SEO

5 min read

SEO Bookmarklets for Busy Marketers (and How to Create Your Own)

Written by

Jake Ward

Published on

January 3, 2023

On average, marketers are using more than 12 different tools to manage their company’s campaigns and data, some are using more than 31. That’s a lot of tools to navigate over the course of a working day.

But what if we can navigate these tools more efficiently? And, what if we can perform specific tasks in these tools with a click of a button from your browser?

Well, bookmarklets help you do just that. In this article, I’ll cover what a bookmarklet is, how you can create them, and the best bookmarklets for SEO.

What is a bookmarklet?

Bookmarklets are similar to the normal bookmarks you have in your browser, but instead of bookmarking a URL, you bookmark short snippets of JavaScript code that act as 'buttons' in your Chrome bookmarks bar.

Here's an example:

javascript:(function(){ window.open('https://app.ahrefs.com/site-explorer/overview/v2/subdomains/live?target='+location.host)})();

This code opens the website you’re on in Ahrefs Site Explorer with one click.

Pretty useful, right?

How to save bookmarklets

Saving bookmarklets is easy. Here’s how:

From my list of SEO bookmarklets below, find the title of the bookmarklet you wish to save in this Google Sheet (no download required).
Right click on your bookmark bar and add a page.
Name your bookmark and copy and paste the javascript code.
That’s it. You're ready to go.

Click here to access all the SEO bookmarklets.

How to create your own bookmarklet

Before we get into the list of SEO bookmarklets, I first want to show you how you can adapt existing bookmarklets and create your own.

We’ll use the previous example. Let’s say we want to create a bookmarklet that opens the website you’re on, but in SimilarWeb, instead of Ahrefs.

We want to change the URL slug within the code from:

javascript:(function(){ window.open('https://app.ahrefs.com/site-explorer/overview/v2/subdomains/live?target='+location.host)})();

To the SimilarWeb URL slug when a website is searched in their platform:

javascript:window.open('https://similarweb.com/website/'
+window.location.host);

The best bookmarklets for SEO

Here is a list of useful bookmarklets I’ve collated over the years. Some I use to perform daily SEO tasks, some I only use every so often, and others I think are cool and deserve to be shared.

I've separated the bookmarklets into three categories:

On-site SEO bookmarklets
SEO analysis bookmarklets
Miscellaneous bookmarklets

But first, I want to credit Glen Allsopp at Detailed for creating most of my favourite bookmarklets I'm including below. Check out his blog post for more even advanced bookmarklets.

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On-site SEO bookmarklets

Domain Index Status

This SEO bookmarklet displays the number of pages indexed by Google for that specific domain. It’s a basic search operator, but an important one nonetheless. It’s a good check to do to see if your pages are indexing properly or finding those unusual pages and potential issues.

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URL Index Status

Similar to the version above, but this only displays the index status of one particular page or all pages within a category.

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Past Week Index Status

You guessed it, this displays all pages indexed by Google within the past week. Using the drop-down menu, this can also be filtered by past hour, past 24 hours, past month, past year and a custom date range if you really want to get specific.

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Common Index Issues

Multi Query Index Status Google Search Operator

Finds pages indexed by Google that maybe shouldn't be.

This includes:

Demo pages or subdomains
Duplicate homepages
Pages with Lorem Ipsum text
Test pages
Duplicated pages with '2' in the URL
Screenshots
Sample pages
Landing pages for paid advertising

You can obviously remove and add queries as you please for your specific website, but the above is generally a good start.

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-In Title

I wanted to get this one in for two reasons:

It allows you to quickly find pages with without a specific phrase (like a brand name, as per the above example).
It's a very useful search operator to know when using SEO bookmarklets and filtering out pages you don't need to see (like in the previous bookmarklet).

Additionally, you can create a version without the minus as a shortcut to find pages WITH a specific word or phrase.

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Lorem Ipsum

Finds pages with 'Lorem Ipsum' placeholder text. These pages normally occur when using WordPress themes and the company doesn't realise they exist.

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HTTP Pages

Identifies pages that are not secure, shouldn't be there, or in some cases, not connected to the main website.

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Duplicate Content Check

Identify all pages that are repeating the exact same content. To use, copy a sentence or paragraph > open the bookmarklet > paste the text > hit 'ok'.

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Siteliner Test

Find pages with duplicate content and broken links at scale with Siteliner.

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Word Count

Quickly find out the number of words or characters used on a page or a specific section of a page. To use, highlight the text you're analysing > open the bookmarklet.

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Highlight Headings

Highlights, and labels, all headings used on a page.

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Alt Text Check

Convert images into the given alt text. For example, the image above was a picture of a cast iron pan and the given alt text is "crane cast iron frying pan".

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View Naked URLs

Strip all hyperlinked anchor text to the naked URL. Click the title above to try it, you will be able to see the full Javascript code for each bookmarklet.

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