Search Engine Optimization Blog - SEM News & Opinion - David Ogletree » Firefox

Using the Firefox Web Developer Toolbar Add-on for SEO’s

ogletree — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 20:49:16 +0000

If I had to pick only one plugin for firefox it would be the Web Developer Toolbar add on. I use it every day. I’m not really a developer. I do make simple web pages but I use it most the time evaluating websites. I use it to look at a site when I get an email or phone call from a prospect. I also use it when I’m link building.

When somebody comes to me to do their SEO the first thing I do is go to their website. I turn off CSS and Javascript using the toolbar to see what search got are seeing. You do this by clicking on the CSS pull down menu and clicking Disable Styles > All Styles and clicking on the disable pull down menu and click on “all javascript”.

The next thing that I do is click on the information tab and go to “view meta tag information”. I can tell if they are using meta tags at all. Sometimes you see all kinds of odd tags like “revisit after” which no search engine uses. Sometimes I see they have 2 descriptions.

I like to use the resize feature. Click on the resize pull down menu and change the size of the window to see how the site looks in different sizes.

This is not for SEO but I like to use the “Display Anchors” feature in the information pull down menu. I use this when I want to link to a specific forum post.

Under Images you can click on “display alt attributes” to see if they are using them. You can also tell it to show you images size. Find broken images is helpful too. “Show images full size” will show you real quick if they are not optimizing their images.

The Web Developer toolbar does quite a bit more but since I’m not a developer I don’t really use it. Let me know what your favorite features are in the comments. I would love to hear them.

Google toolbar 3 for Firefox out of Beta

ogletree — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 21:56:17 +0000

I was just reading over at Googleblog that the Google toolbar 3 is out of Beta. The big feature they mentioned is that you can open your documents and spreadsheets directly in Google Docs & Spreadsheets. They also mention that it is available in 12 new languages.

They released the new firefox tool bar and Google Docs & Spreadsheets in 12 new languages.

French, Italian, German, Spanish, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Korean, Turkish, Polish, Dutch, Portuguese (Brazil)

If you don’t have Firefox yet you can get here.

Technorati Tags: google docs, google spreadsheets, firefox, google toolbar, firefox google toolbar, google toolbar beta

Firefox extensions I use – update

ogletree — Sun, 02 Apr 2006 07:08:19 +0000

I recently gave a list of the Firefox extensions that I used. I also spoke about Deepest Sender. I just got a new computer and had to reinstall all of my extensions. I am using Firefox 1.5.0.1. One of my extensions did not work so I had to install Nightly Tester Tools to get BBcode to work. All you have to do is install the NTT and restart Firefox and you can install BBCode. It does require you check the NTT checkbox before you hit the install button for BBCode. In the future if you upgrade your Firefox all you have to do is go to the extension window and click on the NTT button and it will make all your extensions work. This was very useful.
I got some new ones as well.

Domain Details – This adds a little menu when you right click on a web page. It has two options. The first is just a plain whois. You have to enter a CAPTCHA for this one. The second gives a report about your site. Stuff like Backlinks, Alexa info, where the server is, type of webserver, pagerank, and info from your registrar. The second does not require a CAPTCHA. They both open up in an unfocused new tab.
Web Developer – I may be the last person on the planet to install this. I have heard a lot about it but never understood how it would help me. I have seen some sites that were cloaking and redirecting with javascript and the toolbar allows me to turn off javascript. It lets you turn on and off many things. There are way too many items for me to list here. Just check it out.

Firefox Extension: Deepest Sender

ogletree — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 23:29:24 +0000

I just installed the Firefox extension Deepest Sender. I am using it to write this post. It says I can use it with Spellbound which is a spell checker for the Mozilla sweet. I have tried to install but it does not seem to like me using version 1.5. I’m going to keep trying to get that to work.

What it does is give you a WYSIWYG view just like WordPress does. The difference is that it is much faster. It has a better way to switch to “view source” and “preview”. The only thing that it does not have is a button to add the < more > tag. It also has a way to add it to a catagory. I like it.

firefox google bot user agent – How to Impersonate Googlebot using Firefox see what Googlebot sees

ogletree — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 00:58:00 +0000

I have spoken about Impersonating Googlebot user agent using Firefox in the past and people have asked me how to do this using Firefox so I thought I would give a little tutorial on how to see what googlebot sees. I will start off with why somebody might want to impersonate Googlebot and the pros and cons of impersonating it.
Googlebot is the spider that crawls the internet looking for web pages. Whatever the Googlebot sees is what Google uses to decide how a page will rank in the search engine. Knowing this some people have decided to design a web page exactly how they think Google wants it to look like so it will rank better. Often times this can be a very ugly page so they design another page that looks how they want it to look. They then cloak their page so that the Googlebot user agent sees the page written for it and everybody else sees the page written for humans. This is against the Google rules.

When you surf the net your Internet browser sends out messages telling the website things about itself. Websites keep track of visitors in their log files. One of the bits of information that is sent out is something called a “User Agent”. Each browser has its own user agent string. You can find the user agent that you are sending by clicking here.

So if you want to surf around impersonate googlebot all you have to do is change your user agent. The way that I do it is to use Mozilla Firefox with the User Agent Switcher extension. Both sites have a download or install button just follow the directions it is quite straight forward. One the user agent switcher is installed you go to Tools -> User Agent -> switcher -> options -> options. Then click on “User Agents” and then click on “add”. Put “Googlebot” in the Description. Put

~~“Googlebot/2.1+(+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html)”~~
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)

in the User Agent.

firefox google bot
firefox googlebot

Technorati Tags: googlebot, firefox, googlebot firefox, spoofing user agent

Firefox 2.0 alpha due next month

ogletree — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 23:02:00 +0000

I just read that FireFox 2.0 alpha is due out in Febuary.

“There also plans for enhanced security, blacklisting and anti-phishing measures to be fitted to the new version.”

Extensions I use in Firefox

ogletree — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 22:38:00 +0000

I use Firefox 1.5 as my primary browser. Firefox is a great browser one because it is stable and two because of the awesome extensions. The only problem is that often times when they upgrade to a new versions a lot of your extensions stop working. Also since the extensions are not commercial they may just never work again because the original writer decided to not mess with it any more.I have read that there is a mod that lets you use old extensions on newer versions of Firefox but I have not tried it yet.

Extensions I use:

Disable Targets For Downloads – This is a workaround for a bug in firefox that opens blank windows when you try to download something.
WellRounded – This is a look-and-feel kind of thing.; It adds rounded edges to the location bar, search bar, find bar, and all manor of other toolbars on your browser.
BB Code – Adds BBCode/HTML/XHTML formating to the context menu for forums like www.webmasterworld.com.
User Agent Switcher – There are many uses for this: 1) When sites won’t let you do something unless you are using IE 2) Impersonate googlebot to see cloaking and get access to sites that require you to be logged in. Impersonating googlebot does not always work but sometimes it does.
Print Image – Adds “Print Image…” when you right click on one.
Roboform – You can only get this extension if you buy Roboform. I won this on www.webmasterradio.fm show. I love it. It keeps track of all my passwords for me. It can even generate passwords. It also adds a search bar that lets you search all the major search engiens and lots of other places like ebay and amazon.

I used to use several others like proxie switcher but it no longer works with ff 1.5. I did not use it much so I have not spent the time to get it working,