Peter Vatistas

Being that I am an SEO I need to see live stats and information all the time; fortunately for me Firefox has a lot of great tools for free and extremely easy to use.

SEO tools for Firefox:

1. Search Status: This toolbar provides extensive search-related information about a site, all conveniently displayed in one discreet and compact toolbar. I use everything this tool has to offer but my favorite feature is the display of site’s Google PR, Alexa, and Compete at the base of my browser.

2. SEO for Firefox: Aaron Wall from SEOBook had this neat little tool developed and I love it. Tons of stats show for every listing in Google’s SERP whenever you search anything. This tool has to be one of the best SEO tools out there and without it a lot of my time would be wasted.

3. Social Media for Firefox: I already posted about this but this tool is worth the time to write about again. You can see my original post here but for those of you SEO/SEM Social Network guys like myself this tool just rocks and is definitely a major time saver.

Here is a list of other extensions I use including a few other SEO/SEM plug ins:

- SEOpen: This tool packs a ton of SEO tools, most I use daily.

- SEOLinks: Neat little tool that shows link stats with mouse over.

- Link Checker: Don’t get caught with broken links again.

- ShowIP: Love this tool for when I swing DNS records.

- ServerSpy: Great extension to show what type of server & version the site is hosted on (i.e. Apache 2, IIS 7.0, etc).

I get a lot of emails from people whom want to know which applications I prefer in Windows. Although this is both a loaded question and a very broad one, I will try to answer this the best I can and will definitely update it from time to time.

Favorite FTP Application: WinSCP

Favorite Telnet & SSH Application: PuTTY

Favorite Internet Browser: Firefox 2 & Safari

Favorite Imaging Software: Adobe Photoshop CS3 - Open Source: Gimp

Favorite Instant Messanger: Application: Trillian - Web Based: Meebo

Favorite Text Editor (HTML, CSS, etc): Edit Plus 2

Favorite CD/DVD & ISO Software: MagicISO

Favorite Office Suite: Microsoft Office 2007 - Open Source: Open Office & Star Office

Favorite Compression & Encryption Software: WinRAR

Favorite Blogging Software: Windows Live Writer

Favorite AntiVirus/Malware Software: Eset NOD32

Favorite Email Client: Microsoft Outlook 2007 (for exchange) - Open Source: Mozilla Thunderbird 2

Favorite BitTorrent Application: Azureus

This list is way from a complete one and to be honest I have been moving away from Windows all together and replacing them with Mac’s. Sorry Microsoft guys - I have been bit by the Apple bug. I also have a laptop running Fedora 8 and I’ll make sure I write a favorite’s list for both Apple and Linux soon.