Ahrefs - great for tracking client results, researching keywords (difficulty, related keywords and questions, traffic potential), and tracking how your freelance writer website is doing in search.
Keywords Everywhere - browser add-on that layers your search results on Google (and Amazon, YouTube, etc.) with search volume, CPC, competition, and trends. Great for research!
Clearscope - the ultimate content optimization tool. It helps you get laser-focused on the search intent for the keywords you want to rank for and optimize your writing for maximum results. Many of my clients use Clearscope, and I use it myself, too.
Google Docs - quite self-explanatory, but worth emphasizing: Google Docs is the best way to write if you want to share your work, collaborate easily, and edit efficiently. Take some time to learn keyboard shortcuts and time-saving features, and you’ll be unstoppable.
Headline Studio - a free tool from CoSchedule that helps you write strong, crispy headlines. The tool gives you a score and shows you word balance, word and character count, type, reading grade level, sentiment, clarity, and skimmability so you can optimize your headline. Premium (paid) option gives you an SEO score and optimization tips as well. You get three premium headlines to begin with and can purchase more if you need to.
Hemingway App - an excellent tool for editing out fluff from your writing and writing with more clarity. It’s free if you use it in the browser and has a low one-time fee for the desktop app.
LanguageTool - a Grammarly alternative, more oriented towards privacy. Helps you with grammar, spelling, typos, and other easy-to-miss errors.
Copyscape - great for checking your research-heavy writing against plagiarism. If you use lots of statistics, quotes, steps, technical information etc., Copyscape helps you make sure you are crediting your sources, paraphrasing, and properly quoting your research.
Evernote - my go-to tool for all digital notes, including saving marketing examples I like in my swipe file, taking notes from books I read, storing insights from interesting articles, and more. For me, Evernote is what Tiago Forte refers to as
a second brain and helps me connect thoughts so I can write better.
Swipe Files by Corey Haines - Swipe Files is an exceptional marketing community *and* an actual library full of examples like landing pages, ads, pricing pages, onboarding emails, and more (and the analysis of why they’re so good), which will help you find the best examples for your writing.
Toby - a tool that lets you save your research—your browser tabs—into collections so you can return to it easily (instead of overwhelming your computer with dozens of open tabs).
Full Page Screenshot - does what it says: captures a web page from top to bottom automatically, so you can use it in your writing or add it to your swipe file.
CleanShot - the best screenshot tool there is. Lets you blur, highlight, mark up, add lines, arrows, text, numbers… You can also record your screen and turn it into a GIF, which is great for short demo purposes. I use CleanShot dozens of times *every day*. Mac only.
Canva - doesn’t need much explanation; Canva is great for any graphics for a whole range of marketing assets. Premium version lets you build you own brand kit and use premium stock photos. Signing up through
this link gives you one premium photo, icon, or illustration.
Squoosh - the best image compression tool I've ever used. Use it to keep the image quality up while reducing it to less than 100 kilobytes.