I have written various posts on here before about identifying influential sites but I thought it was worth posting today because I have found a tool to use to make this process a whole load quicker.
The Google Chrome SEO plug-in takes all of two minutes to install and is in my opinion brilliant. It provides easy access to Search Engine Optimisation Tools that can help with analysis, keyword research, backlink Checks, PageRank Checks and other SEO tasks.
Although I have only just started to use this it seems I am late to the party as more than 150,000+ people are involved in the beta programme and I can see why.
Here is a list of the current features:
- A Keyword Research Tool
- Highlight NoFollow links
- The number of Pages Indexed
- The number of Backlinks
- Current Traffic and Rankings
- Social Bookmark counts
- Cached Versions of the page
- Domain Details like DNS, IP, Whois, Server Location
- Detects Robots.txt and Sitemap.xml
Future Features
- On page keyword analysis
- Integration with Google SERPs. Similar to SeoQuake or the SEOBook Firefox extension.
- The ability to compare site ranking stats, side by side.
- Keyword Ranking Checker to check search rankings.
- Integrate the Keyword Tool with the Google Adwords Keyword Tool to make keyword research faster.
- PPC Integration (Adwords, Adsense, Microsoft Adcenter, Yahoo Search Marketing)
Support for Wolfram | Alpha - Better descriptions so any Web Designer / Developer can work with the tool.
- Google Analytics Integration
- Google Chrome SEO Toolbar
- Allow Google Chrome SEO Add Ons sodevelopers can contribute plugins.
The sources it uses include: Archive.org, Alexa Rank, Compete Rank, CoralCDN, Ask, Baidu, Bing, Delicious, Digg, Dmoz, Google PageRank, MajesticSEO, Open Site Explorer, Quantcast, SEMRush, SEOmoz, Linkscape, StumbleUpon, Technorati, WebCite, Yandex Quotation Index, Yahoo.
What I like about this tool is how easy it is to use. You just land on the site you want to check click the button and all of the information is provided to you immediately. 
To bring it to life a bit I have shown an example of it in action using Neville Hobson’s blog. As you can see it clearly shows all of the information you need nice and simply. I also like the statistics section which you can click on and it then takes you through to a more in-depth analysis. In my opinion this is a great tool and it’s free you can’t say fairer than that.
To download the plug-in click here.
Chris Norton is the founder of Prohibition and an award winning communications consultant with more than twenty years’ experience. He was a lecturer at Leeds Beckett University and has had a varied PR career having worked both in-house and in a number of large consultancies. He is an Integrated PR and social media blogger and writes on a wide variety of blogs across a huge amount of topics from digital marketing, social media marketing right through to technology and crisis management.
