Free Internet Marketing Tools of The Trade

Firefox is the premier alternative web browser of choice for internet marketers. This is because Firefox is built with alot less programming and is lightweight making it a lot faster when going from one website to another. But the most important reason that people use Firefox is because it allows for pieces of software called plugins or add-ons that give the users instant metrics on the websites being viewed.

• faster browsing
  
• toolbars (Google Toolbar)
  
• cross platform (Mac, XP, VIsta, etc)
• plugins and add-ons
  

The add-ons and plugins that are most important for internet marketers are SEO Firefox, Quirk Search Status, Google Global, Video Downloader and Cool Previews. I will describe each of these add-ons and plugins below.

www.firerfox.com

SEO Firefox is plugin that gives you a tremendous amount of info when you are at Google's Search Page. Once installed you will see the icon on your status bar located on the bottom of your browser. When it is enabled it is colored in when it is disabled it is shaded gray.

The information that is delivered here is on the Google Search results page and is in highlighted blue after each website entry. Some of the information that is available is domain age, any .edu links, .gov links, total number of backlinks according to Yahoo, and various social networking sites and whether each site has a link from them.

All the counts have a "?" question mark next to them but all you have to do is to click on the question mark to see the answer to anything you want to see. You can also change the settings to display the results automatically by clicking on the SEO Firefox Icon and selecting options.

http://tools.seobook.com/firefox/seo-for-firefox.html

The Quirk Search Status Plugin is a great tool that gives you instant information on whether a website you are on is a "Popular" one or not.  This little plugin uses Alexa, an Amazon Company which ranks sites on a daily basis on how many people have visited their site.

The highest most visited websites will have the blue bar completely shaded and if you hover over the blue bar will tell you precisely what number it is ranked.  These are the usual suspects; like Facebook, Google, Yahoo, MSN.

But generally speaking if you come across a site that is ranked 100,000 and under they are an authority site.

www.quirk.biz/searchstatus/

This little tool allows you to see what your search results look like in another country.  It does this by fooling your browser into thinking you are in the country that you select.

So if you wanted to search for how a product was doing in the UK on Google, you would toogle this button on your browser and go to google and perform your search as normal.  You will then be presented with search results from the UK.  Pretty useful if you want to see how a particular market is in another country and the website competition.

Video Downloader is pretty straight forward.  It allows you to download videos that are playing directly to your computer with no software or geek know how.  When you see the three balls next to the browser's address bar swirling you know you can download it to your desktop.

Cool Previews is a time saver.  Do you hate to always have to click on a hyperlink even when you're pretty sure you don't need to.  This tool saves you the trouble by giving you a window to preview the page and scroll it without leaving the page you were currently on.  Some websites are just a maze of information and you can get lost with a few clicks. 

This tool save you time and keeps you on your current page without losing track of what you are doing by giving you a preview of any link.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2207 or Google Cool Previews