For anyone in the search industry, Brighton SEO is the conference to be at. Superbly organised by Kelvin Newman and the Brighton SEO team, the conference always throws up some great nuggets of information. Yesterdays conference again didn’t disappoint, with the cream of the search crop from brands and agencies heading to the South coast for a day of presentations and networking.
Takeaways from the event are always varied, depending on your level of knowledge of SEO, Content Marketing and Digital Marketing. One thing I noticed from yesterdays event was the vast array of new tools that were mentioned throughout the days presentations. Some of the tools such as Searchmetrics and SEM Rush you will have already heard of, and already use, but I thought I’d do a post on the cool digital marketing tools that were promoted yesterday, and new to me.
In a spin on the usual ‘Brighton SEO round up‘, here are 12 tools that could come in very handy for your SEO, content and digital marketing campaigns.
Searchmetrics – let’s start with the obvious one. Searchmetrics is a great tool, and was showcased by the effervescent and direct Lukasz Zelezny in his ‘How To Track Keywords Like A Boss’ presentation. As well as tracking ‘SEO Visibility’, Lukasz mentioned it is a great tool for sourcing keywords if you don’t have access to Google Analytics or Google Webmaster Tools.
SEM Rush – also mentioned by Lukasz was SEM Rush. A great tool for competitor research, keyword sourcing and understanding traffic levels of a particular domain.
Slickquiz – this is a free WordPress plugin that can help you create simple quizzes, as mentioned by Patrick Hathaway in his ‘Cool Shit You Can Do With WordPress’ presentation.
Simitator – this is a social imitator tool that creates mock ups of Facebook and Twitter posts. As mentioned by Stacey Cavendish, this tool is very handy for fine-tuning your title and description for each social platform, before you post.
Fivesecondtest.com – Also mentioned by Stacey, Five Second Test helps you fine tune your landing pages and calls to action. By finding out what a person recalls about your design in just 5 seconds you can ensure that your messages are being communicated as effectively as possible.
Image Raider – if you ever wanted to track an image across the web, this is the tool to use according to Stacey. Many sites simply copy images and make them their own without giving the author credit, but with this tool you can police your image use and find out who is reusing and repurposing your assets.
Pickanews.com – this tool tracks what people are saying about a brand across the web, in the press, social media and the overall web. Credit to Stacey again.
Journalisted.com – Stacey also mentioned Journalisted.com, a great tool to find journalists and see what they write about. This gives you the starting point for creating a list of journalist and PR contacts for outreach.
Realtimeboard.com – Vicky Cheung gave an excellent presentation on tips for designing great content. In her presentation she mentioned Realtimeboard.com, a really good collaboration and feedback tool for users to comment on designs, wireframes etc. Whereas some feedback to designers might get lost in email translation, Realtimeboard.com has a comment overlay, so users can feedback and point to a specific element within the design.
Browserstack – at 8MS we’re firm believers that content should be responsive, and that it should also be functional across all browsers. Browserstack allows you to test a webpage against different browsers and platforms, and provides a testing platform so you can iron out those final bugs.
Responsinator – also mentioned by Vicky was Responsinator.com, a site designed to help you test responsive websites and pages on different device resolutions.
Stocksy.com – last but not least is Stocksy.com. In her presentation, Vicky mentioned the importance of a leading image. Stock images don’t always cut the mustard because they are bland and unemotive. Stocksy.com provides a great alternative for image sourcing, helping you make your content as powerful as possible.
If you attended Brighton SEO in April and discovered some other tools, let us know if the comments below!