The SEO News Blog from Pat Marcello

I have a few cool plugins for Firefox, but one of my favorites is “Search Status.” Here are some things it does:

• It provides not just Google Page Rank, like the Google Toolbar does, but Alexa ranking of any page you land on as well. And these ranks sit in your lower toolbar and you can see it automatically. You can also see a compete rank and an mozRank, which measures the link juice coming into that site, as well.

When you right click on the Search Status symbol (an @, but with a q in the middle), it will show you the following about any site you visit:

• Highlights “no follow” links. Want to see if a blog is allowing spiders to follow links? Turn this option on and all “no follow” links appear in little pink boxes. You may want to use this when considering the site’s link potential.

• Gives you a link report on. How many are coming in/going out? How many of them are follow links?

• Shows the META tags and description

• Shows what the site looked like historically.

• Gives you robots.txt, whois, and sitemap

• Provides the keyword density and highlights any keyword you choose

• Shows all pages indexed in Google, Yahoo, and MSN (now bing.com)

• Shows the sites linking back in Google, Yahoo, and MSN

So, you can learn much of the SEO data just from this little plugin. Of course, some of it overlaps with the data you get from SEO Quake, but I think you really need both plugins to have a fully functional SEO browser. I mean, there are other SEO add-ons for Firefox, but these are 2 I couldn’t do without.

And if you want a firm foundation in SEO, visit http://SpiderLanguage.com

Today, one of my workmates needed to know page rank of blogs for a project she’s working on, but had no Google Toolbar or anything that would show it to her. Immediately, I asked her what browser she was using  and she told me Firefox. Yes!

Do you know how many very cool add-ons for Firefox there are? I mean, wow! You can go nuts. Here’s my list of must-have add-ons for SEO and social marketing in alphabetical order:

• Bending the Web Toolbar: I’ve told you about this one before, but it’s awesome! One toolbar gives you access to all the important Web 2.0 networking, bookmarking, content, and video sites. It also has a built-in radio. Pretty sweet. Love it, especially since it allowed me to add a calculator to my browser. I’m forever using those. Read more about Bending the Web from social marketing experts Jack Humphrey and Howie Schwartz here: http://www.jackhumphrey.com/fridaytrafficreport/make-money-while-bending-the-web/

• Bookmark Duplicate Detector: Oh, yeah… We’ve all done it, right? We think we need to save a site, and end up with a hundred bookmarks that we just keep adding. Nope! Not with this tool. It keeps my bookmarks unique and I love it.

• Clipmarks: Save the stuff you enjoy and add it to your online account. Clip it! Or, add it to your blog or whatever. Neat.

• ColorZilla: click the icon and get the hexcodes for any color you rest your mouse on. I also like a little program called “Pixie” for this, which you can get at http://nattyware.com free. It’s great for getting matching color codes when you’re not using a browser.

• Fast Dial: Allows you to add icons for all the sites you visit regularly. No more searching, even in neat bookmarks. Just click and you’re there.

• Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer: This is awesome if you have more than one computer. Foxmarks stores all your bookmarks and when you log in to your other computer with Foxmarks installed, you’re golden. All your bookmarks are always up-to-date.

• IE Tab: Switch between Firefox and Internet Explorer interfaces with the click of a mouse. This is great if you need to see web pages in both browsers or if a site just doesn’t work with Firefox. You don’t have to open the other browser, just click!

• Rank Checker from SEOBook.com Let’s say it’s SEOElite lite. You can check the rank of any site in Google, Yahoo, and Live right from your browser.

• Amason S3Fox: It’s like .ftp for Amazon S3. All you have to do to access all your S3 files is click on the icon in your browser.

• Search Status: Give you Google Page Rank and Alexa Ranking plus a bunch of other stuff. Let’s you see keyword density of pages, highlight no follow links, and a whole bunch of other stuff.

• SEOQuake: I love this one. You get this tiny toolbar that appears every time you open a web page. It’s transparent and really unobtrusive, until you open it. BAM! You have Google page rank, the number of pages indexed, the number of backlinks, and similar info for Yahoo and Live. You can also access Whois, SEODigger, and a whole load of info in a heartbeat. This is totally cool.

• Tab Mix Plus: Lets you reorder your tabs, have tabs open when you click on links, rather than leaving pages, and you can really customize this one any way you want. It’s really great, too. Worth the effort to get it and plug it in.

• TwitterFox: I know, I know… You can really customize TweetDeck so much better, but TwitterFox just sits open on my browser all day. I can see when tweets come in immediately and whether or not it’s something I might want to check out or reply to. I mean, I’m so busy that I really don’t have much time for Twitter. If I had to use Tweet Deck or another stand alone program, I doubt that I’d be able to bother with it at all. If you’re as busy as me, you might enjoy this add-on.

I have a few others that aren’t worth mentioning, but these are my absolute faves. Try them. You’ll be amazed at what you can get one free and very cool browser to do for you.

So, have you seen the new “social” browser yet?

It’s called Flock and it’s pretty cool, if you spend your life in the trenches of Web 2.0 every day.

I like it, but not for work. It has some cool features. Like, you can see who’s Twittering immediately in your sidebar. Or, what’s happening on Facebook. Or even Pownce or Digg. Pretty sweet. You can also see several different feeds in “My World” which comes up as a single page in your browser window.

But one feature I really like is that you can search for videos on You Tube or stuff on Flickr at the top of your browser window. So, you search for something and get like this whole strip of videos on that topic without actually having to go to You Tube. Pretty cool.

Flock also has some of the same add-ons as Firefox, since it’s built on the same framework.

And you can post to a blog from Flock, but it has to be a hosted blog like Blogger, WordPress.com or LiveJournal. These are great if you’re just goofing around, but we all know (right readers) that WordPress on your own server negates the need for this particular feature.

And while we’re on the topic, even if you are blogging for fun, you’re obviously doing it for a readership, right? Well, why give your blog audience to someone else? Get up off your lazy, cheap butt and get a hosting account and install a WordPress blog on your own server. You never know what you might want to do with that audience. You might want to make some money from all your hard work, and WordPress.com is no place to do that.

Off my soapbox.

Flock also has a photo uploader and a Web clipboard.

But here’s the thing… None of these features will pull me away from Firefox. Just won’t. Flock is too fun and too social for me. If I used Flock as my regular browser, that would be bad.

I’d never get any work done and Tellman would fire me. Har.

But even if that weren’t true, Flock doesn’t have the SEO goodness that Firefox does. No Search Status. No SEOQuake. No S3 add-on and so on. You really can’t do business from Flock.

Now, if there was a meld. A hybrid, Let’s call it FireFlock, then… Well…

Maybe.