Our Blog

4 Google Chrome Extensions That Will Boost Your SEO

Are you taking advantage of everything Google Chrome has to offer?

Google Chrome is the most popular browser in the world. It’s used by a staggering 2 billion users all over the world. Out of all available browsers, 53.9% of users prefer to use it.

However, Google Chrome has one feature that few people take advantage of–extensions.

No matter what purpose you have in mind, there’s likely a Chrome extension that can help you. Whether you want to save money while shopping online or want to take better notes, Chrome extensions can make it easier or better.

In this post, we’re going to discuss several Google Chrome extensions that can help boost your search engine rankings.

Let’s get started.

What are Google Chrome Extensions?

Before we proceed, let’s define Google Chrome Extensions. They’re software that you can install in your browser that helps you perform a specific function.

Like websites, they’re created using programming languages like HTML, CSS and Javascript.

Extensions can help you save information for quicker retrieval at a later date, download photos, gather data and more. They make performing tasks easier and faster.

LastPass and Pocket are two examples of popular Google Chrome extensions. LastPass helps you save passwords for all online accounts without compromising security. Pocket saves articles you find interesting. It syncs with an app on your phone so you can read the articles at a later time even without an Internet connection.

For the sake of brevity, we’re only going to talk about extensions that can help boost your search engine rankings or SEO.

Keywords Everywhere

Keywords Everywhere is an extension that gathers important SEO-related data for you. If you want to target a specific keyword, it can help you find the following:

• Monthly Search Volume – This is the number of times the keyword is searched in a given month.
• Cost-Per-Click – This is how much you would need to pay Google to send a user to your site for the keyword.
• Competition Data – This will tell you how difficult it would be to rank for the keyword.

Aside from showing you data, Keywords Everywhere also allows you to download and save everything in an Excel file.

How to Use Keywords Everywhere

This extension provides you with the information you need to determine which keywords you should target.

Before you even use this keyword, try to see things from a potential customer’s point-of-view. What keywords would they use to find the products you sell? Would they include a specific location or not?

Using those questions, come up with a list of keywords you can target.

The ideal scenario would be to find a keyword that has a high monthly search volume and low competition. Taking into account how saturated the Internet is with content, scenarios like that can be difficult to find.

If a keyword has a low search volume but high competition, you might be better off choosing a different keyword. Choosing to target such a keyword will need too much effort with very little returns on your end.

Once you have a list, Keywords Everywhere can help you narrow it down.

Click on Keywords Everywhere in your taskbar. It will then let you enter your keywords of choice and show you data for those keywords.

Buzzsumo

According to the co-founder of Moz, Rand Fishkin, creating content as good as the ones found in top ten search engine rankings isn’t enough. To rank higher, your content has to be ten times better.

But before you can create better content than the competition, you need to do your research.

Buzzsumo helps you do that. It’s an extension that shows you the most shared blog posts for specific keywords. It lets you see how many times the post was shared on Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms.

How to Use Buzzsumo

Let’s pretend you used Keywords Everywhere and already have a handy list of keywords you’d like to target.

You can enter those keywords in Buzzsumo. After it generates results, you can see which blog posts were shared the most for your keywords.

Read and analyse everything. Ask yourself the following questions:

• What made so many people share this blog post? Is it the title or the tone?
• What sets this blog post apart from other posts on the topic?
• Lastly, how can I make a blog post that’s better than this?

Let’s say you own a men’s clothing store, and you’d like to sell more winter coats. You want to target the keyword “best winter coats for men” by listing down your suggestions in a blog post.

When you enter the keyword on Buzzsumo, you find that one of the most shared blog posts on the keyword is entitled 25 Best Winter Coats for Men.

You can create a better and more informative blog post entitled 30 Best Winter Coats for Men. You can also create similar posts with even more specific topics like 30 Best Waterproof Winter Coats for Men.

Aside from showing you the most shared blog posts for a keyword, Buzzsumo also lets you take a peek inside your competition’s SEO strategy.

If you enter your competitor’s URL, Buzzsumo can show you their most shared content. You can see who’s promoting and linking to their posts. This tells you what worked for your competition, and you can figure out how to do better in the future.

Whatever you’re trying to sell, Buzzsumo can help your content marketing strategy, boosting your SEO in the process.

PageSpeed Insights

SEO isn’t about keywords and content anymore.

In July 2018, Google rolled out their Speed Update. It stated that the faster a website is, the higher its chances of ranking in Google mobile search results.

Let’s say two websites posted similar articles on the same topic. Both articles are well-researched, lengthy and contain specific information for readers. Website A, however, loads faster than Website B.

Due to the Google Speed Update, Website A will most likely rank higher than Website B in mobile search results. Even if both websites contain excellent content, Website A is able to provide information to users faster.

In a nutshell, content is still king, but page speed isn’t far behind.

This is where PageSpeed Insights comes in.

It’s an extension that lets you see how fast your website is. It even tells you what elements might be slowing your website down.

How to Use PageSpeed Insights

Open your website and click on the PageSpeed Insights icon on your taskbar. It will then show you how fast your website is along with improvement suggestions.

Some of the suggestions are quite easy to understand and implement. For example, it could tell you to properly resize your images. This is a task you can do with free photo editing tools available online.

Other suggestions, however, are more difficult to understand and may require professional assistance. One example is “defer unused CSS.” This is a task that requires coding knowledge and would best be left to your web developer.

Mozbar

Mozbar is a free extension that gives your information regarding websites you view online. It can let you see the following:

• Domain Authority – This is Moz’s rating of how a well a website will perform in search engine rankings. The more people link to your website, the higher your Domain Authority can be.
• Page Authority – This is similar to Domain Authority, except Moz is scoring individual web pages and not an entire website. The more links to a page, the higher its Page Authority can be.
• External Links – These are links from other websites to your own website.
• Internal Links – These are links to and from the same website.
• Dofollow Links – These are links that can be found and indexed by search engines.
• Nofollow Links – These are links that cannot be indexed by search engines.

How to Use Mozbar

Mozbar provides so much information that you could use it in several ways.

First of all, you can use to audit your on-page SEO. You can open your website and check your Domain Authority and Page Authority. It will give you a clear picture of your current online standing.

Next, Mozbar can be a vital tool for link building.

Link building is another skill required for climbing up search engine rankings. If a lot of websites link to your content, Google will think a lot of people find it helpful. This will result in higher search engine rankings.

However, not all links are created equal. A link from an established website with high Domain Authority will be more valuable than links from a lesser known website that doesn’t have popular content.

In a nutshell, links from websites people already trust pass “link juice” to you, making Google think you’re credible.

Before you can ask these high Domain Authority websites for links, you need to find them first.

This is where Mozbar comes in handy.

Find websites who create content related to your business or niche. If you sell men’s clothing, try to find a men’s clothing blog.

Don’t ask for links from websites whose content have nothing to do with your business. If you sell men’s clothing and ask for links from a cooking blog, Google will find it irrelevant and won’t give it much, if any, weighting. Therefore, relevancy of the site linking back to you is very important.

After you find websites with relevant content, you can then check their Page Authority and Domain Authority with Mozbar.

Creating guest posts takes a lot of time and effort. Before sending out pitches, make sure to check the websites with Mozbar. Make sure you’re getting the best return for your hard work in the form of valuable links.

Conclusion

If you want to create an SEO strategy, Google Chrome extensions can be an excellent resource. They’re free, take up very little space on your hard drive and easy to install. You get powerful results without the extra cost of paid software.

Keywords Everywhere is an excellent extension for getting started. If you’re unsure which keywords you should target, it can help narrow down your choices by showing you which ones get the most traffic and are easiest to rank for.

Create an effective content calendar with the help of Buzzsumo. It lets you see which posts were shared the most for the keywords you’d like to target so you can create content that’s ten times better.

Don’t let your content creation efforts go to waste by having a slow website. PageSpeed Insights calculates your website speed and gives you suggestions for improvement. Using those suggestions, you can make changes that will boost your website speed.

After creating keyword-targeted content and making your website fast, you can give link building a try. Mozbar helps you do just that. It lets you see which websites have a high Domain Authority so you can begin your guest posting campaign.

Cornerstone Digital is an SEO agency in Sydney. Want to boost your rankings in search results? Call us on (02) 8211 0668 or email us at info@cornerstone-digital.com.au.

• Comments (0)
• Trackbacks (0)
• Permalink

Darlyn Herradura

A self-professed book and digital marketing nerd, Darlyn Herradura focuses on building trust between customers and businesses with the written word. She understands that creating valuable content is the best way to get found online and happily spends her time doing that.