There are a lot more tools in this category than the ones listed below… but it would require its own page. Tools in this category that I haven’t featured here but also use almost daily are Xero, Paypal, Transferwise, Discord, and G Suite (mainly mail, docs, and sheets).
Notion is an all-in-one workspace. From Wikis to project management and general note-taking. It’s cheap, looks pretty, and verrrry flexible.
We use it to house our SOPs!
Todoist is my external memory, my outsourced brain.
Most of my life’s responsibilities/ideas/tasks are in there. The downside, if something is not in the app, I’ll forget it, it might as well not exist.
Trello is a very well-known project management tool. It’s free, it’s flexible, it’s awesome.
We use it for bigger picture ideas and project overviews.
Communicate efficiently… that’s pretty much Slack, and it does it very well!
Almost all comms go through Slack, we rarely email anymore internally.
Premium courses / communities can dramatically shortcut the learning curve, I’d recommend having a look at the following 3 (yes, I’ve bought and am a member of all 3).
The Affiliate Lab is the course that has it all! You can go from 0 to hero just by following this one course, it’s massive and covers everything.
From niche research, site setup, and competitiors analysis, to white/grey hat off-page seo, email marketing, and scaling as an authority.
Huge thumbs up! (See what’s included here, and hit the button below for a discount)
TASS 2.0 (The Authority Site System) is very similar to the Affiliate Lab in that it offers an A to Z blueprint on how to start a successfull affiliate site.
In my opinion, TASS 2.0 is better for people that are just starting out… those that barely know WordPress exists, and just learned about SEO a week ago.
TASS holds your hand more compared to The Affiliate Lab… but The Affiliate Lab forces you to scale faster and more aggressively… the choice is up to you.
Traffic Think Tank started out as a paid Slack community, and has grown into a resource that absolutely overflows with value.
The Slack community alone is worth the money 10x over, but in addition to that you also get access to a massive variety of courses, tools, docs, processes, and even perks and discounts for popular tools and services.
The 3 founders are Matthew Howells-Barby (HubSpot’s Head of SEO), Nick Eubanks (Chief Strategist of I’m From the Future), Ian Howells (Brilllliant SEO).
The tools below range from keyword trackers, to backlinks checkers and on-page optimisers. We use most of these daily.
Ahrefs is the swiss army knife of SEO. This is a must-have tool!
Backlink checker, keyword research, technical audits, it has everything you need. I log into their dashboard at least once every 2 hours… I can’t live without it.
If you can afford it, sign up!
Accuranker is a fantastic rank tracker. The pricing is decent, and they have a lot of neat features.
From customised reporting and on-demand ranking updates, to tracking specific SERP features and their custom SoV (Share of Voice) metric to track overall organic visilibility… best rank tracker I’ve used.
Surfer is a very affordable data-driven on-page optimisation tool. You can use it to create content briefs (it even has a content editor that writers can write in, with all the recommend terms / word-count / topics for your target keyword easily accessible).
You can also use it to audit and improve existing pages. Surfer uses 500+ on-page signals to built a list of recommended changes you should make to dominate the SERPs from an on-page perspective. It’s really powerful.
Clearscope is, just like surfer, an on-page optimisation tool. There are a few differences between the tools though. Clearscope is more meant for writers as it has an amazing editor with a much cleaner UX compared to surfer.
Where Surfer is more a data-dump that needs a bit more input from you, Clearscope does a lot of that in the background so you have less terms to focus on or choose from… which is a lot easier for writers Clearscope also targets a higher end of the market with pricier plans.
Frase is, again, yet another on-page optimisation tool. I’d say slightly less powerful and light-weight in terms of processing / visual data compared to Surfer or Clearscope.
In my opinion, Frase is perfect for low comp info keywords as it focuses a lot on showing and research topics rather than keywords… even though it does have a keyword/term section like the other tools.
Elementor is my go-to theme/page builder for WordPress… I honestly haven’t found anything better. It’s super flexible, has a free version, and a massive supportive community.
Just try it and thank me later!
Choosing a decent hosting provider is key… it’s the foundation of your site and you ideally shouldn’t skimp when it comes to choosing a web host.
But I also know that if you’re just starting out, budget will be tight, so here are my 3 recommendations for a low, medium, and high budget.
If you’re on a reallly tight budget, Hostinger is the one to go with.
They’re super affordable, but still have most of the features that other higher-end hosts offer.
SiteGround is recommended by WordPress, for WordPress.
The perfect mid-range host, and powerful enough to be your only host, for all your projects.
Kinsta hosts companies like Ubisoft, Buffer, Freshbooks, Tripadvisor.
It’s a complete peace of mind, lighting fast support, super speedy web hosting solution that you pretty much set and forget.
Most of our projects end up on our Kinsta account these days.