SEO HERO Resources
Last Updated: May 6, 2020
SEO TOOLS:
Looking for some good SEO tools so that you can become your own SEO Hero? As a Denver Website Designer, here is my ongoing list that I add to when I come across great new tools.
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The first two tools below are the two I use in conjunction with each other to get first keyword ideas for SEO. I use AnswerThePublic.com to get ideas on keywords and phrases, and then use Google AdWords Keyword Planner tool to find out how many people are actually searching for those keyword phrase ideas.
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Google AdWords Keyword Planner
This is a great tool where you can insert your keywords, and Google will tell you how many people search that keyword per month, PLUS it makes recommendations of other keywords you could use (for example, if you think people are searching for "denver furniture" – but there are a lot more people searching for "denver furniture store". This is a great tool to figure out what to write about on your website.
Note: these days you do have to pay at least $1 a month to see the full stats: Google appears to have started blocking access to the Keyword Planner tool for non-active Adwords accounts, read more »
A fun long-tail keyword search tool so you can see what questions people are searching for around any keywords you specify. You can also select results by country. The interface is a little slow (it's using sophisticated "diagrams" to display the data, which I think they could do without for the sake of speed and simplicity, but all in all this is a good free tool). The background guy is a little weird and creepy, but he inspires you to be quick with your search. :)
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Make sure to add your website to the search engines, here are the two main ones you should tackle first:
Submit your Website & Sitemaps to:
Google Webmasters Search Console »
Submit your Business to:
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Other good SEO tools:
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This is a easy and instant Chrome browser add-on tool that lets you quickly search the search volume of any keyword or keyword phrase. A great quick alternative to the Google AdWords Keyword Planner, though I wish it also had similar keyword recommendations like Google's planner tool. But I like it for a quick search, AND it gives you exact numbers of searches, whereas Google just gives you ranges (1K-10K), so that's a super cool bonus! It does cost money now, but it's still prety cheap for the convenience!
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I just discovered another free Keyword research tool to help with SEO from SEO Guru, Neil Patel.
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A free 7 trial, this tool is another good one for researching SEO keywords!
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Serps Rank Checker
This free tool quickly checks the ranking of a website for specific keywords.
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Webceo.com
A good website to research keywords volume, CPC, and you can even "spy" on the competition to see what keywords they're focussing on. I use their Keyword Suggestion Tool – it's great! Though, it seems it too that I'm limited on what I can use unless I upgrade to a $74+/month plan.
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kwfinder.com
This one is looking pretty awesome, came recommended from my SEO Facebook group. You do have to upgrade (of course) for the full results, but you can get a lot of info with the free account.
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Just looking at this one now, the searched stats numbers seem different (lower) from the other tools I've used, but maybe that is because it showing me only US stats in my free account. I may need to upgrade and pay to see the full toolset, but at $99/month, it seems expensive.
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serpmojo.com (Android phone app)
This tool shows you where your website ranks for keywords. Looks like there is a paid Pro version, but I'm using the free app with good results, easy to use with a simple interface.
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seoquake (Chrome extension)
An SEO audit of your website
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datanyze (Chrome extension)
For website diagnosis and seeing what your competitors are doing
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Screaming Frog SEO Spider – a desktop program for Macs and PCs that crawls websites' links, images, CSS, script and apps to evaluate onsite SEO.
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SEO Starter Guide from Google
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Google's 9 Major Ranking Signals
A good read about how backlinks, Link authority, Link Anchor text and Content Relevance affects your website SEO.
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PPC ADVERTISING​:
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This page is basically a free Google AdWords training program. This pay-per-click learning course will help you fully understand how online ads (PPC) work, like Google Adwords, so you can use them effectively. PPC advertising is also helpful for SEO as you have much more detailed access to keyword statistics, and you can test different keywords or ads to see which perform best. (This site is also selling Wordstream's PPC services, but lots of good information is provided for free.)
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STOCK IMAGES:
If you're looking for some good free stock photography for low-or-no-budget projects, here are some great resources:
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Inexpensive Paid Stock:​
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I just started using Stock Photo Secrets, their image library is good, and they have an offer of $99/year membership that includes 200 XXL stock image downloads, so that is very reasonable at 50 cents per image! Upon first quick search, this site seems to have a good selection of images. This may be another great resource for inexpensive stock images!
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VectorStock has great vector art for $1 each, and they are easy to edit and customize using Adobe Illustrator. At $1 for each credit, very reasonable for the quality of a lot of their vector stock art!
DollarPhotoClub - DEFUNCT! This is not linked because it is now defunct! :( Adobe Stock purchased them, and I'm not a huge fan yet of Adobe Stock, as they want a subscription fee every month, you cannot just buy one image. I only like to pay as I go! I was able to transfer my DollarPhotoClub credits over to Adobe, which I'm currently using, but it took a few emails and calls to get my stocks actually switched over,. Also, a warning – I accidentally signed up for Adobe Stock monthly subscription when I downloaded 10 free images, as they auto-signed me up for their subscription plan, but sent me no emails about the actual plan, where you pay ($19 for 2, or $29 for 10 images a month) if you use it or not! No thanks!
istockphoto.com – Now owned by GettyOne, this keeps getting more and more expensive, and they have now made it confusing with their two separate "lines" of images, you can get Essentials, or Signature images, but it seems that the search keeps defaulting to showing all the images, so it's hard to search for the lower cost images quickly. Pre-Getty, istockphoto.com used to be around $2-3 per image, but now it looks like it's $12 for "essential" images to $33 for "Signature" images.
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thenounproject.com
Cool Icon resource!
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I haven't used this one yet, but the prices are reasonable at $2.50 for a small JPG (800x600) up to $12 for an XXL image (3840x2880). A quick search resulted in a lot of photo options, so this may be a great new resource!
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I'm looking for more reasonably priced quality stock image sites, let me know if you use any that you like using the form above! Stay tuned...
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Free stock images:
Use these if necessary, not as much of a selection and there is a strong chance these "free" images are used on hundreds of websites, but they are a good alternative to paid stock if you have no budget. Some of these have great video backgrounds too, which can be used on Wix or other website platforms to add nice movement to the site:
shotzr.com (Phone App only - hyper-local free photos)
Videvo (video and audio, too!)
Coverr (background videos and audio, too!)
Videezy (background videos)
Mazwai (neat slow motion/time lapse videos for backgrounds)
unsplash.com
raumrot.com
gratisography.com
frankenfotos.com
deathtothestockphoto.com (also has premium plan for $)
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These websites above make their money through their stock image ads that you'll see threaded throughout.
Below is another new free stock photo website I heard about – this one was created more for the use of unused photographer photos from projects, and has turned into a free stock source:
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I just heard about Upsplash from a designer at a Denver advertising agency, upon initial search, it has some decent high end photos. However, the selection isn't huge. But for free, what do you expect? Apparently, these photos are totally free to use in any way you want commercially or for personal use. I'm not sure how the photographers make any money off this, except through exposure? You can upload a few of your photos to be downloaded for free, and then you can get a website link and Upsplash page in exchange, so it could be a way to get more people to find you.
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INEXPENSIVE STOCK VIDEO WEBSITES:
www.coverr.co
Free videos for your websites and backgrounds – I just heard about this one, excited to add it my list.
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Looping Stock Video:
www.rocketstock.com
Here's a potential good source of looping video backgrounds that can be used on website design backgrounds – Wix websites often use looping video backgrounds but it's hard to find unique videos in their free stock, so Rocket Stock is another good source.
From Envato, this one looks promising, looks like videos are around $7-$33. Upon a quick search I found some decent $8 videos for the keywords I searched (beer).
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Free video source!
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Looks like a subscription one, but if you buy a lot of videos and you can find some you like, this may be a good source. $149 USD/yr or $99/month. Kind of spendy unless you have a lot of videos needs.
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www.pond5.com
This is another subscription plan service, but they also have a Pay as you go plan that you can pre-fund your account. Video costs $25-$500+, so they're not too cheap, but they seem to have good quality options.
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Another inexpensive video source, but I can't find a search tool on it?
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IMAGE EDITORS & COMPRESSION TOOLS:
Original images are very important to SEO! Creating unique and new images and then naming the filename and alt image text with your chosen keywords will help greatly with SEO! With good keywords in the filename and alt image text, Google will start indexing your images into their image search, too! One great way to generate shareable and good SEO content is to design infographics pertaining to your business!
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canva.com – A FREE great browser-based image and graphic design editor, you can design social media graphics, memes, documents, social media headers, email headers, Facebook ads, Pins for pinterest, etc with this awesome tool! And since SEO is all about shareable content, and images are king in this department, you can't go wrong!
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gimp.org – If Photoshop's subscription plan is not for you, this is a free image editor for GNU/Linux, OS X, and Windows. I haven't tried it yet (as I'm still on the Adobe Cloud due to my print design needs for Illustrator and InDesign), but I've heard great things about it from other designers! Let me know what you think if you give it a go!
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Another free photo editor.
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sketchapp.com – Another inexpensive option that a lot of my designer friends love is Sketch. It costs $99 but that's a lot cheaper than Photoshop and you own it! Let me know what you think if you try it out!
Image Compression tools: To become a SEO Hero, it is important that your website loads quickly. Below are some free tools that will help you compress your image files to the smallest possible file size so that your website is quick to load which helps with SEO. Make sure to check the image after compressing to make sure the quality hasn't been effected so much that it looks bad!
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ShortPixel – Select from three different JPG compression levels so you can pick the smallest file with the best quality desired. The tool is free for up to 100 images a month, or you can subscribe for $4.99 for 5000 a month. It works alright, I of course like Photoshop for my compression using "Save for Web" as I can adjust the compression visually, but, as that's a subscription program, if you don't have it Short Pixel is a good tool for quick compression for JPG format.
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tinypng.com – PNG files are great for transparency, so they work well for placing images over any color or textured background. They're a great format for logos as they can be placed over any background or image. The TinyPNG online tool uses smart lossy compression techniques to reduce the file size of your PNG files.
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optimizilla.com – This is another image optimizer tool that shrinks JPG and PNG files to the smallest possible size for use on websites.
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yellowimages.com – Mockups and Graphic Assets like t-shirt mockups, or product mockups (think water bottles, banners, pc, tablet or phone screens, transparent PNGs, 3d art, etc).
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VIDEO CREATION TOOLS:
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lumen5.com
Wow, Lumen5 is a FREE and great video tool that makes videos out of blog posts or content. Update: they recently added paid plans, but you can still use the free editor for regular resolution video creation that is now branded at the end credit screen with Lumen5. Minor thing if you ask me for this super easy video tool! It's easy to add and upload your own images and add and edit the copy to your liking. It doesn't look like there is a lot of font choices or control over the size of the font, but this does let you create quick videos for posting that look pretty amazing! It looks like it's in "beta" so it may not be free for long. Make sure to create your videos and download the MP4 files so you have them forever before they start to charge for storage or use! :)
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Wix Video Creator
Only in Wix Beta right now, Wix has created a great little video creation tool, similar to Lumen5 where you can choose font styles, edit text, add images or video and create quick videos. I created this Infographic Designer video with it. Very cool, lots of potential. I love being a Wix Pro so I can beta test all their new tools!
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Filmora.wondershare.com/video-editor
As a SEO Hero, it's important to create new, unique videos to put on your website, YouTube and Vimeo to help boost SEO. I've heard great things about Wondershare Filmora. It's super easy to use, low on system resources and produces beautiful videos with hollywood-style transitions, titles, etc. It does cost around $60, but it's likely worth if if you make a lot of videos.
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NATURE AUDIO / SOUND RESOURCES:
www.nps.gov/yell/learn/photosmultimedia/soundlibrary.htm
Welcome to the Yellowstone sound library, where you can immerse yourself in the aural landscape of America's first national park. The files available here were recorded in the park and are in the public domain. They may be downloaded and used without limitation; however, please credit the "National Park Service " where appropriate.
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Here is an example of an audio clip:
American Dipper & Canada Geese
In a quiet moment along the
Firehole River, an American dipper
sings along with some honking
Canada geese.
or checkout:
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Red-Winged Blackbird
The harsh cries of red-winged
blackbirds reverberate across
Swan Lake lake amidst the sounds
of boreal chorus frogs and
sandhill cranes.
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CREATIVE TOOLS:
Creating beautiful graphics and choosing good colors for your website will make it more appealing for your users, which is always good! Here's some tools:
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Design resources such as mockups of t-shirts, business cards, phone cases, etc, plus textures like wood grain, icons, watercolor textures, and more.
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colorsupplyyy.com/app – a color selection tool that let's you play around with Complementary, Analogous, Triad, Split-Complement, and Square color combinations. Great for choosing website colors!
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Colorzilla Chrome Extension
This tool allows you to copy the HTML hex color (#F7F7F7) to your clipboard for quick pasting into website editors such as Wix, Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.
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MISCELLANEOUS TOOLS:
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I haven't used this yet, but one of my fellow Wix experts recommended it for subscription forms that have tracking. Sounds like they offer the ability to sell digital products like ebooks on websites, as well as subscriptions, and membership ability. I wonder if the membership can be intergrated with Wix to make a member-only area? I'll let you know, or let me know if you've tried it, I'd love to see how you've used sendowl for your clients!
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Privacy Policy Generator:
www.bennadel.com/coldfusion/privacy-policy-generator.htm
A free, simple and quick tool to create a Privacy Policy for your website.
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FORM BUILDER TOOLS
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This is my favorite form builder tool, you can use it for free for up to 1000 views monthly, and 100 submissions a month (1 payment a month). This is a great tool that let's you build completely custom forms from scratch. I love it! The paid versions aren't as cheap, starting at $19/month for 1000 submissions and now only ONE free payment, but the tool is pretty amazing so it's worth it if you need custom forms with payments and thank you pages. You can customize every aspect of the forms, from the thank you page redirects, to email confirmations to both the customers and admins.
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Wix Forms
Wix now offers more customizable forms so if you have a Wix website, using their contact form and customizing them may be all that you need! Wix also features apps like 123forms that have free and paid versions if you want to do more sophisticated forms with payments. And here's another one:
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vcita Wix App
This is an App in Wix website builder, it has a free version and a paid version (starts at $12.25 a month.) I haven't used this yet, but one of my fellow Wix experts recommended it for custom forms.
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I haven't used this one yet either, but another website designer recommended it, this one has a free version with up to 500 entires a month. Then the Pro starts at $10 a month for 2000 submissions. I'll have to check this one out.
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