These are some of the best resources I’ve come across for building your business, making heads and tails of SEO, and doing marketing in the digital age. Some are free and some paid. All in all, use what you like. I hope these are as helpful to you as they are to me.
Tools to run your business
Scheduling Calls
Calendly – helps you schedule meetings without back-and-forth emails. Free!
Project Management
Airtable – an online spreadsheet where you can collaborate, move tables around to organize anything. Free!
Inbound Leads & Customer Relationship Management
Pipedrive – a CRM & pipeline management tool that helps you focus on actions that matter.
Business Cards
Moo.com – a fantastic resource for professional grade cards complete with inspiration gallery and, for SMB’s, the Consultant Guide and Startup Toolkit.
SEO Tools – Affordable & Reliable
STAT Search Analytics – rank tracking for enterprise level SEO. Unlimited SERP tracking in locations across the globe. Fresh, every day. A great bunch, too. I highly recommend attending one of their local SEO events.
SEO Radar – Change monitoring and disaster prevention. SEORadar monitors your pages for SEO-specific changes and alerts users to issues which can have potential SEO consequences.
AlsoAsked.com a free and paid tool for finding out what people also ask about a topic or search term.
Chrome browser extensions:
SEO Minion spot check a URL by analyzing on-page SEO elements.
SEO META in 1 click a quick reference menu displaying the technical SEO aspects of a URL like the page canonical tag, title tag & meta description.
SEO & Marketing Blogs
A.J. Khon Blind Five Year Old
Andrew Shotland Local SEO Guide
Bill Slawski SEO By The Sea
Google Webmaster Central Blog
Moz – Beginner’s Guide to SEO
Wordstream
Search Engine Journal
Search Engine Land
Search Engine Watch
MarketingProfs
Hubspot Blog
Content Marketing Institute
Inspiration Injection for Entrepreneurs
Marie Forleo – Marie TV
Gary Vaynerchuck – GaryVee YouTube Channel
Simon Sinek – Start With Why
Seth Godin’s Blog riffs on marketing, respect, and the ways ideas spread.
Professional Networking in the Bay Area
SEO Meetup’s hosted by Bay Area Search. Come and meet some of the best and brightest SEO’s in the Bay. We host networking events at the San Francisco headquarters some of the most recognized names in tech: Macy’s TECH, Optimizely, LinkedIn, Yelp, and Credit Karma. They’re fun and free thanks to our generous sponsors.
During 2020, all BAS events are being hosted virtually using Zoom.