Firefox is a great browser, and one of the things that makes it so great is it’s wide selection of add-ons. Some of these add-ons are great for SEO work. We’ve compiled a list of 5 SEO add ons that you can get for Firefox:

1. RankQuest SEO Toolbar
   RankQuest SEO(Search Engine Optimization) Toolbar provides you quick access to more than 30 intuitive SEO tools. Alexa Rank and Page Rank provided by Alexa and Google respectively ensures the popularity of the site.
2. SEOpen
   SEO services: Track sites placement at Google and Yahoo for any keyword. Watch Google PageRank (PR), Backlinks, Saturation over time. Graph and table presentation of the data.
3. SEOQuake
   Seoquake is a Mozilla Firefox SEO extension aimed primarily at helping web masters who deal with search engine optimization(SEO) and internet promotion of web sites.
4. Foxy SEO Tool
   Foxy SEO Tool offers tools for search engine optimization (SEO), web traffic and page analysis for webmasters and web professionals.
5. Keyword Spy
   KeywordSpy SEO/PPC Plugin – Do your competitive research in SEO & PPC right from your browser! Download the revolutionary plugin which will change the way you do keyword research & competitor tracking, while you browse on Google, Yahoo in Real-time.

• Pages do not display correctly in browsers, which can cause a whole number of problems.
• Search engines cannot index your pages due to them not being able to read badly crafted code.
• Modern design software cannot edit your pages correctly due to invalid code.
• Adapting your pages to updated code standards becomes more difficult if you do not keep up with them.
• Creating mobile versions of pages is very difficult with invalid pages to begin with.

So how do you check if you pages are valid? First off, you need to check your HTML code. Use the W3C’s Markup Validator Tool. Just enter the URL of your sites, and look at the results. Next you should probably check for broken links. Using the W3C’s Link Checker, you can find broken links in pages, invalid links, etc. Last, but certainly not least, you need to check your CSS code to ensure it is valid, and will display correctly on all browsers and platforms. Use the CSS Validator to ensure that your site meets the W3C CSS standards.

These tools will:

• If your pages are valid, inform you of the standards that your pages meet, as well as give you embed code to put a badge on your site demonstrating the validity.
• If they are not valid, it will give you a list of things that are invalid, so you can get to work fixing them.

Fixing invalid pages will allow your site to benefit greatly, but perhaps you are not skilled enough to fix them yourself. A web design company such as RP Design can fix the issues for you to ensure your pages are validated.

The following video is a small introduction to the internet.

Now that you have a bit of an idea of the history surrounding the internet, I will explain the way the internet works today.

First off, let me explain a couple of key terms. A server is a computer that holds some type of information on the internet. It could be the page you are trying to access, or simply information for your computer.

A client is a computer that connects to a server and makes a request. Your PC is a client.

The internet is what’s known as a centralized network. This means that it runs on a client-server setup, where computers such as your PC makes requests to servers on the internet.

Let’s talk about the basics of the internet. The internet is essentially a massive grid of clients and servers, interacting with each other. Each computer, whether it be a client or a server has what’s called an IP Address. This address is similar to the street address of your house. It allows other computers to connect directly to your computer, and vice-versa. Remembering the IP address of every computer you wanted to connect to would be difficult, so we have what are called domain names.

When you type a website into your browser, say google.com. Your computer has no idea where google.com is. There are servers that work kind of like directories for your computer. These are called DNS servers. So your computer asks a DNS server what the IP Address of google.com is. Once the DNS server responds, you computer connects directly to google.com using the IP Address.

If you think about a website like a house, think about if it has a bunch of doors for different purposes. This is the equivalent of ports. When you access a website, it is usually on port 80, which is designed for HTTP, which is the transfer of HTML pages. Other ports exist however, and are used for different purposes. I will not go into detail regarding other ports however, since there are nearly 50,000 of them in use!

Once your computer has the IP Address of google.com. It establishes a connection on port 80. Your computer then makes a request to download the home page of google in HTML format. Google’s server responds by sending you the homepage in HTML format.

The other main way to traverse the internet is through the use of hyperlinks. These are essentially parts of a webpage that guide your browser to other destinations on the internet. The following image gives you a good representation of first, the networks of the internet, and second, a minute portion of hyperlinks on the internet.

This should give you a slight glimpse into the relative size of the internet. Now that you know the basics on how the internet started, and how it works, it will help you in your future SEO endeavors. If you head is spinning from all this information however, perhaps you should consider clicking the banner on the right, and hiring RP Design.