There’s no shortage of SEO (search engine optimisation) tools out there to help you perform research, compose data-driven campaign strategies, and boost your organic traffic.
Think of these tools as complete packages. You’ll be able to see information on the three main SEO data types: on-page, off-page, and technical.
But with the complete package comes a mighty cost. If you want to choose either of the two big names in SEO tools (Ahrefs and Semrush) you’ll be setting yourself back quite a bit.
Ahrefs starts at £79 per month for the Lite plan, and if you want to use Semrush, while you have the option of a limited free plan, you’ll want to be on one of their paid plans that start at $119.95 per month.
If you don’t want to spend this kind of money, then you might be interested in choosing a number of SEO Chrome Extensions instead. While they might offer less functionality than complete tools, the majority of them come with the benefit of being free.
Carry on reading for more information and our tips on what extensions we recommend and why!
What type of Google Chrome SEO extensions should you use?
When it comes to choosing the right SEO Chrome extensions, you should bear in mind that it’s highly unlikely that you’ll find a single tool that does everything you need.
Instead, you should take a different approach. Identify the different areas of SEO that you need a tool for and pick one extension for each.
This way you aren’t using tons of extensions and clogging up your browser, but you have the most functionality without having to spend the big bucks on a premium service.
We’re going to break it down for you into four different areas:
- On-page
- Links
- Technical
- Keyword data
And we’ll even throw in some bonus suggestions for you too, free of charge!
On-page
On-page SEO Chrome extensions are some of the most popular Chrome plugins, alongside keyword data extensions. They give you a good insight into on-page data and may contain extra features that can relate to backlinks, SERP data, and keyword difficulty, to name a few.
Two of the best on-page SEO Chrome extensions are SEOquake and Detailed SEO Extension. Either of these will do a great job at giving you a head start when performing a quick SEO audit, or want a bit more detailed information at first glance.
SEOquake has a nice unique feature where it runs an automatic SEO audit of a page for you. This audit is powered by data from SEMrush, so you have a little work around into accessing data from one of the biggest SEO complete package tools.
Links
While more of an on-page tool, SEO Minion also has some stellar off-page abilities so we didn’t want to miss it off our list!
For off-page, SEO Minion has useful tools that allow you to easily identify all links on a page, both internal and external, and can also check for broken links or specifically follow/no follow links. SEO Minion can then download all links into a .csv file, where it will break down any broken links into their respective error type. Presenting information this way allows you to easily compile reports or compose a checklist of things to fix yourself.
This is one of the best rated SEO tools on Chrome Web Store, and for good reason. Aside from its useful link data, it’s a great all-round SEO plug in that (for free) should be at the top of anybody’s list.
Technical
If you’re a tech savvy individual and want a deeper insight into a page’s technical SEO, then META SEO Inspector is the one for you.
META SEO Inspector is aimed at web developers who are following Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. Following these guidelines will help your page get crawled and indexed quicker and therefore is very important to technical SEO. Being able to quickly see how a page relates to Google’s guidelines without having to flick through tabs can save time and help prevent getting side-tracked.
This tool also allows you to dive into a page’s meta data (like meta descriptions and title tags) to see if there are any issues that can be further optimised such as the use of too many characters or any missing tags that are relevant to a page.
Keyword data
The other most prolific group of Chrome SEO extensions are keyword data extensions. And the one that we recommend in the office is Keyword Surfer.
Keyword Surfer will literally change the way you use the internet. When making Google searches on Chrome, keyword surfer will display information alongside your query and SERPs like search volume, CPC, related terms and also some keyword ideas that you can use to create relevant content.
This change to your browser will allow you to see search data much quicker than if you were to perform research on Ahrefs or SEMrush. Albeit, the data is less detailed than if you were to use either of those two complete packages – but you can’t argue with free!
Bonus
There’s simply too many good SEO Chrome extensions to list them all!
If you use MOZ, then their MOZbar plug in is great. This is one plug in that will get you as close to as a complete package as you could get, displaying search data on keywords, on-page analysis, and even information on technical and off-page stats. Downside, some features require a premium subscription.
Similarweb is probably as close as you could to Google Analytics through a Chrome extension. This useful tool gives you a peek into any site’s key metrics, including a full break down of traffic sources into geography, traffic type, and visits over time, to name just a few.
And finally, a curveball option: Note Anywhere. While not technically an SEO tool, a lot of SEOs that we speak to use Note Anywhere to keep track of thoughts and ideas that they have about clients/potential clients when assessing their pages. This plug in allows you to leave a note on a specific page and in a specific place, and this note will remain there whenever you return to that page.
SEO tips and advice from Blaze Media
If you do require a little bit more SEO knowledge about a webpage but don’t feel like you need to splash out on a full-package tool, then hopefully one of the Chrome extensions that we’ve listed will help you out.
And if you are a business owner trying to improve your own SEO but feel a bit lost, then get in touch with our team at Blaze Media and we can discuss how our SEO department can help you out!