Tools of the Trade: A Roundup of 37 Top Apps, Resources & Software Recommended By Experts at BrightonSEO

19 September 2017

Posted in: BSEO SEO

At this year’s Brighton SEO, we were lucky enough have the entire team come down to coast to enjoy this unique and educational networking experience. Between us, we were able to attend 26 different talks – and boy, did we uncover some useful tips. Pointers I found myself noting time and again were the tools, programs, and websites that speakers recommended, with several of them cropping up more than once.

Coincidence? Obviously not. There’s a reason these services are so popular with SEOs and digital marketers alike – they do the job, and they do it well. Therefore, I thought it only right to share the tools I came across, so that we may all enjoy the useful benefits they bestow.

So in no particular order, here are some of the best apps, resources & tools recommended by experts at BrightonSEO 2017.

@journorequest

Recommended by Sophie Everett, Head of Content & PR at Prodo, the Twitter handle @journorequest (or the hashtag #journorequest) is ideal for PR workers looking for potential media opportunities from journalists.

journalisted.com & holdthefrontpage.com

Journalisted.com is a fantastic resource – an independent website that makes it easy for the public to find out more about journalists and their specialisms. Perfect if you’ve got a niche angle you’re hoping to cover and you need to find the right journalist to approach.

Along a similar theme, HoldtheFrontPage.co.uk is a news, jobs and resources website for UK journalists, which you can use to start collating valuable contacts from the UK regional press.

Recommended by @ProdoSophie.

Canva

If you’re often in need of design elements such as graphics for social media, then Canva might just change your world. This simple graphic design software allows you to create designs easily for both web and print, whether or not you have any previous graphic design experience. Think Facebook covers, flyers, posters, and presentations.

Recommended by @bobbibrant.

Piktochart

Another lifesaver for the “graphically challenged”, Piktochart is a simple, easy-to-use infographic design app that will take your data and transform it into a thing of beauty.

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Recommended by @bobbibrant.

SEO Monitor

SEO Monitor is recommended by Chelsea Blacker of Blueglass as a keyword research, management and forecasting system. Use it to generate SEO reports and track thousands of keywords. Pricing is based on the number of websites and keywords you want to track.

Recommended by @ChelseaBlacker.

Moz

It’s not super surprising that Moz was mentioned at an SEO conference, but it’s worth covering all the same. Moz has some of the best SEO software, tools and resources out there, and also developed the search engine ranking score known as Domain Authority (DA).

Recommended by @ChelseaBlacker.

CoverageBook

Another excellent PR tool, CoverageBook is a reporting tool that allows PR teams to accurately measure the impact of their work. It’s even been featured in the Huffington Post. CoverageBook gives you customisable reports and automates a lot of time-consuming work for busy publicists. Comes with a free trial.

Recommended by @ChelseaBlacker.

BuzzSumo

This tool was recommended by several speakers – it’s clearly popular! BuzzSumo is an amazing piece of software designed to help you find popular content themes and key influencers online, so you can create data-driven content marketing and SEO campaigns.

Recommended by @ChelseaBlacker and others.

Who Moved My Cheese by Dr. Spencer Johnson

Hailed by the Daily Telegraph as ‘one of the most successful business books ever’, Who Moved My Cheese: An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life by Dr Spencer Johnson was recommended by Chelsea Blacker as a starting point to upskill yourself in the world of business.

Recommended by @ChelseaBlacker.

Self Control

Sam Charles gave us an absolute wealth of tools in her talk Blogging advice that’ll make your job easier – guaranteed! The first was Self Control: a free desktop application designed to help you avoid distracting websites. Ideal for getting your head down and actually doing some work!

Recommended by @SamCharlesUK.

Trello

Trello is very popular with digital agencies, and indeed many other kinds of businesses. This flexible project management apps allows you to keep track of all your projects easily, whether that’s writing a shopping list or managing a team of freelancers.

Recommended by @SamCharlesUK.

Ubersuggest

We love this tool here at Seeker. Ubersuggest is an awesome (and free) SEO keyword suggestion tool that you can use to generate keywords and phrases for your content and optimisation strategy – perfect for bloggers and SEOs alike. It’s been described as Google Suggest on steroids.

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Recommended by @SamCharlesUK.

Answer The Public

Of course, there is far more than one amazing keyword research tool out there. Answer The Public is another top choice, allowing you to see the questions and queries that users put to Google on a daily basis. Answer The Public is a content marketer’s best friend.

Recommended by @staceycav.

Quora & Askreddit

Looking for some public input? Then you won’t go too far wrong with forum-based tools like Quora and Askreddit. These options are ideal if you need a personal angle to a story, or you want to generate some ideas. Just beware, you may get some out-there responses.

Recommended by @SamCharlesUK.

Jetpack

Jetpack is a plugin used for WordPress – and happily, many of its features are free. It’s designed to help you increase traffic to your website and engage readers, while also keeping things secure. With the free version, you get features like stats and analytics, automatic sharing, and related posts – and with the paid version, SEO tools, and advertising credits.

Recommended by @SamCharlesUK.

Buffer

The preferred social media management platform for many. With Buffer, you can schedule social posts in advance, as well as track the performance of your posts. If you run a number of social media accounts, it makes taking care of everything far simpler, as you manage everything from one dashboard.

Recommended by @SamCharlesUK.

Grammarly & Hemingway

Helpful grammar tools to keep your writing in check! None of us want to be caught out with typos or grammatical errors in our copy. Grammarly and Hemingway are two of the top-rated digital spelling, grammar and editing applications, designed to help you improve your writing on the fly.

Recommended by @SamCharlesUK.

Pexels, Pixabay & Unsplash

GONE are the days of bad stock imagery – or so they should be, with free stock photo websites such as Pexels, Pixabay, and Unsplash. Find beautiful photos and graphics for your website and blog posts that look natural and appealing, instead of cheesy and awkward. No more women wearing headsets and laughing over their salads, please.

Recommended by @SamCharlesUK.

Boomerang

One for those of us who spend hours in our email inboxes. Boomerang for Gmail makes it super easy to schedule emails and set reminders to keep your inbox organised.

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Recommended by @SamCharlesUK.

YouGov & Storybase

Want to know what the world thinks? If you’re in the process of doing market research, source websites like YouGov and Storybase will help you find facts, statistics, and story ideas, so your content is rooted in real data.

Recommended by @pugdinosaur.

Google Surveys

In addition to the above, Google Surveys is a useful package with both pay-as-you-go and enterprise solutions, which enables you to find out more about your target audience by conducting online surveys. Make more informed business decisions and keep tabs on what’s important to your customers.

Recommended by @pugdinosaur.

ONS.gov & whatdotheyknow.com

Looking for statistics to back up your argument, or to form the basis for a piece of content? Try the Office for National Statistics, aka ons.gov.uk. This website is the UK’s largest independent producer of official statistics, so there’s a wealth of data at your disposal.

Likewise, using whatdotheyknow.com, you can make a request for information to the government and public sector – and by law, they have to respond. You will receive an email with the response, and it will also be published online, so it’s accessible to everyone.

Recommended by @lauralhampton.

Site Visibility’s Internet Marketing Podcast

In this weekly podcast recommended by Alan Cairns, the world’s top marketers reveal their latest growth strategies and advice, covering topics such as the importance of speaking in public for marketers and how to make your marketing more visual. A great listen for entrepreneurs or anyone in the world of digital marketing.

Recommended by @lancairns.

The Publication List of Your Dreams

If you’re after big links in media publications like The Guardian, Cosmopolitan, and Huffington Post, then you will be thrilled to find this compiled spreadsheet of sites that include backlinks in their articles, offered by Hana Bednarova. You may be surprised by how many of them offer followed links. View the spreadsheet here.

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Recommended by @Miss_HanaB.

Buzzstream, Ninja Outreach & Pitchbox

The holy trio of link building and digital PR tools. If outreach is your business, then you’ve almost certainly come across at least one of these programs before – they’ve certainly changed our world here at Seeker.

They’re all a little different and have their strengths and weaknesses, so it’s worth trialling Buzzstream, Ninja Outreach and Pitchbox individually to see what works best for your campaigns.

Recommended by @Brisky001.

Majestic, Search Metrics & SEMRush

And finally, we have the top SEO and link intelligence tools (in addition to Moz): Majestic, Search Metrics, and SEMRush. When you’re gathering data on your website and those of your competitors, you’ll be glad you invested in these awesome tools, which allow you to analyse backlinks, perform keyword research, monitor organic search performance, and much more.

Recommended by @Brisky001.

So whether you work in SEO, online PR, content marketing or ecommerce, you’re likely to find some useful gems among this treasure trove of tools. We’re certainly familiar with more than a few of them here at Seeker, and we’re excited to try out those we hadn’t heard of. Many thanks to the wonderful speakers at this year’s Brighton SEO for their incredible insights and recommendations.

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