I am writing this article for at least 75% of you, who, according to our tracking tools, are using Firefox to read this blog. The chances are that your Firefox browser is not “naked”, as dressing it up is what makes it such a great and beloved browser around the world.
The best part of it, though, is you can customize it so that it really helps you in your web marketing work. You can add features that help you increase your online social capital or features that will make browsing, web discovering and source code debugging a breeze.
Being part of a department that works with Search Engine Optimization and Marketing, Web Analytics and Usability Consulting, I consider Firefox not just a simple browser, but a customized tool that helps us get things done faster and more accurately. We really rely on it, so here goes a big Thank you to the Firefox developers, wherever you are.
Cutting to the chase, here are the plug-ins that we use in order to be really productive and on time:
Greasemonkey
Greasemonkey is all about JavaScript and web pages customization. You don’t like the look of that Google logo on the search results page? Well, just install Greasemonkey and change it so you can feel better about it. Seriously now, there are thousands of JavaScript snippets that can be added to Greasemonkey and improve your online experience. I use it to customize my Google Analytics and for some SEO research. Here are the JavaScript codes that I use:
- Google Analytics Report Enhancer – “helps” Google Analytics provide more data than otherwise;
- Multiple profiles in Google Analytics – changing between profiles dashboards will never be frustrating again;
- Keyword trends in Google Analytics – helps you see how organic search traffic is changing. An increase in a keyword performance may indicate a general change in user interests and/or improved performance on search results;
- Column Sorting in Google Analytics – helps you sort data in a certain column. So, if you want to sort top 10 keywords bringing traffic to your website by their bounce rate, now it is possible;
- Show all profiles in Google Analytics – having more than 10 profiles and Google not remembering the number of profiles you would like to see on your account dashboard make this plug-in much needed.
- No Follow Script – highlights all the links that have the “no follow” attribute. SEO people find this very helpful.
Firebug
This plug in makes the life of everybody in the department a breeze. Debugging and discovering problems in the source code of our clients would be a hard time without it. The SEO team, the webmasters and developers, even the designers use it. The plug-in helps you edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page.
What I love most is that I can customize it even further and add to it Pixel Perfect, which allows me to overlay the layout from the design team on the implementation from the webmaster. Now, there are no more excuses why it doesn’t look the same :). Another great customization for Firebug is Yslow, developed by the Yahoo Developer Network. What does it do? It measures how fast a web page is loading on different components and it shows you where you can improve it.
Web Developer
Our webmasters use this plug-in for debugging. I love it, because it gives me the possibility to resize the Firefox window to a specified resolution. Great for checking how websites work on smaller or bigger resolutions than those we work on.
Measureit
My favorite designer here, at Avangate, loves this plug-in. It helps him measure areas on Firefox windows with just a mouse click.
NoScript
This plug-in blocks JavaScript and allows it only with the permission of the user. Once you add a website in the white list, it will be remembered. We use it for security reasons and for seeing how a website behaves when there is no JavaScript.
Screengrab
This plug-in is another favorite by the design and web development teams. It captures print screens of websites by saving the whole website, no matter the height, just the visible part or just a selection of the screen.
ColorZilla
Just as the name states it, the add-on will help you get the color code for anything within a webpage with just the click of a mouse. tech reads has an even bigger collection of plug-ins specially designed for webmasters and programmers.
SEO Link Analysis
This plug-in was developed for the users of Google Webmasters Tools or Yahoo Site Explorer. It shows the link juice you get from other websites so now you can see how much a search engine values each individual link you get. You’ll be surprised how many “no follows” you get that you didn’t even think about.
Rank Checker Tool
Get your websites rankings in Google.com for selected keywords with just a couple of mouse clicks. Seobook.com published this tool for helping you find your website’s and the competitor’s position in Search Engine results page.
Google UnPersonalized
Another great plug-in that helps you browse Google with the personalized search disabled. This way you will see the results like the majority of users see it.
User Agent Switcher
Another great SEO plug-in. It allows you to change the Firefox user agent to Google Crawler, so when you will navigate the certain page, the website will serve you content as it would do to Google. This way you can discover those websites who have implemented bad hat SEO techniques and report them to Google or other search engines. Alex from Notaniche collected over time a great list of plug-ins designed for SEO experts.
Remove Cookie
The plug-in allows you to easily delete the cookies saved for a certain website without restarting Firefox or deleting the cookies and sessions from all the opened tabs. It is helpful for doing analytics tracking implementation and website debugging.
WASP
Stephan Hamel from Immeria developed the WASP add-on which is a must for anyone working with analytics. It makes life thousands of times easier and takes guesses out of the work. If you don’t understand something about the data being transmitted to the analytics service, this tool will shed light.
Google Analytics Goal Copy
Working with a lot of profiles and websites, writing goals in Google Analytics, especially using RegEx, can be a big pain in the back. LunaMetrics developed this toolbar that will make goal adding to profiles a walk in the park.
Google Analytics Notes
This extension has been developed by EpikOne that lets you add business data to a profile. Notes will appear in a concealable table at the top of every report.
Social networks plugins
For social networking, you should try the dedicated plug-ins for Facebook, Twitter or Stumble Upon.
Google Reader Watcher
Notifies you for incoming RSS news as they land in your Google Reader Account. Getting information in real time just gets a new meaning with this add-on.
Update Scanner
It is a very good plug-in for watching competitors’ websites for changes. This way you can know about pricing table changes, about press releases or services packages before users even get to learn about them.
Read it Later
We never have time for reading all the news or web pages we would like to. Read it Later gives you the chance for saving web pages or news for reading them later.
Well, yes, I have all these plug-ins installed on my Firefox and they do make my work much easier. I get to focus on important tasks and spend much less time in getting the information I am interested in.
However, I am sure there are even more plug-ins designed to make our work easier.
What are you using?
