Using the Mozilla Web Browsers when conducting SEO

One of the best tools you can have at your disposal when conducting search engine optimization for a site is the Mozilla browser, in particular the free to download version called Firefox. This browser is great for helping with SEO due to the range of free plugins, known as extensions, that will help you when optimizing a site.

What is Mozilla?

Mozilla based browsers are an alternative to the Internet Explorer , the browser that the majority of web users will view the web with. Firefox in particular is a great piece of web browsing goftware for the browsing of the web. It has a simple to use interface, using similar metaphors to IE

How do Mozilla based browsers differ from Internet Explorer?

In simple terms Mozilla browsers were designed purely to view the web - Internet Explorer was not. When you utilse a Windows operating system the Windows Explorer tool is used for navigating the differing directories and that are installed upon the computer. Internet Explorer is a derivative of Windows Explorer and has the ability to interpret HTML code output. As such it sometimes gets the rendering of pages wrong. It also lets web developers away with far more than a true web browser does, such as bad coding practices. With Mozilla accounting for larger and larger numbers of web users it is becoming important that your website is Mozilla compatible to ensure that your site has the maximum reach. Not all websites are compatible with browsers that are an alternative to Internet Explorer and are likely to be losing out on valuable sales to their competition.

List of Mozilla Extension that are useful in SEO

At the time of writin this the version of Firefox that can install these extensions is :Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051111 Firefox/1.5, otherwise referred to as Firefox 1.5.

  • Groowe Search Toolbar - This is a multiple search engine toolbar that allows you to access the functionality of various search engine toolbars without cluttering up your Browser window. You can choose your most frequently used Geographical Location, default is for the .com search engines. It includes Google, MSN, Yahoo, Hotbot, Dogpile and more. OK so the Google function doesn't have a Page Rank bar, some may see this as a blessing but this can be easily added to your brower with alternative functions.
  • Web Developer Toolbar
    • Disable Menu
      • Disable Java
      • Disable Javascript - If you want to show what links are hidden from a search engine simply let them see your display and turn off the javascript and show them how the javascript menu system is not spider friendly.
      • Disable Metaredirects - Wonderful little function for when you find pages that have had Meta redirects set on with no time. Meta Redirects are meant top be used for when pages have been moved so that people have the ability to replace their bookmarks with the new pages and to let users know the page has moved. Instead unethical SEO companies may set the redirect to kick in immediately rather than after a period of time. Is useful for seeing what spam people have been placing on these pages and trying to hide from users and present to search engines.
    • Information Menu
      • When optimising dynamic websites the output of the HTTP from the servers may not tell server when the content has been updated. This is because there are no Last Modified headers sent out, unless you set your web scripts to send them out. This toolbar has a function to allow you see which headers any web document is sending out and check for error easily and quickly.
  • IE View
  • IE Tab
  • Opera View
  • User Agent Switcher
  • Search Status
  • Netcraft Toolbar
  • LiveHTTPHeaders

:: Tutorial Index :: What is a Search Engine? :: What are Search Engine Spiders? :: Controlling Search Engine Spiders :: Analysing Log Files :: What Search Engines look for in Web Document Content :: Anatomy of Search Engine Results ::

Copyright Information

This article or tutorial relating to Search Engine Optimization is provided by conSEOquences. This article and the copyright relating to it remains the sole property of its owners. We do allow our articles to be reproduced by other web site owners but only when the article is produced as being from the conSEOquences site and that a link to the original article is provided.