Must Have Google Chrome Extensions

If you’re anything like me, you are always on the lookout for ways to make your life a little easier, become more efficient, be more productive, and increase your level of awesomeness. Google Chrome has been my browser of choice for many years for a number of reasons, but one of my favorite features is Google Chrome Extensions. Once I discovered Chrome Extensions, I went a little download happy, to say the least. I tried a ton of Chrome Extensions and my toolbar quickly became cluttered with icons. Over the years, I have restructured my list of must have Chrome Extensions and found which of them work best to help me with my job or make my life just a little easier and help me become more efficient. Depending on what you do for a living or what your personal hobbies are, your list may differ. For those of you involved in marketing in any way, these Chrome Extensions might be worth a closer look. These are all freebies, so why not give them a try and see how they work for you!

Hannah’s List of Must-Have Chrome Extensions

#1) Momentum

The Momentum Chrome Extension is all about productivity. Once you download this extension, each new tab you open will start with the Momentum landing page. You will be prompted to enter your name and Email to set up your account and then you’re ready to start keeping track of your to-do lists for each day! You will be able to set up your main focus for the day and also click on the “Todo” in the bottom right corner to complete a full Todo list. This is an easy way to make sure you stay on task and remain focused on your highest priority tasks. Drag and drop the tasks you create into order by priority and then start checking those bad boys off! There is no greater feeling than marking something off your to-do list and seeing it crossed out and completed. Aaahhhhh….. accomplishment! In addition to that, this super duper productive extension will allow you to store your most accessed links in the upper left-hand corner (sort of like bookmarks), you’ll get a nice little inspirational quote of the day, the current time in your time zone, the current weather, and pretty background images to stare at when you need a break from working.

#2) AdBlock

Now wait a second, Hannah… you’re a digital marketer… isn’t this sacrilegious?

Sure, I can create some pretty awesome display ads for my clients, and I even enjoy seeing ads sometimes, but that doesn’t mean I want to see everyone’s ads while I am working. You should have the right not to see ads if you don’t want to see them. If you’re running ads, why would you want them to appear in front of people who don’t want to see or click on them anyway? If you add this extension you will completely block all advertisements from all web pages including Facebook and YouTube. Most marketers probably wouldn’t want you to know that, but this is freakin’ America. Land of the free and home of the brave. So if you are tired of seeing those ads on your screen, download this popular chrome extension and kiss your ads goodbye!

#3) Eye Dropper

This is a very simple yet extremely helpful Chrome Extension that I use nearly every day. The Eye Dropper extension gives you the option to use a standard color picker or pick a color from a web page. It also saves your color history so you can easily find your most recently sought after colors. Picking colors from a web page is really handy whenever you are trying to style or design something so that it matches a brand or color scheme. Simply click on the Eye Dropper icon, click on the “Choose color from web page” button and then hover your mouse over the elements on the web page. Once you hover over the color of choice, a simple click of the mouse will save the color to your history! You can then get the color codes for a perfect match to use in your designs or styles for other elements of your website.

#4) Tag Assistant (by Google)

The Tag Assistant Chrome Extension was created by Google to allow you to check the status of various Google Tags on a given page. This is used to make sure you have correctly placed HTML tags within the code of your site for elements such as Google Analytics, Remarketing, and other various tracking codes. When you download this from the Chrome app store, you will need to enable it for the page you would like to test. Then refresh the page to see how many tags are on the page and if there are any issues. Tags that were installed properly will be accompanied with a green tag image with a smiley face :); tags with minor suggestions will appear blue, and tags with issues will appear in red with a not so smiley face :/. Click on the tags that have errors or suggestions to find out how to better optimize them!

Learn more about using the new Tag Assistance by Google in the video below.

#5) MozBar

If you’re a Moz user this Google Chrome extension will be beneficial in speeding up and assisting with your SEO research. You don’t have to be a Moz Pro subscriber to gain helpful basic SEO information from Moz when using MozBar (although you can get more details if you are… or you could always hire us and have me optimize your site for you!). MozBar allows you to streamline your SEO efforts as you are surfing the web. You can compare link metrics, expose page elements, highlight links and keywords, and access a number of other powerful SEO tools.

MozBar also lets you create custom searches by search engine, country, region, or city. You can see how difficult it will be to rank for a specific keyword based on the competition for that keyword. You will also be able to expose page elements with the Analyze Page overlay. And finally, view social metrics for Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.

Moz Pro subscribers also get more detailed page-level analysis, including linking root domains and subdomain links, in-depth SERP analysis, unlimited reports on Open Site Explorer, and easy access to the other Moz Pro resources.

#6) Check My Links

The Check My Links Google Chrome add-on is classified as a developer tool, but it is so simple that it can be useful for anyone that works on their own website as well.  When activated, this extension will crawl through a given webpage and find all of the broken links. All of the good links will appear in green, and the broken links will be highlighted in red. You can then go through the page and update any links that are not working. It is important not to have broken links on your website in order to provide a better user experience for your website visitors. This tool is simple, yet effective, especially if you have a webpage that contains a mass amount of links.

#7) Strict Workflow

This productivity Chrome Extension is not for everyone (including myself), but if you’re one of those people that can’t keep away from your Facebook (you know who you are) and find that these Social Media sites suck every drop of productivity you have left, I recommend you give it a try. I can’t use this because I frequently need to be on Social Media sites for my job to help my client’s grow their Social Media network and engage with their audience. Unless you are managing Social Media for your company or your clients you shouldn’t be spending much time on these sites (shame on you). What this extension does is sets a 25 minute countdown timer during which the extension automatically blocks known time wasters such as YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. Once you’ve made it 25 minutes of pure productive goodness, you get a 5 minute break with unlimited access, after which the cycle repeats again. The countdown cannot be turned off once it starts. You can update the blacklist or whitelist, as well as configure the duration and other settings to fit your needs.

#8) OneTab

I’m a multi-tasking maniac sometimes. When you work with as many clients and co-workers as I do, you will have a lot of people and tasks pulling you in many directions. This has left me with so many tabs open at once it will make your head spin. OneTab is a nifty little Chrome Extension that breaks down all of your open tabs into a single page. Once you need to open your tabs up again, no problem! You can restore them all at once or individually for the tasks at hand. The remaining items will be stored on the OneTab page for you to quickly go back and access it whenever needed. What is even niftier – you could save up to 95% memory when doing this making the tabs you have open run faster!

#9) Evernote Web Clipper

Evernote is an awesome application for taking notes and organizing them into notebooks with the ability to search for specific keywords or topics. The Evernote Web Clipper works seamlessly with your Evernote account allowing you to “clip” a full page you are visiting, highlight and share key text or create visual call-outs and share via Email or create a share link, or create customized clips with special formats for LinkedIn, Amazon, and YouTube. This extension can be used in so many different ways, it just depends on how you want to use it. I like to store different interesting articles and blog posts that involve the digital marketing industry or web development. I can then sort out the articles I want to come back and read later to highlight key items to come back to in the future or share ideas with our digital strategists team. I have also used it for my personal life to add things to my wedding planning notebook as I search for wedding dress styles, vendors, decorating ideas, etc!

#10) Grammarly Spell Checker & Grammar Checker

Pore grammer and speling can relly make u look silly. Especialy, when your writting blog posts, busines proposels, or work emales. See what I did there ;). Let’s face it… it’s been a while since most of us have been in an English class. In a world filled with shorthand text like lol and ttyl, our language continues to deteriorate more with each generation. Even if you consider yourself and English scholar, typos happen. Grammarly helps alleviate the stress that comes from potentially sending an embarrassing Email, proposal, report, or posting “word crimes” to your business Social Media account. Basically, it helps you not to look like a big dummy. It’s not full proof, but it will catch a lot more than the average spell checker. Check out some other Grammarly reviews here.

Now here is the “Word Crimes” video from Weird Al… Just because.

I hope you all enjoy these must have Chrome extensions as much as I do! If you have some other extensions to share I would love to check them out! Add your favorites in the comments below.