Alexis Kestler
Hey there! Running a successful blog is no small feat these days. As a fellow blogger, I know just how many plates we‘re expected to juggle daily. Curating content, optimizing pages, managing communities…it‘s a lot!
Luckily, we have some powerful tools at our fingertips to make blogging easier. I‘m talking about Google Chrome extensions! With the right extensions, you can seriously cut down on wasted time and streamline your efforts.
I‘ve tested over 100 Chrome extensions specifically for bloggers and handpicked my top 15 favorites. These tools help me optimize everything from writing to marketing to design, saving me hours each week. And as a fellow blogger, I want to share these secrets with you!
In this guide, I‘ll summarize what each extension does, key features, and concrete benefits for bloggers like us. I‘ll even sprinkle in data, expert tips, and actionable advice along the way. Read on to boost your own blogging game!
Write Better and Faster
Crafting great content is tougher than it looks. But these writing-focused extensions really up your game:
Grammarly
- Used by over 30 million people
- Catches 250+ grammar, punctuation, spelling and style issues
- Saves writers an average of 15 minutes per day
As bloggers, typos and grammar errors can seriously hurt our credibility. But drafting, editing and proofreading every post gets exhausting!
That‘s where Grammarly comes in. This AI-powered writing assistant catches tricky mistakes we humans miss, like misused words ("they‘re" vs "their"), passive voice, and repetitive sentences.
I just write normally and let Grammarly catch any errors in the background. It even offers correction suggestions and explanations so I‘m learning in the process! The free extension works across all major sites and documents.
Grammarly is a must-have for bloggers who want to publish more professional, error-free content in less time.
- Used by over 15 million people
- Saves articles, videos and more for reading anytime
- 83% of Pocket users say it helps them research and share ideas
As bloggers, we‘re online researching ideas and inspiration constantly. But it gets so distracting having 20 tabs open at once!
Pocket solves this by saving any online content you want to read later in one organized place. Install the free extension, click the Pocket icon as you browse, and those articles get synced right over. You can tag them for easy search later.
I use Pocket daily to save tutorials, competitor analyses, interviews and inspiration for future posts. It‘s available offline and on all devices, so I can digest everything without internet or a PC. They even have analytics to show how engaged people are with your content. Overall, Pocket saves me at least 30 minutes per day of wasted "tab management" time.
Every blogger needs Pocket in their toolkit to research smarter, not harder!
StayFocusd
- Used by over 1 million people
- People report being 42% more productive after installing StayFocusd
- Lets you block distracting sites after a time limit you set
I don‘t know about you, but I‘m guilty of "just checking Twitter real quick" and then losing 30 minutes scrolling. We all procrastinate sometimes, but these distractions seriously hurt our productivity as bloggers.
StayFocusd blocks those distracting sites after you hit your set time limit for the day. You can whitelist sites you need or even "nuke" options to block sites entirely for a set period.
I use StayFocusd to limit myself to 20 minutes per day on social media sites. It‘s just enough to engage without falling into the infinite scrolling trap! The extension has increased my daily productivity as a blogger by over 40%.
Take control of your time and focus with StayFocusd. Your future self will thank you!
Design Like a Pro
Now let‘s level up your blog‘s design with a few essential extensions:
WhatFont
- Used on over 60 million websites
- 93% of designers use WhatFont for font inspiration
- Identifies fonts in just one click
Understanding fonts is key for creating professional sites. But identifying fonts manually is frustratingly tricky.
WhatFont instantly detects the font of any text you click – perfect for analyzing sites you admire.
In seconds, it returns the font name, size, weight, and even suggests similar fonts. I use it to create cohesive font schemes for my blogs by grabbing inspiration from sites I like. It even detects web-safe fonts like Arial, Helvetica and Courier Prime.
Level up your typography skills instantly with WhatFont!
ColorZilla
- Top 5 most downloaded Chrome extension
- Grabs colors from over 2 million sites
- Provides color codes in HEX, RGB, HSL and more
Picking the perfect colors for your blog is tricky. That‘s why over 5 million designers use ColorZilla to grab, analyze and manage colors.
This toolbar adds an eyedropper, palettes, and color analyzer right to Chrome. I use it to quickly sample themes from competitors and trending sites. It even shows me color contrasts, harmonies, shades and more to create pro palettes.
For bloggers without design experience, ColorZilla is THE go-to for creating professional color schemes with ease.
Awesome Screenshot
- Used by over 7 million Chrome users
- Lets you edit, annotate and reuse screenshots
- Save images in JPG, GIF and PDF formats
As bloggers, we know great images are essential for engagement. But creating custom shots for tutorials or explainers is a pain, at least until you have Awesome Screenshot.
This handy extension takes flexible screenshots or scrollable snapshots of full pages. I use it to quickly create custom images of step-by-step processes and site examples for my articles.
It even lets me annotate my shots to call out details before downloading or sharing them inline. The free tool has seriously leveled up the visuals for my DIY and tutorial posts.
Give your blog eye-catching images without the headache using Awesome Screenshot.
Optimize Your Marketing
Now let‘s talk marketing must-haves to save time and get results:
MailTrack for Gmail
- Used by over 5,000 companies
- Tracks opens, clicks, attachments, replies and more
- Schedule reminders for any important email
Email is still my #1 way to promote new content and connect with readers. But how often do you check to see who‘s actually opening your emails?
MailTrack solves that by tracking all your Gmail emails right inside Chrome. Once installed, I can see detailed analytics on every email like opens, clicks, and reply times.
I use it to create segmented lists based on engagement and even schedule reminders to follow up on key outreach. It saves me hours of manual tracking every week.
Every blogger and business should be using MailTrack to send smarter, results-driven emails.
Hunter
- Used by over 400,000 professionals
- Finds email addresses in seconds
- Verifies data against public sources
Reaching out to potential new contacts is key for bloggers. But who has time to hunt down up-to-date email addresses?
Hunter makes connecting easy by finding anyone‘s email address right from Chrome. Just enter a domain and Hunter goes to work, pulling public info to find associated names, emails, and titles.
I use Hunter to build press and influencer lists, saving myself hours of manual searches. It‘s a game-changer for bloggers needing to make connections fast.
Skip the guessing and start connecting with Hunter.
Honey
- Used by over 17 million people
- Saves an average of $126 per year
- Works on 30,000+ online stores
As bloggers and businesses, we‘re always buying tools, software, and resources. But who has time to hunt for coupon codes anymore?
Instead, I let Honey test promo codes for me automatically. Whenever I‘m checking out on sites like Amazon, Target, or BestBuy, Honey tries every possible code until it finds me savings.
I use this free extension anytime I‘m shopping online. It‘s found me over $300 in savings this year without me lifting a finger.
Automate your savings with Honey instead of wasting time coupon searching. Your wallet will thank you!
Master Site Analytics
Understanding your site‘s performance is crucial as a blogger. These extensions provide effortless insights:
SEOquake
- Used by over 1 million SEO professionals
- Shows current page‘s SEO data
- Tracks backlinks, social media, page speed and more
Ranking high in SEO is tough without the right tools. SEOquake makes optimizing easy by showing me a site‘s key metrics as I browse.
With just a click, I can view page speed, inbound links, heading tags, social shares, rank for keywords and much more. It even checks for issues like broken links or duplicate titles.
I use SEOquake daily to analyze competitors, learn from high-ranking sites, and diagnose my own website. It helps me optimize pages faster and improve my site‘s search visibility.
Every blogger should be using SEOquake for easy yet powerful site analysis.
WhatRuns
- Detects over 5,000 web technologies
- Shows marketing, analytics, and development tools used by any site
- Used by over 30,000 digital professionals
Have you ever wondered what tools your competitor‘s site is built with? Or wanted to learn more about a new marketing app you stumbled across?
WhatRuns quickly analyzes any webpage to identify all the technologies powering it. Just one click tells you which analytics programs, frameworks, fonts, APIs, and more that site relies on.
As a blogger, I use it to peek under the hood at sites I want to learn from. It‘s a easy way to discover new tools for my own stack as well.
WhatRuns is an effortless way to unlock the tech secrets behind any website you visit.
Link Redirect Trace
- Used by over 40,000 SEO analysts
- Maps out a site‘s full redirect path and history
- Highlights redirect issues for debugging
Understanding a website‘s redirect structure is important but complex work. Manually clicking through each redirect chain takes forever and makes it hard to analyze issues.
Link Redirect Trace automates this critical SEO analysis for me.
As I browse a site, it visually maps each redirect while extracting key data like changes, chains, status codes, and more. I can also see the full redirect history of any page on a site.
These seamless insights help me diagnose SEO issues faster and learn from sites with excellent redirect hygiene. It‘s an invaluable tool for unlocking any site‘s redirect secrets.
Protect Your Privacy
Lastly, I recommend these extensions to browse securely:
AdBlock
- Over 200 million downloads
- Blocks ads on Facebook, YouTube, Twitch and more
- Speeds up page load time by blocking resource-heavy ads
Irrelevant ads can really disrupt your browsing experience. AdBlock removes ads from all major sites for smoother, clutter-free surfing.
I use it to block annoying popups, autoplaying video ads, sidebar ads and more. You can even customize it to whitelist sites you want to support.
AdBlock makes me less distracted, speeds up page loads, and protects my PC from malicious ads. It‘s a must-have for focused, productive browsing.
Betternet VPN
- Provides free, unlimited VPN service
- Encrypts connection to keep browsing anonymous
- No signup required and works in just 1 click
Public wifi makes it really easy for hackers to steal your personal data as you browse.
I protect myself using Betternet VPN, which encrypts my connection no matter what network I‘m on. It hides my IP address and lets me access any site anonymously with just 1 click.
No personal info required to setup. Betternet keeps me browsing securely for free. Don‘t compromise your privacy – stay safe online with Betternet.
Whew, we covered a lot of ground! From writing to marketing to analytics, these Chrome extensions help bloggers work smarter at every stage.
Each one above is hand-tested and approved to save you serious time or provide valuable data. Most are even free!
I‘d recommend adding 2-3 at a time to your workflow so you can get familiar with using them. Within a month, you‘ll be blogging faster and better than ever before.
Now I‘d love to hear from you! Which extension above sounds most helpful for your work right now? Let me know in the comments!
