It’s impossible not to be synced anymore. Everything is on cloud and the amount of information we come across every day is unprecedented. The difficulty of any digital marketer’s mission is not letting themselves be distracted by the connectivity and hyperlinking on the web. While we have never been more exposed to information, it’s now harder than ever to keep focused and prioritize our online activity.

Because we know how crucial it is to stay informed and relevant when it’s almost impossible not to miss something (however small), we’ve put together a compilation of extensions that should make every digital marketer’s life a little easier.

We are moving from an era of brand dominance, to one where agility is rewarded. – Will Critchlow, Founder & CEO, Distilled

A digital marketer’s work can be massively improved with the right browser extensions. We usually install them as we cannot afford the time to either search for some data manually, or to wait for the dozens of tabs to load. This is why our compilation will include the most useful extensions in this field, to guide you through a better productivity rate.

Installing an extension only takes a few seconds and they will run on the back of the system while you operate the browser and your account, which makes them a useful alternative to the current situation, as they are all meant to solve some of the essential every day problems.

Copywriting & Content Marketing

1. Google TranslateDownloads: 6,323,515
2. GrammarlyDownloads: 4,198,579
3. FeedlyDownloads: 1,375,846
4. Print FriendlyDownloads: 365,861
5. Diigo Web CollectorDownloads: 241,545
6. YeswareDownloads: 231,600
7. Wise StampDownloads: 215,911
8. Project NapthaDownloads: 208,893
9. Similar PagesDownloads: 162,542
10. InstapaperDownloads: 156,722
11. TL;DRDownloads: 120,409
12. GiphyDownloads: 61,283
13. DraftDownloads: 4,542
14. Drum UpDownloads: 1,649

SEO and Marketing Metrics

15. GhosteryDownloads: 2,441,992
16. Alexa Traffic RankDownloads: 447,614
17. MozBarDownloads: 339,703
18. Hide My AssDownloads: 187,807
19. VidIQDownloads: 142,223
20. Check My LinksDownloads: 120,697
21. Majestic Backlink AnalyzerDownloads: 51,199
22. Google Analytics URL BuilderDownloads: 30,886
23. SEO SerpDownloads: 23,130
24. Fat RankDownloads: 8,952
25. Mobile Friendly CheckerDownloads: 4,188
26. Share MetricDownloads: 3,485

Social Media Engagement

27. Hootsuite HootletDownloads: 508,737
28. RapportiveDownloads: 441,335
29. BufferDownloads: 429,992
30. Bit.lyDownloads: 337,163
31. KloutDownloads: 69,639
32. Email HunterDownloads: 58,846
33. DoShareDownloads: 25,490
34. Rite TagDownloads: 21,127
35. DiscoverlyDownloads: 16,500
36. RiffleDownloads: 13,753
37. Find That LeadDownloads: 11,179
38. FollowrDownloads: 1,507

Productivity

39. Ad BlockDownloads: 10,000,000+
40. Last PassDownloads: 4,219,260
41. Pocket Downloads: 2,729,383
42. MomentumDownloads: 1,589,696
43. PushBullet Downloads: 1,340,354
44. BoomerangDownloads: 1,109,443
45. 1PasswordDownloads: 1,023,937
46. One TabDownloads: 1,015,460
47. The Great SuspenderDownloads: 882,787
48. SignalsDownloads: 704,188
49. Stay FocusdDownloads: 674,406
50. Speed Dial 2Downloads: 643,890
51. TodoistDownloads: 379,388
52. Smooth ScrollDownloads: 154,844
53. KeeperDownloads: 97,589
54. Time StatsDownloads: 84,367
55. MediumDownloads: 34,068
56. Followup.ccDownloads: 12,002
57. PopchromDownloads: 10,138
58. List GoalDownloads: 4,265
59. StacheDownloads: 3,250
60. Price SnoopDownloads: 2,332
61. SwitchmarkDownloads: 2,242
62. GoodbitsDownloads: 1,592
63. Ananke TimerDownloads: 238

Website Optimization

64. User Agent SwitcherDownloads: 1,194,463
65. Web DeveloperDownloads: 1,091,172
66. Firebug LiteDownloads: 686,834
67. Tag AssistantDownloads: 539,849
68. Window ResizerDownloads: 530,290
69. Clear CacheDownloads: 333,669
70. WappalyzerDownloads: 331,018
71. YSlowDownloads: 317,276
72. IE Tab MultiDownloads: 185,129
73. StylebotDownloads: 166,341
74. Quick Javascript SwitcherDownloads: 144,227
75. PenduleDownloads: 103,065
76. CSS ViewerDownloads: 101,612
77. Web BoostDownloads: 72,615
78. Redirect PathDownloads: 64,933
79. Page RefreshDownloads: 55,600
80. WASPDownloads: 24,426
81. HTML ValidatorDownloads: 22,830
82. SightDownloads: 17,936
83. Built WithDownloads: 16,726
84. Quick Source ViewerDownloads: 13,898
85. Stylesheet ReloaderDownloads: 572

Design Tools

86. ColorZillaDownloads: 902,922
87. WhatFontDownloads: 545,995
88. Page RulerDownloads: 434,053
89. EyedropperDownloads: 373,647
90. Nimbus ScreenshotDownloads: 398,052
91. Pic MonkeyDownloads: 180,284
92. Resolution TestDownloads: 145,920
93. MeasureltDownloads: 108,281
94. Fontface NinjaDownloads: 101,708
95. Palette CreatorDownloads: 62,124
96. DimensionsDownloads: 48,225
97. Yet Another Lorem Ipsum GeneratorDownloads: 26,874
98. Google Font PreviewerDownloads: 25,546
99. StencilDownloads: 15,379
100. Type SampleDownloads: 12,012
101. Microstock Photo Power SearchDownloads: 1,870
102. Font EditorDownloads: 1,733

Copywriting & Content Marketing

1. Google Translate

(19933)Downloads: 6,323,515

Install this extension

The best use for this extension in the context of a digital marketing agency is that it allows you to browse through international web pages and get an immediate idea on their content – then decide if you want to dig deeper or leave if for good.

Another way it can be used to assure maximum efficiency is in the context of foreign clients. The extension is a time saver when it comes to multi-lingual professional experiences.

2. Grammarly

(200)Downloads: 4,198,579

Install this extension

We all know how crucial content is. However, what’s easily read is not easily written, most of the times. It takes a lot of experience and years of practice to transmit the essential information, while not being boring and also adding a bit of a personal dash to the copy. It’s essential to have a clean writing style, otherwise your audience will not grant you with credibility.

Grammarly doesn’t only check the grammar appropriateness of your content, but the readability as well, making it easier for you to formulate a more word-efficient copy.

3. Feedly

(68842)Downloads: 1,375,846

Install this extension

The extension is great for copywriters, as it can feature different topics, divided by folders, that will automatically update a news feed at your fingertips. The extension works like an intersection between bookmarks and a news feed. Among the sources that it indexes, you can choose the topics you are interested in following, and you will receive a daily feed accordingly. It takes a lot of effort to keep up to date with the amount of content publishers, news websites and all reading interests. There is a limited number of sources that you can add to your feed, but it does the job great for the ones that it indexes.

Browsing through content has become a nightmare, as it’s often hard to separate the stories we’d like to read from the ones we’re running from. Feedly makes this activity pleasant and organized, and it helps prioritizing the interests as well.

4. Print Friendly

(1012)Downloads: 365,861

Install this extension

The extension comes in handy whenever you wish to print an article that you liked particularly, or a webpage that you wish to examine further. Its help comes from cleaning the junk information from the webpage. Either because you don’t want to waste ink on useless pictures or ads, or just because of aesthetic reasons, the extension is constantly in your mind, and it tells what you want to print and what you’d rather leave out.

It gives you an editable .pdf conversion of a webpage, and you can easily transform web data into clean, organized .pdf’s for your projects. It helps if you’re a researcher and you can save all the changes in Google Drive, which makes it even more user friendly.

5. Diigo Web Collector

(104)Downloads: 241,545

Install this extension

Simply put, this is an extension that helps annotating, bookmarking and archiving web content. It has everything a geek who likes to take time with their content would need. You can use colored highlights and sticky notes, share the pages with your annotation via social media, bookmark links for later or curate content.

While it’s a very intuitive extension, it also helps you stay organized and it’s pure heaven for anyone who is a little nostalgic about the agenda-writing era.

6. Yesware 

(927)Downloads: 231,600

Install this extension

Many of us, content marketers, have newsletters and thousand of weekly sent emails. However, the open rate of these isn’t always something easy to analyze. If you’re not looking for complicated metrics, but a general view on who opened your email and who didn’t, this extension is going to be more than you need. You get to be notified (by push notifications or otherwise) when someone opens an email you automatically sent, and you also get to see the device they did it from.

7. Wise Stamp

(1354)Downloads: 215,911

Install this extension

There’s a lot to tell about the perfect email. What’s obvious, however, is that most of them aren’t read, or get to be skimmed in a few seconds. The better part of emails don’t get to convince (let alone impress) because they lack personality.

This extension is one of the possible solutions to this problem – it provides you with a live signature that you can link to your social media accounts. You can also personalize it with the company logo or any other visual elements that you’d like to associate with your signature.

8. Project Naptha

(1020)Downloads: 208,893

Install this extension

If you’ve ever felt frustrated that you couldn’t copy a text that was part of an image, you’re going to love this extension. It allows you to highlight, copy or edit texts that are in an image format. Now you can copy the text and paste it as a search query, or translate it.

The semi-transparent select blue box can be especially useful when you don’t have time to re-write blocks of text that are part of an image. Once you install the extension, it will automatically select the words inside an image in a text box, on hover.

9. Similar Pages

(919)Downloads: 162,542

Install this extension

I’m sure it’s happened at least a thousand times to find something captivating on the web and then follow the impulse of searching more on the topic. This extension anticipates your need of more information on something you’re already reading and suggests a number of other similar web pages.

What makes it useful is that every suggested page comes with a preview, so that you can decide what’s appropriate for your needs and what isn’t. Whenever you click on the extension icon, a Google search query will be conducted to identify pages that are closely related to what you’re reading.

10. Instapaper

(215)Downloads: 156,722

Install this extension

There are many tools dedicated to bookmarking content that you’ll be interested in reading later. However, what this extension brings is the opportunity to save web content offline.

Offline reading isn’t our main preoccupation since most of us focus on bringing the content online, but this tool is especially made to make sure we can read the content that we want to save for later even when we don’t have access to an Internet connection.

11. TL;DR

(305)Downloads: 120,409

Install this extension

Anyone who spends enough time online will know that TL;DR is an online abbreviation for ‘too long, didn’t read’. We don’t always have the time to enjoy a long read, and this extension shortens the web content into a generic idea on the topic. There are 3 different lengths for every webpage that is shortened (approximately 25%, 50% and 75% of the original content length), and you can opt for the one that will best satisfy your informational need.

Aside from the English language, the extension also supports Spanish, German and French. The synopsized long content is at your disposal, and you can also look for similar topics on the web directly from this extension.

12. Giphy

(74)Downloads: 61,283

Install this extension

We’ve begun to introduce visual aids with our online messages because the tone wouldn’t always be transmitted rightly. This is how the first emoticons appeared. More than a decade after that, shortened communication forms have taken over our social media communication. Partially because they’re playful and send a more personal tone, partially because they’re visual and easily to relate to.

Whichever the reason, Giphy allows you to use gifs from their continuously updating database on email and social media, in order to better connect with the people you’re talking to.

13. Draft

(33)Downloads: 4,542

Install this extension

For those of us who write a lot, this is a Chrome extension that transforms any text area into something you can edit through Draft. Organizing your ideas is much easier this way, as you’ll have all the text you’re composing in the same format and always on your screen, to keep you coordinated.

14. Drum Up

(20)Downloads: 1649

Install this extension

Very much like Similar Pages, this extension creates search queries that match the content that you’re currently reading in order to make topical suggestions for further readings.

Aside from the content suggestions, the extension also allows you to schedule sharing posts on social media, which makes it easier to share captivating content with your friends, especially since it can be delivered in an organized manner.

SEO and Marketing Metrics

15. Ghostery

(9235)Downloads: 2,441,992

Install this extension

Every action you take on the web leaves a footprint behind. The technologies monitoring web activity are called trackers, and usually take the information they need about your browsing data. The extension allows you to control the amount of personal data that you share with the trackers for every site you visit. One additional advantage to this is that some of the websites may even work better with tracking limitations, as trackers sometimes weigh them down. You can also remove page clutter and focus on the content that you’re actually interested in.

16. Alexa Traffic Rank

(2136)Downloads: 447,614

Install this extension

The extension provides quick traffic analytics without interrupting the browsing experience. It’s great for a quick glance at a website’s performance. Aside from the traffic metrics, you can see the number of sites linking in, the load time and a number of related links as further suggestions for your browsing.

17. MozBar

(696)Downloads: 339,703

Install this extension

It’s exactly what the name suggests you should be expecting. After each result you get for a search query, you are displayed a performance bar to allow you to make a first impression on the website: page authority, domain authority. MozBar even provides you data about keywords that are easier or harder to rank for.

18. Hide My Ass

(584)Downloads: 187,807

Install this extension

There are many reasons why developers need to use private browsing a lot, especially for testing purposes. This is how the extension makes a great requisite, as it allows you to browse privately on the spot, redirecting your traffic to an anonymous proxy network.

19. vidIQ 

(713)Downloads: 142,223

Install this extension

vidIQ is great for anyone who needs to keep up with their Youtube metrics, while at the same time not spending a lot of time to get them. If you’re fine knowing just a few key data sets, the extension offers you the necessary information that you need to have to keep up with the competition: the organic reach of your video, the keywords used as labels to it, the number of shares across social media platforms.

20. Check My Links

(267)Downloads: 120,697

Install this extension

The extension underlines the links on a webpage, telling you which ones are live and which ones are broken. Plus, the extension gives you the option to cache the information which means that the second time you’re visiting the same pages it will work a lot faster.

21. Majestic Backlink Analyzer

(839)Downloads: 51,199

Install this extension

The extension has over 50k users as it provides two sets of data at the same time: link counts on the one hand and the sources of the links on the other. Generally, extensions are made to be simple and offer one main data set. However, this one crosses that line and it allows you to make an idea about the strength of a page based on its backlink profile.

22. Google Analytics URL Builder

(59)Downloads: 30,886

Install this extension

You can easily create short links with the URL builder, share them, manage tags or choose pre-defined sets. Once you’re generated the final URL, you can copy it into the clipboard button and, on top of this, import or export back-ups. You can also link the presets to Bit.ly, as the two extensions are complementary and compatible.

23. SEO Serp

(251)Downloads: 23,130

Install this extension

If you want to just quickly check the position of a list of sites to see how they rank for a certain keyword, this extension is cardinal to your research. Besides having the possibility to create alerts for changes in position, you can now export the results as well save them for further examinations.

24. Fat Rank

(62)Downloads: 8,952

Install this extension

The extension promotes itself as being easy to use because it has one functionality that it implements flawlessly. It’s not far from the truth – it provides lightweight keyword performance for the page you’re currently on. The tool will also check the rankings by location.

25. Mobile Friendly Checker

(14)Downloads: 4,188

Install this extension

You’ll find it most useful especially because it can bulk check up to 20 URLs for mobile friendly results. The extension also displays a result page and a preview of the webpage as Googlebot sees it.

26. Share Metric

(11)Downloads: 3,485

Install this extension

The extension offers you data about the number of shares and generally the social media visibility of the page you’re on. A drop-down menu will display these along with the Moz page and domain authority, in case you’ve got it installed. For the case in which you already have an Ahrefs subscription, you will be shown the ranks that Ahrefs attributes to the page as well. The extension only works if you have accounts for Ahrefs and Moz.

Social Media Engangement 

27. Hootsuite Hootlet

(1027)Downloads: 508,737

Install this extension

The extension helps you find and share content across the web, on social media platforms. It allows you to search social media along with your web search query, share content while you browse the web, schedule your posts to be shared at a later time.

28. Rapportive 

(1769)Downloads: 441,335

Install this extension

For those of us who use Gmail a lot, it’s often very important to know whom we’re talking to, and the signatures don’t always say a lot about the person behind the email. The tool gives you instant access to a lot of data you may be interested in: the company they’re working for, their location, the LinkedIn profiles (this one’s a charm!), their most recent Tweets. You can easily engage with your prospect with this information at your disposal.

29. Buffer

(2430)Downloads: 429,992

Install this extension

Buffer is one of the vital extensions for any content marketer out there. Whenever you wish to share content on social media platforms, this extension is an efficient way of scheduling content posts for social media, especially if you don’t want to share them right away. Suppose you ran over an amazing piece of content – it’s not practical to post it immediately, if – for instance – you just posted something else. Buffer gives you the chance to queue the content you’re posting cross-platforms.

30. Bit.ly

(1209)Downloads: 337,163

Install this extension

The extension allows you to save and share content through social media platforms, even when it doesn’t have on-page share buttons. You have additional access to the social media performance of the link over the years, for a a generic idea on the popularity of the content.

You can also organize the content through notes and bundles, and save the links with individual privacy preferences.

31. Klout

(438)Downloads: 69,639

Install this extension

The extension allows you to share content to Twitter. However, the reason why it’s so popular among users is that it provides a score of every Twitter account you’re engaging with (including yours), calculated after their own algorithm. This gives you an idea of how authoritative the popular people on the social media network are. This way, you can prioritize your social media strategy according to the data you’re offered.

32. Email Hunter

(1475)Downloads: 58,846

Install this extension

If the most complicated part of your outreach is actually finding the emails of your prospects, then search no more. The extension will help you to find email addresses on LinkedIn and even Twitter. It gets easier to access the 150 free contacts you’re allowed to search monthly.

33. DoShare

(216)Downloads: 25,490

Install this extension

This extension is dedicated to people who are active on Google Plus. It allows you to write and schedule the posts, share content from different platforms, save drafts and schedule posts. It is intuitively manageable and it can save a lot of time.

34. Rite Tag

(65)Downloads: 21,127

Install this extension

This Twitter tool allows you to get actionable insights as you post content. It gives you stats on the fly about the popularity of your hashtags, it gives you the possibility to add images, create memes, tag influencers, and color-grading hashtags after a popularity metric.

35. Discoverly

(52)Downloads: 16,500

Install this extension

The extension allows you to understand more about your contacts on Gmail and LinkedIn, offering you information about their work info, mutual connections, recent tweets, and the data is also available on Facebook. It’s a great extension for networking, as it can make your email positioning work easier.

36. Riffle

(19)Downloads: 13,753

Install this extension

The extension gives you tweet stats on your brand and your competitors’. It ‘teaches you about the community’, as they say they do, providing you data about the number of tweets, number of favorite, medium number of posts per day, top hashtags, top mentions and top URLs, all for you to engage your audience better.

37. Find that Lead

(126)Downloads: 11,179

Install this extension

FTL aims to help you find the emails of your prospects on LinkedIn, as the leads of professionals often shape the direction of our future company plans and development. The leads aren’t only usable in generic outreach and networking with the business community, they can be targeted for sale as well.

38. Followr

(64)Downloads: 1,507

Install this extension

The extension is aimed to increase your followers on Twitter, in a natural and organic way. According to the developers, the more you normally use Twitter the better the extension will suggest your account to people who can follow your content based on interest. This automation extension can help a great deal in reaching the proper audiences.

Productivity

39. Ad Block

(183952)Downloads: 10,000,000+

Install this extension

The extension is not only one of the most popular on the web, but it solves many potential issues of digital marketers as well. For a cleaner browsing experience, you can activate the extension and get rid of the annoying ads. This comes at a price, as some of the websites out there won’t let you access their content when detecting the AdBlock. However, there is always the solution of private browsing for those exceptions, and it shouldn’t interfere with your overall experience.

40. Last Pass

(16908)Downloads: 4,219,260

Install this extension

If you’re the type of person who’s always struggling to remember the hundreds of passwords on different accounts from both work and personal accounts, this extension fixes your issues on the spot. From now on, you’ll only need to remember the one password to rule them all, and get instant secure access to all your other accounts through it. The password manager has great reviews and is highly recommended for digital marketers, who always use one too many tools to remember all their passwords.

41. Pocket 

(5162)Downloads: 2,729,383

Install this extension

You’re about to start saving some time with this extension. It keeps track of all the content you discover that you don’t have time to read on the spot or just want to save for later. It also syncs your account cross-device and you can easily read the bookmarks from your desktop on your mobile or tablet. The best part about it is that it doesn’t even require an Internet connection, once the tab is saved.

42. Momentum

(6575)Downloads: 1,589,696

Install this extension

It’s always a charm to have a reminder on what our most important task of the day is. Momentum replaces the new tab page of your browser with a custom picture every day, while it can also display the weather, a daily focus, your todos and a daily quote if you feel like you’d need some inspiration. It looks clean and it reminds you to stay focused on a very personal way. The todos are divided into tasks and a daily focus, to constantly remind you what the priority of the day is.

43. PushBullet

(3917)Downloads: 1,340,354

Install this extension

We communicate only more than we’d like to admit. However, it still takes a lot of our time, especially if we’re doing it from more than just one device at a time. The tool offers you the possibility to integrate the most popular communication media (from SMS to Whatsapp and Facebook) into one single device that you can use both on your desktop or on your mobile, thus saving a lot of time.

44. Boomerang

(1054)Downloads: 1,109,443

Install this extension

If you like planning ahead, you’re going to like this one. The extension allows you to send emails on a scheduled time frame. All you have to do is write it and then program it to be sent. This way, you will never miss a deadline – not even when you don’t have an Internet connection.

45. 1Password

(481)Downloads: 1,023,937

Install this extension

This extension is made for people who have one too many accounts to manage. It offers you anything from password generators to special protection for credit card passwords. It also divides your account types into folders, so that you never get confused while accessing it. It’s not just a password storage place, it logs you in on the websites and its interaction with the browser is always smooth.

46. One Tab

(5238)Downloads: 1,015,460

Install this extension

It’s not uncommon for us to be upset at browsers when they load too slowly when we most need them – when we have dozens of opened tabs. It’s what One Tab does – reduces the load time by reducing the used space of all the open tabs. You’re going to be displayed all the tabs as a list in one tab, and access them whenever you wish. Their load time will be insignificant, as they will be already probably cached. The extension saves up to 95% of the browser memory and can be a great fix for us, multitaskers.

47. The Great Suspender

(1938)Downloads: 882,787

Install this extension

The extension allows you to configure a personalized time interval after which tabs will be suspended for the better usability of Chrome, or you can do it manually for the tabs that don’t fit the algorithm. If you always have too many tabs opened at the same time, the extension will unload the tabs individually and it will retain the favicons and title texts.

48. Signals

(8784)Downloads: 704,188

Install this extension

The extension allows you to edit your emails in the Gmail box. You can edit the body and subject of your emails and highlight the text you want to keep. You can also organize your emails as to be more efficient. Plus, you can use the functions ‘restore’ and ‘revert’ to go to the original email and then back to the edited version whenever you feel like it.

49. Stay Focusd

(4400)Downloads: 674,406

Install this extension

Creative people are also huge procrastinators, and this is a fact. However, this extension solves the issue of too much time spent on Facebook or too many quizzes taken on Buzzfeed. You can limit the time you’re going to be ‘allowed’ on certain websites that you know reduce your productivity.

50. Speed Dial 2

(5,769)Downloads: 643,890

Install this extension

Save your favorite apps, bookmarks and websites and organize them to increase your productivity. The extension has a very clean design that is meant to keep you away from distractions, and it can be synced cross-device.

51. Todoist

(24,080)Downloads: 379,388

Install this extension

Combine the personal and the professional tasks in order to increase your efficiency. The task manager allows sync and backup on 10+ platforms, along with sharing options for group tasks. It’s great for any busy bee, and helps keeping track of priorities in the sea of deadlines you have to meet.

52. Smooth Scroll

(1,242)Downloads: 154,844

Install this extension

The extension enables smooth scrolling, and it also works with embedded content. The native smooth scroll belongs to the iOS, but it can be replicated on any device with this extension.

53. Keeper 

(1909)Downloads: 97,589

Install this extension

It advertises itself as the most secure password keeper there is, and the best feature is that you can sign in with your fingerprint (available on iPhone). The extension also gives you a virtual vault to stock all the precious information you may be needing to keep confidential.

54. Time Stats

(638)Downloads: 84,367

Install this extension

The extension records how much time you’re spending on different websites. This way, you can keep in touch with how much time you’re spending on a website on average. You can always add or delete websites from the monitoring list, you can delete the saved logs at any time and, most importantly, you can keep an eye on the places on the web that you’re most active.

55. Medium

(16)Downloads: 34,068

Install this extension

The extension is more for teams than individual users. It helps you manage passwords and account for up to 5 different users. It gives a solution to the problem of sharing a spreadsheet with passwords across the team for the entire group to have access to the same platforms. It’s a problem solver if you have to work on more accounts at the same time.

56. Followup.cc

(273)Downloads: 12,002

Install this extension

The extension allows you to keep in touch with your prospects at any time you would like to remember to email them back, directly from your inbox. It’s easy to use really intuitive. You have the option to choose between regular reminders and one-time reminders and they go up to two weeks from now.

57. Popchrom

(166)Downloads: 10,138

Install this extension

The extension allows you to create your own shortcuts to text phrases that can be activated when you type in the letter sequence. Create your personal shortcuts to get you through the repetitive blocks of the same texts you have to write from time to time.

58. List Goal

(121)Downloads: 4,265

Install this extension

The extension will be by your side in your attempt to grow your email list, by giving you real-time advice on what your strategies should look like. It will monitor the goals you’re setting and the actions you’re doing to achieve them, and guide you through the process.

59. Stache

(19)Downloads: 3,250

Install this extension

If you do have Stache for Mac, this extension is going to be your best bud. While it only works for iOS, you’re going to find interesting links with content that you’d need to save and it will suggest further similar pages, while also saving the ones you’ve already found.

60. Price Snoop

(9)Downloads: 2,332

Install this extension

In case you’re interested in pricing policies, this extension will tell you how much a product on Amazon costs on other stores. You’ll also be able to see if the products are available or not on other stores, thus keeping you in touch with the pricing policies. This way, you can keep in touch with the prices charged by your clients for any products that you may be researching, on the spot.

61. Switchmark

(57)Downloads: 2,242

Install this extension

You can switch through more bookmark bars. Switchmark helps you set a number of bookmark bars you’d like to have and then change to the ones that interest you in seconds.

62. Goodbits

(6)Downloads: 1,592

Install this extension

Collect content and save time with Goodbits – you can use the extension to create emails in seconds. It seems easy to use and it helps you organize and prioritize your mails, while also being very intuitive. While writing emails is crucial for the sustainability of your business, it’s also relevant that you optimize the process as much as possible.

63. Ananke Timer

(4)Downloads: 238

Install this extension

If you often find yourself having busy days and it’s become harder to prioritize your tasks, this extension will help you time every task you have from the moment you start it until completion. You can set up more than just one timer at a time.

Website Optimization

64. User Agent Switcher

(1367)Downloads: 1,194,463

Install this extension

If you’ve had enough of testing while developing a website, the extension could be a match to your needs. Switch between user agent strings and set up specific URLs that you wish to spoof every time you do this. If you’ve always complained about testing every change on both desktop and mobile, you’ll find this a crazy helpful time saver.

65. Web Developer

(2104)Downloads: 1,091,172

Install this extension

The extension has a series of developer tools that you may find handy when browsing any webpage. The main categories are: image, miscellaneous, information, outline, resize, tools and options, each of these having their own sub-categories of actions you can take to inspect or modify the current webpage you’re on.

The best thing developers love about it is that it’s very responsive.

66. Firebug Lite

(1,333)Downloads: 686,834

Install this extension

The extension is best used to visually represent HTML elements, DOM elements and Box Model shading. You can also use it for its live editing CSS feature. Although it can be useful in itself, it’s recommended to use it along with Firebug and Chrome Developer Tools for a better and more complete perspective.

67. Tag Assistant

(394)Downloads: 539,849

Install this extension

Tag Assistant helps you check the installation of Google tags, while also suggesting improvements to your implementation. Among the included tags, there is Google Analytics, Adwords Conversion Tracking and Google Tag Manager. You can also record the typical user flow and diagnose or validate it, while you can also get troubleshooting advice for Google Analytics.

68. Window Resizer

(1879)Downloads: 530,290

Install this extension

You can now resize your browser’s window as to simulate all the resolutions you need. Web designers as well as developers will find the extension highly practical for testing purposes, especially since the resolution list is entirely customizable. You can set your window’s position and dimensions and even apply the selected dimensions to the entire window. Because we all know developers love shortcuts, Window Resizer has got some of these as well.

69. Clear Cache

(556)Downloads: 333,669

Install this extension

The extension has one simple purpose – the one of easily clearing your cache without you going through the struggle of confirmation boxes or pop-ups. Of course, you can also opt for the amount of data you want to delete, from app cache to cookies, downloads, file systems, form data, history, indexedDB, localstorage, plugin data passwords and WebSQL.

70. Wappalyzer

(756)Downloads: 331,018

Install this extension

This is a very useful tool if you find yourself wondering what the technologies behind a website are. It gives a complete overview from the JavaScript frameworks to the analytics tools (used to get a view on traffic and performance) and content management systems. It’s indispensable if you’re into searching the trends that seem to work on various successful web platforms, as it gives you insight on what top notch players are using for their business.

71. YSlow

(198)Downloads: 317,276

Install this extension

The extension analyzes the performance of different web pages based on a series of rules that are taken into consideration when evaluating page performance. It doesn’t only diagnose the issues, but it also suggests ways of improving the current performance. The extension is made by Yahoo.

72. IE Tab Multi

(4316)Downloads: 185,129

Install this extension

This is another extension made to satisfy developers’ testing needs. Unlike other tools of the kind, this one behaves like the good old Internet Explorer, allowing you to test IE from the comfort of your Chrome browser. It only supports Windows and it only supports Desktop mode for Windows 8.

73. Stylebot

(1,020)Downloads: 166,341

Install this extension

When you’re testing alternatives you’d like you take into consideration for your newest project, Stylebot changes the entire appearance of websites for you to see what combinations make the best style for your business. You can also preview and install styles created by other users and saved for the public use. You can instantly custom the entire CSS of a website.

74. Quick Javascript Switcher

(343)Downloads: 144,227

Install this extension

You can instantly disable Javascript by hostname and subdomain. The tool also helps you to edit the shortcut of this extension as to be more at your fingertips when you need it, as well as you can opt to permanently disable Javascript.

75. Pendule

(477)Downloads: 103,065

Install this extension

Pendule is an extension that you’ll find extremely useful if you work a lot with CSS. It’s a rather complex tool that allows you to take a large set of actions, from editing the CSS (view, disable embedded styles, inline styles, disable linked stylesheets, show used colors) to image information, viewing JavaScript and generated source, to finally viewport size and resize browser.

76. CSS Viewer

(268)Downloads: 101,612

Install this extension

Exactly what it advertises itself to be, the tool allows you to see the CSS properties of any webpage. In order for it to work properly, it has to access your history and website data. After this, you can hover over any element and see its properties on the spot.

77. Web Boost

(353)Downloads: 72,615

Install this extension

This open source extension helps your tabs load faster, and it doesn’t affect the quality of your images or your videos and the quality of your images doesn’t get to be distorted. It is recommended when you work with many tabs at the same time, and it saves a great deal of loading time.

78. Redirect Path

(93)Downloads: 64,933

Install this extension

The extension provides you information on the 301, 302, 404 and 500 HTTP Status Codes, along with client side and Javascript redirects. This way, you’re immediately notified when something potentially harmful happens to one of your client’s website.

79. Page Refresh

(304)Downloads: 55,600

Install this extension

With Page Refresh you can auto-refresh pages at any desired interval of seconds or minutes, which is a time saver and allows you to focus on the really important aspects of testing your code implementation. The extension an be helpful when you have work in progress that needs to be checked and updated every few seconds/minutes.

80. WASP

(102)Downloads: 24,426

Install this extension

The acronym stands for Web Analytics Solution Profiler and it helps monitoring the data sent from your client’s websites via tags. The tool detects every type of tag automatically, and offers SEO information about the inspected pages. It also allows tag blocking, which may come in handy every now and then.

81. HTML Validator

(176)Downloads: 22,830

Install this extension

The extension validates the HTML for the website you’re inspecting, and the results can either be displayed inline or in a new tab, depending on your preferences. The extension also has keyboard shortcuts for every OS you may be using it from.

82. Sight

(241)Downloads: 17,936

Install this extension

The extension is a Syntax Highlighter and its developers say ‘it makes reading code a joy’. The advertisement is really not far from truth, as the tool also comes with a series of personalization options such as font, size and toggle line numbers.

83. Built With

(72)Downloads: 16,726

Install this extension

Aside from the generic information that kind of gives away what the extension is all about, it also provides in-depth statistics about the technologies used. You can find what technologies are most often used, and spot the growing trends, as well as download popular and successful websites using the technological types you’re interested in.

84. Quick Source Viewer

(59)Downloads: 13,898

Install this extension

The sources it inspects are HTML, Javascript and CSS, in a very compact way. The syntax of the tool is colored, the badge displays the node counts, and the onclick handlers with inline Javascript. The extension can be personalized, as well.

85. Stylesheet Reloader

(7)Downloads: 572

Install this extension

You can reload the external CSS stylesheet of the page you’re currently on, including the imported ones. If you want to avoid reloading the entire page after CSS tweaks, this extension is highly useful. You can also set the key combinations for the shortcuts you want to use as part of this extension.

Design Tools 

86. ColorZilla

(1000)Downloads: 902,922

Install this extension

The tool is mostly used for its color picker, which – along with the CSS gradient generator can help you create color patterns and palettes. The color reader is available in any point of the browser. The eyedropper also maintains a recent history that makes the entire experience easier and more practical.

87. WhatFont

(917)Downloads: 545,995

Install this extension

By enabling it, you can identify on the spot the type of fonts that different webpages are using. You’re also displayed the font size and the line height. The font database is large enough to recognize every font out there. Whatfont helps when analyzing the font families used by different website developers.

88. Page Ruler

(1060)Downloads: 434,053

Install this extension

You can draw a ruler on any page, to check the height, width and position. Resize it depending on your needs. Further, you can update the position changes manually in order to make even the most subtle differences. ‘Element mode’ is a feature of this extension that allows you to see every element of the page when hovering over it with the mouse.

89. Eyedropper

(1035)Downloads: 373,647

Install this extension

This extension allows you to pick colors from different web pages. It helps whenever you don’t have the time to go through an entire process of color recognition. It also comes with a color history where you can store the colors that are most relevant or appropriate to your projects.

90. Nimbus Screenshot

(1218)Downloads: 398,052

Install this extension

It’s not your generic screenshot extension. Nimbus can either capture the webpage you’re on or the entire browser window, and it can also record screencasts. After you’ve done this, you can use arrows or sticky notes to make the content you’re interested in stand out easily. Moreover, you can highlight texts, resize the screenshots, save them or make comments.It’s highly helpful when you want to make annotations on a webpage on the spot.

91. Pic Monkey

(772)Downloads: 180,284

Install this extension

This is one of the most friendliest photo editors out there. It’s intuitive and easy to use and it allows you to open any web image with the extension to make further modifications. You can select the menu options that best fit your editing needs, and transform the image into something you’d share on social media, for instance, in a matter of seconds. From frames to effects, overlays, texts with different fonts, there’s little you cannot add to the images to give them a very personal note.

92. Resolution Test

(338)Downloads: 145,920

Install this extension

The extension is helpful when it comes to testing how your design behaves on different resolutions. It helps you preview how responsive website is. You can either select one or more resolutions to be tested at one time, then see what would happen on different screen sizes.

93. Measurelt

(637)Downloads: 108,281

Install this extension

Find out the width and height of any elements on a webpage in a matter of seconds. You can use it to measure whichever section of a page you’re interested in. The extension is useful for design projects as it gives you a quick idea on what the dimensions of your visual elements should be like, or what proportions successful websites use.

94. Fontface Ninja

(224)Downloads: 101,708

Install this extension

The extension is great for quite an impressive number of reasons. First, it fetches fonts from a wide web database made of the most popular niche websites for font recognition. Then, it also shows you the line spacing, the letter spacing and the size of the font instead of just its name. Third, it hides all advertisements so you can focus on how the specific font looks on a clean webpage. Last, but not least, it will search the font for you and give you the option to buy it (or download it if it’s free).

95. Palette Creator

(172)Downloads: 62,124

Install this extension

The extension is developed for designers and it creates a color palette to match any image on the web. If, for instance, you want to create a palette starting from an image on your website, all you have to do is choose the number of colors that you’d like it to include.

Then you can download the palette and use it to start a new project.

96. Dimensions

(213)Downloads: 48,225

Install this extension

If you ever wanted to measure the radius of a circle and text was standing in your way, then you can’t wait to learn about this extension. It helps you measure the dimension of whatever geometric form and it’s easily activated by pressing the Alt key. You can easily see the dimension of any element you would like to integrate on your website.

The elements through which the measure is taken are: images, input-fields, buttons, videos, gifs, text and icons.

97. Yet Another Lorem Ipsum Generator

*not available anymore

(77)Downloads: 26,874

In case every time you’re trying to test an interface you hate the amount of text that you need just to blurt out, this is an extension you’d like to install. What it does, in fact, is insert blind text into your website’s fields for you to get a better image of what it looks like.

From paragraphs of text, to dates, titles, email addresses, web addresses, the extension generates blind texts for every need of yours.

98. Google Font Previewer

(234)Downloads: 25,546

Install this extension

Choose a font you like from the Google API directory and apply it either to the entire webpage of a specified CSS selector to get an idea of what it looks like. The font previewer is especially useful when you design a new website and are trying to figure out what the fonts look like on the specific page. However, if you know you usually use the same fonts or the same font families you can save those for quicker access.

99. Stencil

(45)Downloads: 15,379

Install this extension

If you post very often to social media or if you just create and update blog posts on a regular basis, you’re going to find this extension extremely practical. You can instantly add text to any image of your choice and make it custom to your marketing needs. The extension has over 100 fonts, and custom watermark, while it also works on every website.

100. Type Sample

(8)Downloads: 12,012

Install this extension

It may come in handy if you’re testing and sampling fonts, as it tells you what fonts are used on different pages when you hover over their content. Clicking on the text opens a panel that allows you to test the font in the extension, after which you can save the sample provided that you have a typesample.com account.

101. Microstock Photo Power Search

(10)Downloads: 1,870

Install this extension

The extension is more than welcomed for designers, as its primary purpose is to help finding free images. The database includes more libraries that are accessed every time you’re trying to find a photo. The extension displays the search results that provide you with a large number of images related to your search query. The more a photo is liked the more it increases its chances to appear in search results, which is an opportunity to promote your work as well.

102. Font Editor

(22)Downloads: 1733

Install this extension

Aside from the fact that this extension allows you to test any font on any website at any time, it also comes with a series of characteristics that make the testing more accurate and precise, among which: a selector, the fontfamily, the font variant, the font weight, the font face, the text transformation and the line height.

Conclusion

This post was hopefully a useful fix for people who constantly work on their browsers and have too many tabs open at all times. Managing them doesn’t require better organizing skills, but little helpers to allow you to focus on one task at a time. It may seem overwhelming, as the number of extensions we chose is quite large, but once you get the hang of it the improvements are visible. The advantages of these extensions lie in optimizing processes that usually take more than just a couple of clicks to perform, reason for which they’re welcome time savers.

If you think there’s maybe an extension that you’re creepily in love with and we missed it, don’t hesitate to share it with us!

Disclaimer: The data we’re presenting about these extensions concerning their availability, the number of downloads, scores and ratings is documented in May 2016.

The post 102 Most Used Chrome Extensions for Digital Marketers appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.

Moreover, how can I not delete your emails if they bring me no added value? None. Except the astonishment of how unprofessional that email is written, it literary brings me nothing. As an irony, it claims to get me a lot of worth (ranking no. 1 on Google and trillions of unique visitors on my website, just to mention some) but actually, there is nothing in for me.

And how can I not delete your emails when you advertise me things I am totally unrelated to, you are not even trying to connect at a personal level, or you try to schedule appointments without me knowing what for.

I am not replying to these failure emails because replying to them might give someone the impression that their emails were well written, they lead to engagement, and they drove results. And that is the last thing I wish to do.

Every time we get a bad outreach email we think ’Oh, I’ll definitely write a post about it someday soon’. But so it happens that we don’t have the time to treat them individually. We gathered the main lessons we’d love to leave as SEO legacy from the over 10 k outreach emails we received, over time, to offer you an idea of what unprofessional propositions look like. From link exchange, guest posts to black hat collaboration, there’s no unsuccessful proposal that escaped our inbox during the last years.

We believe that outreach marketing is best done through human outreach – creating valuable relationships with people in your network, with the purpose of exchanging professional experiences.However, in this article we’re going to present you the opposite of that. As we’ve received over a thousand outreach emails in time, we decided to gather a list of lessons we learned in time. We will present to you some of the most frequent and serious mistakes we found with the outreach emails we received over time. Aside from making a list, we also tried to break them into the most relevant categories.

1. Be Specific When You Write an Email
2. Be Consistent and Eloquent or You Won’t Get a Reply!
3. Never Advertise Your Prospect’s Competitors
4. Avoid Generic Formulas that Lack Personality
5. Don’t Harass Your Prospect! Be Flexible and Patient
6. Don’t Take Your Prospect’s Reply for Granted! Prove Yourself Worthy of a Connection!
7. Don’t Insist Too Much or Your Prospect Will Tag You as Spammy
8. Don’t Send the Same Outreach Templates Over and Over
9. Don’t Overuse Textual Emphasis Features
10. Be Concise. Spare Your Prospect the Huge Block of Text
11. Don’t Give the Idea that Your Email is Spam!
12. Target a Specific Audience or You Won’t Be Remembered!
13. Keep Relevant! Avoid Long and Generic Content
14. Stress On the Added Value of Your Proposal!
15. Fix the Broken English – Sloppy Content Is Not an Option!
16. Offer Something Meaningful Before Asking for Favors
17. Be Clear About Your Intentions. Shady Tactics Don’t Work with Professionals

1. Be Specific When You Write an Email 

You’d think it’s almost redundant to say, let alone stress, that researching is crucial before an outreach campaign.

You cannot simply email the same template to 200 people and hope for the best.

First of all, no influencer will read an email further than ‘Hello, I hope you are well.’ Who am I? Do you even know the type of business I’m running? I believe not. What gave you away?

You cannot simply offer to give me a service that I’m into the business of offering too. It’s not ‘unprofessional’. It’s more than that – it’s outrageous and messy not to know who you’re talking to.

2. Be Consistent and Eloquent or You Won’t Get a Reply!

Before anything approach-related, a quick technicality: You can decide either to write your message subject with capital letters or not. A middle way is not professional.

Concerning the email. First of all, having typos inside the ever-so-short outreach email is not quite professional. It means you were in a hurry.

It’s hard to assume that somebody who doesn’t even bother to write both letters in the word ‘we’ has actually conducted a thorough research on our business before contacting us.

A smartly put marketing-based approach could have spiked the interest of any SEO professional out there. Yet, it doesn’t take in-depth research to notice that we also offer a rank tracking module – helping our customers constantly monitor their rankings.

Actually, one only needs to access our site.

In this context, asking us to use another service for better rankings is too much. Not to mention that this approach, from a knowledgeable professional to another, may have worked if it had been based on a very specific piece of context.

For instance: ‘Hi, Razvan. I also have an SEO tool and I noticed that your rankings dropped for the x keyword last week. Just wanted to friendly let you know.’

Tip: It’s not advised to write to the owner of a comprehensive SEO tool explaining in broad terms what the SEO activity is about.

Assuming you should spend at least 5 minutes on a website before emailing to whomever (it’s not certain from the email body), you should know what their activity is about.

Not to mention how demeaning it is to offer to do our job for us. Clearly an awful example of spammy outreach.

3. Never Advertise Your Prospect’s Competitors

We’re not proposing an all-night-reading-our-blog-inside-out. We’re talking minimum facts, such as our website being a platform that advertises our SEO tool, which happens to be one of this proposition’s competitors.

Despite being a little rude and uninformed, the guy is also sending a generic message that says nothing about our site at all. It does present a large array of possible issues of any website out there. How convenient, right?

There’s a reason why the spammy strategy doesn’t work. It is true. You can do a lot of documentation and come up with 20 great emails, both relevant and personal or you can send 500 random spammy texts.

It is also true that, most likely, each of these times only 5 of the webmasters will reply to your email.

What makes the difference is the type of connection you’re making and its relevance for your business. These outreach campaigns – whichever their purpose – are meant to enhance our marketing efforts and engage a new audience through the means of an influencer. And it’s only the first of these techniques that will lead you there.

4. Avoid Generic Formulas that Lack Personality

Quite the same issue as the other emails had. Add a plus of bullet-ed list, that makes the inappropriate email easier to read – to make sure that we understood how they did not bother to read about us. The main issue of this approach is that it fails to address us personally. Most of the marketers out there don’t have the time to reply to senders who weren’t even interested to be personal.

On a more serious note, the most damaging fact about writing such an email isn’t the email. It’s not even the fact that you won’t get a reply. It’s that not only have you failed win a connection, but that you have forever lost it.

These days, when you talk to a person you talk to one thousand. You cannot afford to ruin your reputation before even having one.

Anyone receiving this email will put you on a professional blacklist where you’ll either be quoted as a bad example (guilty as charged!) or you’ll just be forever ignored.

Maybe your business has just started and you’re not familiar with these common sense rules. Maybe in 5 years’ time you’ll be more mature and looking to increase your network. Some of the people will never get over the fact that you’ve once been this sloppy.

There’s a broad category of people who will not take no for an answer. While generally in your professional life this isn’t a bad thing, it also depends on how you’re putting it.

However, you can’t just endlessly send automated emails without understanding that a lack of an answer has its reasons – usually the fact that you did it wrong the first time.

5. Don’t Harass Your Prospect! Be Flexible and Patient

When you’re used to dealing with professionals, it’s intolerable to see stubborn attitudes accompanied by no concept/content.

The example above refers to a person who sent us over 30 emails in approximately one year – none of which got a response. This, however, didn’t make any bell ring. Borderline harassing, this attitude will bring you no luck with a webmaster.

We’re all for follow-ups. Every business relationship has to be maintained properly and won’t, supposedly, limit to one or two interactions. But sending a ton of follow-ups – that are most likely automated – while repeating the same mistakes clearly won’t get you too far.

6. Don’t Take Your Prospect’s Reply for Granted! Prove Yourself Worthy of a Connection!

Maybe the most important observation about this outreach email isn’t even that it comes from someone so insistent.

We believe that every reaction (or lack thereof) has its cause. The main cause why we didn’t reply to this person is that it’s such a bad practice to send entire article, already written on a topic of your choice, on your first outreach email.

It says a lot about not being available for longer talks in order to provide a truly appropriate topic to write on. It also shows lack of flexibility (of course, assuming it wasn’t a bulk message, case in which it is way worse).

 

You cannot do this for a good number of reasons:

• You can’t know weather the webmaster is really interested in a guest post on his blog. The more professional the webmaster, the slimmer the odds;
• It’s not professional to assume that the webmaster will be interested in that specific domain – let alone ‘serve’ an article already written. Most of the website admins will at least impose a few conditions. Sending an attached post is almost a guarantee you won’t be taken seriously;
• The topic of the guest post is usually something you negotiate with the webmaster, assuming – of course – you’ve been decent enough as to get a chance to publish on your prospect’s blog;
• Take the sentence ‘I have attached best unique content which I want to publish this on your site as a guest post’. It’s not just poor phrasing and contextualizing. It’s broken English – the new low in any professional industry of your choice. Moreover, this email being about your content writing qualities, how could anyone ever trust your content creating rigor when you didn’t get the 2 sentences right?

7. Don’t Insist Too Much or Your Prospect Will Tag You as Spammy

This is perhaps the most fascinating example of this article. These people think we’re interested in their LED factory’s products.
They’ve sent us countless emails, with different texts and approaches, from different email addresses, through time.

Each one of these emails had something DIFFERENT wrong with it.

This one, for instance, used the very off putting ‘dear sir/madam’ formula. Also, the text of the email was quite telegraphic for someone who’s been emailing us for months.

So many wrong things here:

• The ‘Hi, dear’ formula, that’s never appropriate in a professional environment;
• ‘We found you here and know that your are business on LED products also. We are one. ’ – aside from the poor English (and I also mean it in the compassionate sense- a bit smart ass), there’s no true fact there aside from them producing LEDs. Also, we’d be curious to find out what ‘here’ is in reference too;
• Concerning the style, the paragraphs are discontinuous and broken off, clearly not sending a favorable message, even assuming the content would have been more appropriate to our field;

Aside from the other issues we’ve analyzed until now, there is something outstanding about this particular message.

This was perhaps the 20th message we got for a business proposal, throughout a year. It means the people running this company certainly have a marketing department: one that stores data about their network and analyzes the market and, sadly enough, composes the texts they’re sending out.

One of the most scaring risks you’re taking through sending an unprofessional outreach email is having people believe that your entire company’s marketing efforts are based on random approaches instead of coordinated effort. Long term, this can cause serious brand management issues that can lead to significant loss in profit.

8.Don’t Send the Same Outreach Templates Over and Over

It’s true that the sir/madam line isn’t the most inspiring. But that’s not the most off putting about this email. It’s being entirely generic what makes it inappropriate.

If your email works just as well if I’m the SEO industry or if I’m selling pipes, maybe you’re doing it wrong. This ‘Hi, your blog is informative, fun, inspiring and eye-opening’ approach doesn’t work in a competitive industry.

And it’s far from over. Add being insistent to this mix and you’ve got yourself the worst guest post pitch possible. Not to mention that the phrase ‘Thank you for your consideration’ should imply we’ve already answered to your thousand emails – which is both false and annoying.

It also suffices to say that the emails we published in this article are just a few of the instances this person approached us.

9. Don’t Overuse Textual Emphasis Features  

One of the issues of emails containing huge blocks of text is the amount of content written. Textual emphasis is generally used to shift the attention on the most valuable idea you’re pitching. When you overuse it, the entire email will look sloppy and spammy.

And there is more than one other reason why we wouldn’t recommend this type of outreach.

• Promotional outreach is too much. People barely read your emails when you’re giving them heads up about their own issues. Nobody will be kind enough with their time as to read something promoting your business in their free time. And supposing we would need this company’s services, outreaching just to make themselves known is very intruding in terms of marketing strategy;
• Not being specific enough. Aside from not knowing my name (which literally would have taken a few seconds), the email doesn’t even seem to offer something specific – a bunch of generic services doesn’t mean walking an extra mile. Carefully researching as to propose something of true relevance for the influencer does;
• It doesn’t offer competitive advantage. That’s the worst that could possibly happen in this very competitive environment – especially online, where there are no other boundaries but the quality of your services and how you’re pitching them. Other than (not satisfactory) covering the informational part, this email doesn’t stand out by anything.

10. Be Concise. Spare Your Prospect the Huge Block of Text

Looking at the email below, other than having wording issues, you’ll believe it’s decent. Of course, not one of the ones you actually ANSWER to, but not to be presented on a negative list either!

And then comes a huge block of text just below the signature. Psychologically, when sending an outreach email you have to ease the influencer into participating/responding/doing something.

This is one of the poorest examples. Besides not having a good chance with the email copy per se, this huge press release attached is a major turn off, even assuming that you’d initially be inclined to answer.

11. Don’t Give the Idea that Your Email is Spam!

The fact that this email is long and not at all specific somehow weighed so much because it was so diluted and irrelevant. This P.S. also indicates that there is a high chance for it to be spammy.

The need to integrate this final disclaimer comes from the lack of planning in designing the outreach campaign, along with the recipients who were destined to receive the emails, and the lack of research as well.

12. Target a Specific Audience or You Won’t Be Remembered!

Offering such a wide array of services should be accompanied by targeted promotion for each of them. Accordingly, every single service should have its own targeted audience, and they shouldn’t be mixed all together, but two or three of them exceptionally.

However, emailing an influencer to let them know about all these services is an unfortunate strategy for the following reasons:

• It doesn’t allow the receiver to focus on any of these, since they’re too many;
• Assuming the influencer would be interested in one of these services, they would still ignore the emails since the services are advertised together;
• It doesn’t allow focusing on the competitive advantages of his business because of the information vertigo.

13. Keep Relevance! Avoid Long and Generic Content

In this example, we’re going to skip the ‘not-knowing-my-name’ and ‘offering help in my area of expertise’ issues, to address even more important ones.

The email is way too long.

We believe there could be successful blog posts shorter than this. First of all, nobody will give you credit for a ‘unique strategy’ that isn’t that unique in the first place, and that you’re not even a little reluctant to present even before knowing my name. The ‘buy-me-dinner-first’ rule applies.

 

Usually, this kind of proposition requires intensive previous talking about the specific industry that we’re active in, the size of our business etc. assuming this wouldn’t be the same you’re advertising for.

Last but not least, it’s absolutely redundant to just go through all the steps of getting better ranking, traffic, visibility on social media platforms etc. Instead, a more concise approach to sum up the major benefits of these steps would have made a much more powerful approach.

14. Stress on the Added Value of Your Proposal!

We’re positively certain that it wouldn’t have taken more than 40 seconds on our website to realize that your public is not very successfully chosen. In our blogging history, we haven’t ever published something similar. Moreover, we rarely publish infographics, and assuming we’d be open to let this situation change, it would take something that’s truly specific and relevant to both our niche and the audience that usually reads our content.

Aside from this, the same mistake as sending out an already written guest post is made. You cannot just attach an infographic that is not even related to my business and then hope we’re going to publish it on our blog.

15. Fix the Broken English – Sloppy Content Is Not an Option!

This is one first examples of sloppy content. Very generic, it works perfectly in the fashion world as well as it does in retailing. You cannot afford to be this evasive in your approach, which should be all about convincing you’re worth taking into consideration as a contributor.

The nature of this context imposes the rigor of relevance, as well as a sense of personality casually slipped into the conversation. The email below fails to offer any of these.

This email is differently generic than the previous one. This one tries to achieve a more personal endeavor. However, it fails to address my name, and it also contains superficial wording such as ‘frequent visitor of your blog’.

Moreover, I would place a bet that Phillip didn’t even enter our blog once. If he had, he would have known that we don’t cover graphic design among our topics, that our case studies mostly conduct other kinds of analyses.

Of course, besides the huge mistake of offering to send us an already written guest post on a topic of his choice.

Before even trying to think of a specific competitive advantage, get your facts straight – that is not our infographic. The email had already started bad with the ‘sir/madam’ formula. Further, making an offer based on a false premise is quite the path to failure.

Plus, being so generic as not to mention anything related to our area of expertise makes the entire proposition futile.

The ‘I need your help’ approach is usually accompanied by ‘you’ll also have advantages’. While the others are only generic and non-personal, this email is vague and it needs extensive conversation.

When addressing somebody who generally lacks time because of the industry, the idea is to be catchy and promising from the first attempt. Whenever you fail to do this, the chances to ever get a response are significantly slimmer.

Plus, just stating you are a student won’t make the prospect accept your offer just because your assumed intentions are good. It takes more than that to be taken into consideration as a professional (be it budding).

The entire idea behind this email is odd. It begins with ‘you’re a professional, your articles were useful during my documentation’ and it ends with ‘I’m equally capable, let me write for you’. If you’re casually ‘looking for some information on creating backlinks’ one morning, this doesn’t represent a savvy approach that could bring you a high response rate.

In other words, don’t make the approach so thin when it comes to the idea behind it. Creating a scenario often comes in handy, as it places our relevance in your professional life and it gives us a good start.

However, superficial readings don’t make profitable conversation starters.

Perhaps the worst kind of outreach failures come from people who have the potential to write something worth your while. It doesn’t seem like we do accept guest posts on a regular basis, we never gave this idea to anyone. On the contrary, just like anyone else who’s a professional in this industry, we’re very careful with the guest posts we’re accepting.

Anyone who pitches you an idea should know this, especially if they’re ‘an avid blogger’.

Another mistake is presenting examples of your content, using broken English. A sloppy email will fail to generate a good response rate. It’s impossible not to see the mistakes before anything else, especially since you’ve been spending years trying to build an eye for identifying them.

First off, for somebody who benefits of a large professional team, you sure missed your research. It’s unacceptable to call us ‘cognitiveseo.com’. It lacks seriousness and gives away your generic approach.

Second, it wouldn’t kill seeing who you’re writing to, as it’s almost embarrassing to receive an offer from someone performing the same type of services as you do. It’s like telling you you’re not doing your job well. And I don’t mean ‘you missed a little something here’.

That’s a friendly approach, very specific and it shows investment, as it took time to come across it. On the opposite side, there’s the very wide email we received from somebody who wishes to make a link audit on our website.

16. Offer Something Meaningful Before Asking for Favors

Some of the email senders have no real motivation for which you should do them favors. No elaborate explanations, not one good, specific reason. Just because they’ve got a business and you’ve got a business and you seem to have exposure. This is as far as the thought process goes.

The only benefit presented in the email is our readers, happy to take advantage of their products. However, while this is necessary, it may not be enough of a premise to accept the featured guest post.

This shows a huge leap of faith in the outreach campaign, which most of the times won’t bring the desired results. Instead of being specific and to the point, this email has just managed to leave us extremely disappointed.

Needless to say, the broken English didn’t help much, either.

Reading this email really made me wonder if before starting the outreach campaigns they read about the business. Because, regarding this example, my instinct suggest ‘not really, no’.

Secondly, let me walk you through how inappropriate this request is. To us, it’s the equivalent of knocking on a stranger’s door at 4 a.m., casually asking if they’re not interested in holding your huge wardrobe for a while – you’re sure they’ll benefit from it, and their friends will like it too, when they’ll visit.

A write-up in this industry takes a lot of effort. Because we’re aware how complicated it is to have a sustainable strategy when it comes to your website’s profile, we’re often reluctant to reply to people who take it so easily.

17. Be Clear About Your Intentions. Shady Tactics Don’t Work with Professionals

The reason why webmasters stopped hosting paid articles on their blogs lies in the guidelines of being a good professional. When quantity and not quality is the purpose, you will be careless about professional standards. This kind of situation often escalates from a nice bonus that comes with a niche article to publishing something so far from your website’s area of interest that affects your rankings.

When they first noticed how dangerous of a slippery slope this technique is, people in the industry all stopped using it as a perk. Today, a few years after that, it’s almost outrageous to receive an email proposing to exchange money for content hosting and links.

It is very similar to how we’re socially perceiving actions and activities happening in the Middle Ages (and, from an evolutionary standoff, 4-5 years ago were the SEO’s Middle Ages. Under no circumstance would we allow anything similar to happen and whoever tries to advocate such practices loses all credibility.

There are some people who lack SEO perspective. Sometimes a proposition like this one sounds so unacceptable because it’s far from being done properly. I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen/read/heard of some similar strategy that actually worked, assuming that at least one of the parties was a trustworthy professional.

And it’s not just ignoring some of the search engine’s guidelines. Accepting such a proposition is giving up your efforts’ sustainability that took you years of hard work to implement.

Whenever it comes to avoiding SEO violations, I believe that the guidelines mean something a little different than linking to a partner site instead of yours directly. However complicated it is for a search engine to detect these techniques, it’s always best to keep it White Hat.

There are other reasons, aside from being a true professional, for which these practices shouldn’t be encouraged. Let’s all agree for a second that our main purpose is to satisfy an audience through the means of our content.

While generally it’s quite complicated to raise to the standards as it is, being shady with our links and sources clearly would generate solid traffic loss, implemented long-term.

What’s even sadder about these practices is that they’re so common, they’ve got intermediaries.

And they’re insisting.

On the one hand, it’s not that hard to understand how people who don’t come from our industry or didn’t have a digital marketer taking care of their account would easily start such a promising business.

Especially with all the you’ve-worked-so-hard-let’s-monetize-it ego-bait.

The honesty of some of these emails is puzzling to us (and, I’m sure, to some of you as well). Being used to white hat practices, all kinds of creative and innovative approaches makes it so hard to ignore such an email.

Sometimes all you wish to do is reply and teach them a lesson. However, since that doesn’t really solve the problem at hand, you’ll just archive it and save it for a long unfortunate-practices blog post.

It goes without saying that the additional info is actually the pricing offer. Which takes me back to knowing your audience. Somebody who’s visited our website at least once and had a general idea of what we’re doing would never send such a proposition to us.

Assuming that such a black hat business exists, it still failed to do its research. You cannot email people randomly. This is why Matt Cutts (head of the Web Spam team at Google) got propositions similar to this one – because people don’t do their research.

Conclusion

There are many (creative) ways of failing at outreach attempts. However, we hope this list was helpful as to give you a general idea of what’s truly unacceptable. Any other possible mistakes can be worked out through careful practices and a lot of time investment.

What about you? What’s the worst outreach email you’ve ever received?

The post Why Your Outreach Failed and Why I’ll Always Delete Your Emails appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.