My Top Tip for Managing Multiple SEO Clients – Browser Accounts

by Anna Lewis on 30th August 2012

Something I’ve only come across recently (laugh now if you’ve been using it for a while!) is the ability to have multiple Chrome or Firefox user accounts on one computer. Sounds simple, but it turns out there a lot of advantages to using this when you manage multiple SEO clients, or multiple accounts of any online variety, or even just multiple email accounts. I’m going to go over those benefits in this post and also explain how to set everything up yourself.

In 5 minutes time you won’t have to keep logging in and out of accounts!

So why bother reading the how to? (scroll me down quick – I’m convinced already!)

Bookmarks, plugins, passwords, history and settings are saved to the account
Bookmarks, plugins, passwords, history and settings are automatically synced
You can log in on any computer that has the browser installed
Account log ins could be shared amongst the team so everyone has up to date information
Alert shows if the account is being used by another computer at the same time
You can have lots of accounts open at the same time – all in different windows and shown individually across the task bar
When you get a new computer you don’t have to export your bookmarks and try to remember to then reinstall all your plugins, setting and themes – all you need to do is log in!
You no longer need to use the ‘incognito’ option to get around having two Google Accounts open at the same time

So here’s how you do it, although I’ve only written up how to do it in Chrome because that’s what my data says you all use! For those of you not in the 43%, Firefox is very similar so I’m sure you can work it out!

How to save all your current Chrome settings within one log in:

Go to Chrome ‘Settings’:
Under ‘Sign in’ click ‘sign in to Chrome’
In the pop up box sign in to your Google Account
Voila!

How to set up Chrome accounts for each of your clients:

Go to Chrome ‘Settings’
Under ‘Users’ click ‘Add new user’
If you already have a gmail or Google account for the client sign in with that, if not click ‘Create Google Account’
You’re then signed in and ready to go!
Repeat for remaining clients – but you can now use the shortcut to creating a new user that is located under the image that now appears in the top left of your signed in browser window (see image with users further down)

You can change the specific settings for each log in and also customise what pages open when you open the browser under this user.

Sites to open on start up

If you want to ensure that every time you open this users browser you quickly have access to a certain set of pages, here’s how to set it up:

First open all the pages you want to open automatically for that client
Go to Settings
Under ‘On Start Up’
Click ‘Open a specific page or set of pages’
Click ‘use current pages’ or enter URLs if they’re not open

To navigate between users look for the image in the top left hand corner of Chrome – each user will have a different image and the email address listed, like so (and no, I didn’t choose the nicknames and images they have, I just haven’t got round to renaming them!):

There are some things to bear in mind when doing this:

Each user has it’s own settings page so you might need to edit the settings for each new user to set what to open, the default search engine, and other settings.
Plugins are custom to each user so you might want to install the some plugins on all users
If you need to set up multiple Google Accounts you may prefer to put your email address in the secondary email address field, this means you don’t have to verify by phone (useful if you don’t have a direct line or you have used the same phone number too many times already). I also found that this is useful when you forget what email address you used to create the user account! You can get all associated gmail addresses emailed to you.
You can have multiple users logged in to Chrome at once, they appear in the task bar with their relevant image – this is how this looks in Windows 7:

So there you have it, lots of accounts with their own settings and all their passwords saved. Now you can easily be logged in to multiple accounts at once and not have to remember any passwords!

Anna Lewis

Our resident analytics specialist is Anna Lewis. Anna is unbelievably attuned to anything analytical and can fill you in on all the latest news, tips and advice to get ahead in this evolving market.

15 Comments

Raul Crisan 30th August 2012

Nice post! Congrats

How can i change/customize the logo for each profile? I want to put something more representative for each one of my clients.

Can we do that?

Thank you very much Anna!

Regards!

Reply to this comment

Anna Lewis 30th August 2012

Thanks Raul, to edit the image open that account and go to Settings, then click the account in the list of users, then click edit and pick your icon! It’s in the same place as changing the nickname for the account.

Hope that helps!

Reply to this comment

Raul Crisan 30th August 2012

oh yeah!!! Much better
Before I was trying to edit each account through the main profile but i could not do it.

Now it works…and i love it!
tnx

Russell McAthy 30th August 2012

Anna, this is a great idea, never considered using it for clients before – I use it for my work / home setups – thanks a lot for the great tips and the drink

Reply to this comment
Pak Hou Cheung 30th August 2012

Nice one Anna

One question though, in the last picture do you see where you have the:

Superhero
Cat
Purple Man

How do you get them to stay up on the desktop? Is there a “secrect hack?”

Cheers
Pak Hou

Reply to this comment

Anna Lewis 30th August 2012

Hi Pak Hou,

I get them there by opening each account from the icon in the top left. I haven’t managed to pin them to my desktop per account, I always have to start with the default account and open more from there. Don’t know if that solves your problem, sorry!

Anna.

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Tiggerito 1st September 2012

Here’s a solution to pin them on your desktop:

Create a shortcut to Chrome.
Open the shortcuts properties.
Add the following to the end of the Target command:

–profile-directory=”Profile 1″

You can repeat this for each profile number. I drag all the shortcuts into my toolbar so I have direct quick access.

You can also set it to open in incognito but it doesn’t quite work right:

–incognito

Cheers for the article. I’ve been solving the problem using alternate user data folders. This way looks like it will work a lot smoother.

Charlie Southwell 30th August 2012

Something I should have known, and never played with. Shall give it a go this week and I’ll let you know how I fare..

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Pritesh Patel 30th August 2012

Brilliant tip Anna

Just set it up in Chrome for my main clients who I have to constantly switch between. Proper time saver!!

Now just to figure out how to do it in Firefox – I’m also a multiple browser man too!

Pritesh

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Pritesh Patel 30th August 2012

Me again,

You can also edit the name and avatar for each account and name it after your client instead of the default Fizzy, Cloudy, Fluffy and Pizza. Makes it a little more easier to switch to the right account.

Reply to this comment

Anna Lewis 30th August 2012

Thanks Pritesh, yeah, I didn’t outline those instructions but have put them in a comment above, although I quite like being Agent X!

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Jeff 30th August 2012

Brilliant! I was just looking for this type of solution yesterday, believe it or not, and now you go and give a step by step instruction on how to do it…thanks Anna!

I’ve been running multiple browsers to achieve the same thing, but I need 3 open at the same time (my “normal” login, my “work” login” and my “Adwords MCC” login), and I was having trouble “pinning” more than 2 browser instances at once (one version of Chrome and one of Firefox). This solution is so much more elegant….!

I note when running these instances in Chrome, it opens a new “tab” in the start-bar, so I can simply “pin” these to the start-bar (on Windows 7), and viola, I have 3 shortcuts in my start-bar, and a one-click solution to opening each particular account, so this works perfectly!

Thanks once again

Reply to this comment
Matthew Shepherd 30th August 2012

Fantastic tip! Thanks Anna. I’d never thought of doing this and it’s going to save me a bunch of time

Reply to this comment
Pak Hou Cheung 30th August 2012

Hi Anna,

I find sometimes when I open the different tabs my little icons don’t always stay on the desktop… sometimes are empty / blank (where the images should be)..

So in your example you have

Superhero
Cat
Purple Man

All showing on the desktop, but what I find is sometimes it be

Superhero
(BLANK)
Purple Man

or

(BLANK)
Cat
Purple Man

or even sometimes

(BLANK)
(BLANK)
Purple Man

….

I hope that makes sense, if not I would be happy to do a screen shot and tweet you this…..

Kind regards
Pak Hou

Reply to this comment

Anna Lewis 3rd September 2012

Hi Pak Hou, I’ve noticed this before and found shutting and opening them again sometimes solves it (I always set them to reopen the last set of tabs so I never lose anything I’ve got open). I’m not sure if there is a way to force it to work! Maybe Tiggerito’s solution (above) might help?

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