Top 10 Firefox plugins

1. Adblock Plus. If you have ever been annoyed by all those ads and banners on a site that often take longer to download than everything else on the page, install Adblock Plus and get rid of them. Right-click on a banner and choose "Adblock" from the context menu, and the banner won't be downloaded again.

2. Colorful Tabs. This simple add-on makes a strong colorful appeal. It sets each tab to a different color and makes them easy to distinguish while beautifying the overall appearance of the interface. After a long day of research when you have lots of browser windows open, this makes online page viewing easier on the eyes.

3. ColorZilla. ColorZilla puts an eyedropper icon in your status bar. Click it and you'll get a crosshair cursor. As you run this over a Web page, the RGB values of the pixel under the crosshair will display in the status bar, both as three separate values and as a hex value (e.g., R:255, G:255, B:255 | #FFFFFF). I use this all the time if I'm trying to match colors; i.e. a font color to an the primary background on an image, for example.

4. GMail Manager. This Gmail notifier is great if you have multiple Gmail accounts. It allows you to receive new mail notifications along with viewing account details including unread messages, saved drafts, spam messages, labels with new mail, space used, and new mail snippets.

5. MeasureIt. After installing this extension, you'll have a small ruler icon on the left side of your status bar. When you click on it, your browser window will fade out a little, and you'll have a crosshair cursor. Drag the cursor over a section of the screen that you want to measure. Next to the box is its height and width, measured in pixels. I use this all the time when trying to measure the size of images. When you're finished, just hit the Escape key to turn it off and return to normal viewing of the page.

6. Quirk Search Status. Search Status allows you to see how any web site you visit is performing. When you land on a page, SearchStatus lets you view its Google PageRank, Google Category, Alexa popularity ranking, Compete.com ranking, SEOmoz Linkscape mozRank, Alexa incoming links, Alexa related links and backward links from Google, Yahoo! and MSN. This combined search-related information means you can view not only the link importance of a site (according to Google and Linkscape), but also its traffic importance (according to Alexa and Compete), so providing a balanced view of site efficacy. I use this all the time to determine whether a site has enough traffic to warrant accepting a joint venture proposal.

7. Scrapbook. ScrapBook helps you to save Web pages and easily manage your saved collections. Major features are: saving web pages or snippets of a page, saving a web site, organizing the collection in the same way you do bookmarks, full text search and quick filtering search of the collection, and editing of your collected pages.

8. Session Manager. Session Manager helps you manage your Firefox tabs. If you visit the same sites every day, all you need do is open all the sites in separate tabs and/or windows, and then use Session Manager to save the session with a distinct name. Then, you simply go to Tools > Session Manager, pick your session, and all the windows and tabs open up just as you saved them. And, Session Manager tracks your sessions as you surf, and if Firefox (or your system) crashes, you can recover the selection of tabs you had open when it crashed.

9. Tabs Open Relative. Tabs Open Relative makes all new tabs open to the right of the current tab, rather than at the far right of the tab bar. This reduced a huge annoyance I had with how the Firefox browser worked.

10. XMarks (formerly Foxmarks) provides seamless bookmark synchronization between your computers and browsers via their synchronization server. Your bookmark (and optionally password) data is securely stored and backed up on their servers and is available online, as well. After you install the add-on, click on the notification to set up Xmarks and start backing up and synchronizing your bookmarks. Install Xmarks on each computer you use, and it seamlessly integrates with your web browser and keeps your bookmarks safely backed up and in sync across all of your computers. Secure Password Sync is an optional Xmarks feature.

Note: To locate these, search for the plug-in extensions here: addons.mozilla.org 

Link building - 5 simple tips

As the online market place continues to warm up to the idea of SEO, link building has become center stage as it tends to be the most time consuming and crucial part of any internet marketing strategy. Link building services are the most commonly outsourced aspect of SEO. This process involves finding qualified and thematically relevant one-way linking partners who will link back to your website.

At first glance this sounds easy and there are hundreds of automated products out there that claim to add thousands of back links overnight. The truth is there are no short cuts in cultivating authoritative back links for a site. Link building companies spend many hours link building by hand in order to get the best results. Spammy automated products often don't cultivate valuable links and tend to do more harm than good. Here are a couple quick suggestions to help you get started.

1. Know What Keywords You're Targeting

Link building strategies are an extension of your current SEO practice. You'll want to reference the list of keywords you have selected to optimize your site. Make sure that the anchor text of the link has the keyword you are targeting. For example, if you're targeting the keyword "baby names" you'll want to place that keyword in the anchor text of the link. I've seen many companies go after links by using their company name. Although this does boost link popularity it fails to pass popularity for a specific keyword and can be seen as a failed attempt.

2. Develop a Link Building Strategy

There are many strategies link building companies use to source qualified back links to their clients. The most tedious but often most rewarding method is manual linking requests also known as "cherry picking". This method allows you to obtain exceptionally qualified links which can really help boost your position in the search engine results page (SERPS). A good place to start with manual link building is to look at your suppliers, vendors, clients, related organizations associations and more.

Besides manual link requests other well known tactics include:

  1. directory submission (Dmoz, Yahoo Directory, Joe Ant)
  2. article submission (ezinearticles.com, goarticles.com)
  3. optimized press releases (PRWeb.com)
  4. social media outlets (FaceBook, Linked In)
  5. bookmarking sites (Digg, Reddit, Furl)
  6. Blogs (niche blogs)
  7. Forums (niche forums)
  8. Classifieds (niche classifieds)

3. Identify Thematically Relevant and Authoritative Linking Sources

Search engines see links as votes of confidence for your site. The more relevant and authoritative the site, the more consideration is given to the link and the subsequent keyword in the anchor text. It really pays off to focus on the quality of your links rather than the quantity. It is also important for your link building to look natural and not an attempt to deceive search engine spiders in search of links. Try looking for sites within your industry rather than general, unrelated sites to get links from.

A good example of this would be content creation and distribution. Try creating content on a relevant subject of which you can speak authoritatively. An example of this would be a SEO company writing a short article on 5 simple ways companies can start link building and placing it on an authoritative, industry relevant site like this one. Remember, before placing a link on a site (or making a request), ask yourself three questions:

  1. Does a link to my website belong here (does it look natural)?
  2. Is this site relevant and authoritative?
  3. Is there any benefit to my potential customers?
  4. Look for the onsite attributes of the linking site

4. Determine Where Your Link Will Reside

Once you've nailed down a potential linking partner that represents the overall quality and thematic authority that your site deserves you'll need to see where your link will reside.

Here are a couple guidelines that I look for when placing links on a site. I try to get my links no more than a few clicks away from the homepage. The page must be thematically relevant and recently cached by Google's search engine (this lets me know that the page has been indexed by Google). I also take a look at the number of external (outbound) links leaving that page. I try to keep the number of external links below 50 as it will dilute the effect of the page. Lastly, I look at the page the link will be placed on. For some sites this is harder to control, but if you have the option you should know where the most valuable locations are. I always try to get my links in line with thematically relevant content, like an article or blog post. I've found this produces some of the best results. Try to avoid placing your links on a "sponsored" or advertisers section that runs throughout the entire site. Also avoid footer links as rumor has it Google has devalued links buried in the footer of the site. Links placed at the top of the page or inserted into the site's navigation also tend to do quite well. Bottom line is that your links need to look like they belong and provide value to the user and the site it is published on.

5. Be Aware of "No-Follow" Links

Within the last 5 years Google developed the concept of the "no-follow" link. The "no-follow" code is inserted into your link and instructs the Google spider to ignore it. The "no-follow" link can be seen used most commonly in blog comments and forum posts. This initiative was set forth to combat spam and automated linking mechanisms that would throw links automatically on blog comments and forum posts.

There are a lot of SEO professionals that will only place a link if it is a "do-follow" link, meaning it doesn't have the "no-follow" attribute. I tend to disagree with this notion especially when the link in question is on a highly trafficked authority site. If it makes sense for the link to be there, then add your link. Even though Google won't give you any credít for it, it will be seen by thousands of people who may visit your site and link to you themselves because your site is highly relevant. I call this concept indirect link building. You are influencing and promoting your site to potential linking partners.

Link Building is a very time consuming process and link building companies spend a lot of time researching, testing and improving their techniques. Link building services are available for companies that don't have the time to invest in manual link building. The bottom line is that with a little help anyone can link build and move their site up the SERPS.

3 Easy ways to get HQ SEO links!

Follow or No Follow?

Note, I do not concern myself whether a blog or resource is a ‘follow’ or no follow resource. I like links from anywhere as it is always targeted to my market and also looks more natural.

1. Comment Love
Comment luv is a popular wordpress plug-in that displays the last post from your blog when you make a comment. This provides you a nice keyword related deep anchor text link. 
To locate blogs in your niche that use this plug-in use this search in Google:

“title=”CommentLuv Enabled”” KEYPHRASE

(be sure to replace the keyphrase with your target term). Once you get the results make a valuable comment on the top ranking blogs and you will get a nice juicy link back.

2. Squidoo
To locate Squidoo lenses in your niche that allow links use this search in Google:

KEYPHRASE + site:squidoo.com + “0 points”

Next click on the high ranking Squidoo lens. Go down to ‘list” and at the bottom and click on “Add To This List”. Add your website URL to the list. Make sure the description includes your keywords and vary them for each lens you add links to….

3. Youtube
To locate Youtube channels in your niche that allow comments:

“KEYPHRASE” “Channel Comments” site:youtube.com/user

Go down to comments at the bottom and make a useful comment about the channel. People will follow you back to your channel…

Important
Use this information wisely and add real value when you make comments. Spammy comments will get you nowhere fast.