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As an SEO we all have our favorite tools.  Most of mine are SEO tools such as server header checkers, backlink checkers and so on.

But there are a variety of other tools I use just as often.  While not SEO related they are just as handy and crucial to my job.

In this article I look at a few of those tools in hopes that you too will find them helpful.

As I said, these aren’t necessarily SEO tools but they are handy to have.

For example, I have a ton of extensions for Firefox – some are SEO tools but some aren’t.  Here are my favorite extensions:

Adsense Notifier – tells you how much money you’ve made today/this week/this month with Google AdSense.  A must for a website owner.

Greasemonkey – an extension that allows you add on a bunch of Javascripts to do a whole bunch of stuff.  Greasemonkey is more of a shell which enables the richer Javascript aspects.

For example, I’ve added a “Delete” button to my Gmail and a “Compose” button to the Gmail preview on my Google homepage.

I’ve also been able to remove the Google logo and search box from my Google homepage using Greasemonkey.  For more information on Greasemonkey and it’s scripts go here.

I also have Forecastfox – it’s a cool little extension that shows you the current weather and even gives you a satellite view of things.

Of course there’s the usual toolbars including:  Google, Yahoo! And Clusty.  And for those lazy Friday afternoons there’s card games like Solitaire, Pyramid and Wasp.

In addition to browser extensions I have lots of other SEO and non-SEO tools:

IDServe, Checkload and Xenu are all great free applications as is the text based Lynx browser.  All of which I’ve introduced before.

I also like a bunch of online tools which in general aren’t SEO related:

For example, I have a little program called GmailFS which allows you to access your Gmail account and treat it as another drive.  I have kept files there in the past that I needed to access in multiple locations.

Yahoo! Has a similar feature (which isn’t a Gmail hack) called the Yahoo! Briefcase.  If you have a Yahoo! Account you have access to 30 MB of storage for free.

Speaking of Yahoo! Accounts I love mine and I find myself turning to the various Yahoo! Services more and more.  I like the My Yahoo! Page because I can customize it with all the feeds and news that I want, plus I have a Yahoo!360 account.  But my favorite Yahoo! Product is MyWeb 2.0.

It’s an online bookmarking system much like del.icio.us (and it also interacts with del.icio.us on a limited scale).  I find that I turn to MyWeb 2.0 on a regular basis to store all kinds of things, both work related and personal.

Another cool feature is the tag cloud you can produce – it shows you which are the most popular tags you’ve assigned based on the size of the font.  Larger fonts indicate a tag is used more.

Speaking of tag clouds, I’ve found a couple other cool tagging sites.  TagCloud.com allows you to import your favorite feeds and then creates a tag cloud based on keywords it parses out of them.  It’s a quick way to see what the hot topics are at any given moment.

For example, I can look at the cloud I’ve created for my favorite SEO blogs and see that “google” and “search” are the top 2 terms.

Also speaking of clouds, if you’ve ever wanted to know what the hot topics are on Google News, why not check out Newzingo.

Another site I recently found was LinkedIn which allows you to create a network of friends and associates.  So far it seems to be more professionally oriented in that most people are not using it to find new friends, but they are using it to make connections.

Finally, for the photo buffs is Flickr.  This site provides you with a way to easiliy upload and share your photos with the world or just people you chose.  They offer a handy desktop file uploader which makes it really easy to manage photos plus they allow you to tag and organize them.  And if you have a Yahoo! Account it’s very easy to use as Yahoo! Recently bought Flickr and has since integrated some of its key features, including authentication through your Yahoo! Account.

Finally, I came across a site that allows people to share their music.  However the music they are sharing is unique.  This is because in all cases the songs are a mix of a variety of tunes.  This type of music – called Mash or Mashup – is becoming more and more popular.  I know I recently downloaded a few songs from here and I’m very impressed.  The quality is excellent and the songs are better than you’d imagine.

For example, I never would have thought that a mix between Black Eyed Peas and Marilyn Mason would be that good, or one with 50 cent and Queen.  But my favorite is a mix with AC/DC and Kanye West.

So there you have it – a mix of my favorite work and non-work related tools.  I use all of them on a regular basis – some more than others – but overall they’ve made my online experience both more rewarding and more enjoyable.

Rob Sullivan is a SEO Consultant and Writer for Textlinkbrokers.com