavaScript, CSS, and Images turned off). If you like to use a lot of Firefox extensions and they are conflicting with each other, you could install different sets of Firefox extensions to different Firefox profiles. That way they would not conflict. The screenshot below shows the Firefox Profile Manager: