It’s not at all surprising that Google Chrome has eventually become the most popular browser on the internet, slowly and steadily overtaking Internet Explorer over the years. Not only is it far superior than other browsers in terms of speed, security, productivity and user-friendliness, it offers a huge collection of extensions which can be installed for added functionality.
In this article we will take a look at five of the best Google Chrome extensions that are especially useful for bloggers. They will not only help you manage your blogs efficiently, but also increase your productivity manifold. So here they go:
1. WebRank SEO
One of the best SEO tools available as an extension for Chrome, WebRank SEO provides you a great deal of insights into any blog including the Google Pagerank, Alexa, Compete and Quantcast rank, all of which help you analyze a variety of aspects related to the blog. You can even lookup the backlinks and indexed pages of the blog in Google & Bing to gauge your competition and work them out pretty quickly and effortlessly. If you are not sure who the owner of a particular blog is, you can make use of the Whois Lookup feature offered in WebRank SEO. Overall, a highly recommended app to edge past your competition and always keep them on their toes!
2. Feedly
I am sure every blogger would agree that reading blogs related to your niche definitely helps you stay abreast of the latest happenings in the niche. As bloggers, we often mark a number of blogs that interest us, but fail to digest information from them as it may seem too overwhelming at times. With Feedly you can transform your favorite websites into a fun, magazine-like start page which makes it easier and fun to read them whenever you want. The best part about it is that it also integrates with Google Reader, Google +, Twitter and Facebook, allowing you to sync information and browse your feeds with a number of different views to make it all seem more appealing.
3. Evernote
Another highly useful productivity app, no matter if one is a novice, intermediate or advanced blogger. Evernote can be considered as an extension of your brain, as it can help you save, recall and recollect all your ideas and experiences and access them from any computer or phone you want. Evernote also allows you to create task lists and to-do lists to accomplish your day to day tasks. More so for bloggers since we usually come up with new ideas or blog posts so saving them right away is essential before they make their exit from our minds. You can also attach images, audio, PDF’s and any other file type along with the text, and even organize your notes using notebooks and tags. Add to it the added functionality of searching by keyword and automatic image processing that lets you search for words inside photos, thereby making it a potent combination and undoubtedly one of the best apps available for bloggers.
4. Stay Focused
A personal favorite of mine, Stay Focussed is a unique application that works well to keep you focused all day long. As bloggers, often we find ourselves procrastinating to write new blog posts or any other task essential for our blog’s success. With this app, you will no longer have to worry about getting distracted while working on your blog, helping you increase your productivity by several notches. The app has been primarily designed to block time-wasting sites that end up eating a lot of our valuable time. You can block groups of site for specific periods of time and the app will make sure that you have no way to access them, no matter how desperately you want. Though it is best for those of bloggers who lack self-discipline, I would certainly advise every novice blogger to install it and save their precious time every day and utilize it for improving their blogs instead.
5. Awesome Screenshot
Bloggers usually need to take images to post within some articles on their blogs to express their points clearly & precisely to the reader. However taking screenshots & editing them can sometimes be a time-consuming and annoying task as it involves manipulating the images using an advanced software. After installing Awesome Screenshot, you won’t have to worry about any of that. As the name suggests, it is an awesome extension for capturing screenshots of the website you are viewing right within Google Chrome. You just need to click on its icon next to your address bar, and the option to take screenshot of the entire page, selected area or the visible part of the page shows up. The best part is that once the screenshot has been captured, you can edit it in a number of ways, including adding text, rectangles, squares, circles etc. Annotating also become extremely easy thanks to the feature of adding lines and arrows to images. You can even crop your images, and blur any part of the image to hide the information you want.