We created a free SEO extension for Google Chrome that allows you to spy on your (and your competitors’) SEO settings. Check out and download the Chunky Squirrel on-page SEO analyzer!
In this article I go over each element of the extension and why you want to get this information to improve your website’s SEO!
How to add the SEO extension to Google Chrome
When opening the extension page, click on the big blue “add to chrome” button in the right upper corner.
You’ll see a small window with the question to confirm again that you want to add it. (Yes, you do!)
Pin this extension to easily find it when you need it! First click on the little puzzle block, where you can manage all of your extensions. Next click on the little pin to pin our SEO extension.
When you see the little squirrel, you did it right!
Next we’ll go over what all the sections in the plugin mean and why they’re important for your SEO. You start this process by first visiting the page of the website you want to check out.
The meta tags section
Meta tags are pieces of code (HTML tags) that provide information about a web page to search engines and browsers. They are not visible to your users when they visit your website. While there are more meta tags than discussed here, we opted to include these 3 important ones.
Title tag
A title tag defines the title of a web page and is a crucial component of SEO. It provides a concise and accurate description of the content on the page, and search engines use it as an important factor in determining the relevance of a page to a user’s search query.
It often appears as the clickable headline in search engine results.
Here’s an example of the website we checked above. As you can see it’s not entirely optimized. Yes, it includes the name of the site, but it’s not an enticing title. Google changed it slightly for the search results.
A well-crafted title tag can improve a page’s visibility in search engine results and encourage users to click through to the page.
Ideally a title tag is not longer than 60 characters, because longer titles aren’t fully displayed in search results. That’s why you can read the character count in the SEO extension.
Meta description tag
The meta description provides a brief summary or description of the page’s content. Search engines often display this description in search results, so it can influence the click-through rate.
If you don’t fill out the meta description, Google will draw information from your page to create a description. So don’t waste an opportunity to write one yourself and include keywords!
Ideally a meta description is around 155 characters. Longer descriptions are truncated by Google in the search results.
Robots tag
Some website builders don’t have this option. But most luckily do!
A robots tag provides instructions to web crawlers and search engine robots (hence the name “robots”) regarding the indexing and crawling of a web page.
Our SEO tool shares the tags in a list. You might see some common ones like:
- “index”: allows search engines to index the page.
- “noindex”: tells search engines not to index the page.
- “follow”: instructs search engines to follow the links on the page.
- “nofollow”: tells search engines not to follow the links on the page.
The headings section
Headings, as opposed to the meta tags, are visible to your website visitors! And search engines read them too. They work in as a hierarchical structure.
The main title of your page is the H1 title. It’s often similar to your title tag and ideally contains your focus keyword. It’s a good practice to have only one H1 title. In the example photo above, there is no H1, so that’s a missed opportunity.
Next you see the subtitles (going from H2, to lower level H3 all the way to H6).
Titles are important for your SEO because they signal to Google what your content is all about. They carry more importance than regular copy.
The images section
Here you can quickly see both your file name (which you can only choose BEFORE uploading an image to your site) and the alt tags.
Search engines can read your file names, so when your files are named lskjdflksdj.jpg vs actual words, it makes a difference. Make sure to use hyphens in between words.
Alt tags are for visually impaired people to know what an image is about. But mentioning your keywords helps! Don’t stuff alt tags full of irrelevant keywords and make sure you keep accessibility in mind!
Keywords section
In the keywords section, you can type in any keyword and see how many times it’s used on the page.
You’ll see if the keyword is used:
- in the title tag
- in the meta description
- in titles (H1-H6)
- in the copy
- in images (you can see the file name and alt tag)
For the content section, notice how there’s an automatic word count of the page, keyword count and the keyword density. This helps you find a balance between keyword stuffing and not mentioning enough what your post is all about! We recommend aiming for at least once every 100 words. (1%)
The upper limit is up for debate amongst SEOs, where some companies say you can use it up to 5%. (but that sounds spammy in my opinion)
Links section
Internal links
Having a good internal linking structure is a crucial element of good SEO (and good UX).
Anchor text is the text that your link is attached to. When linking internally, anchor text shows search engines (and your users) what the page is going to be about, so use your anchor text wisely!
External links
External links are links to websites other than your own. Often social media icons are external links as you can see in the example. But ideally where possible, use relevant anchor text too.
Bonus tip: Make sure you open external links in a new browser window! That way people don’t leave your website.
Canonical link
Usually a page would be canonical to itself. But once in a while it’s worth pointing out to Google and search engines that you have another page that is more relevant. That is a canonical link.
(And if you’re paying really close attention to my example images, no the blog of this example website isn’t set as canonical to the home page. That screenshot was taken from a different page! Good catch!)
Love our free SEO extension?
Share it with your friends and I you enjoy using it regularly, leave us a review for the plugin at the Chrome web store!
Want to learn more about Local SEO? Check the post I wrote about local SEO in Vancouver here. (swap “Vancouver” for a city of your choice)
