1. WordCounter
Friends, WordCounter does so much more than just count words. After you've copied and pasted your text into the tool, it also gives you loads of other useful insights:
- The estimated reading level of your work. This is handy to make sure your work is the right tone of voice and complexity for your audience.
- The estimated time it will take to read your work. Although some websites do this automatically, it can never hurt to include this at the top of a blog or article. It lets your readers know what to expect.
- The estimated time it will take to read your work out loud. Extra useful for presentations or calls.
But I probably use it most of all for its keyword density tool. It tells you how many times you've used a particular word or phrase in your copy. This is handy for SEO, but also to make sure you're not using the same word too many times. BUT HOW TO FIND A NEW WORD TO USE INSTEAD?
2. WordHippo
WordHippo is kinda like an online thesaurus. If ever you find yourself reusing the same word too many times in a piece of copy, WordHippo is your friend. You simply pop your word into it, and it gives you a humongous list of alternatives.
It also sorts each word into different categories: verb, noun, adjective etc. So you don't get too many irrelevant results. It's great if you're getting writer's block, but also great if you need a word that rhymes or alliterates with something else. Sprucing up your copy like this will really make it stand out - just try not to overdo the flowery adjectives.
3. Hunter
If you're thinking of sending off some cold emails at some point in the future, you're firstly gonna need a way of getting those email addresses. Hunter makes that process much easier. It has a load of different features, like:
- Domain Search. If you know which company you want to email, pop their domain in this tool. It'll give you a list of publicly available email addresses and give you the typical naming convention of their email addresses (e.g. {first}.{last}@website.com).
- Email Finder. This is so useful. You just put someone's full name in, along with the name of the company they work for, and Hunter comes up with a possible email address for them together with an accuracy score.
- Email Verifier. Once you've got a possible email address, you can get more info about it in Hunter's Verifier tool. It'll tell you how likely it is that this email is accurate and whether it follows naming conventions of other emails within that domain.
Once you've gathered a list of emails, you can also use Hunter to write and send your emails. Not bad for free.
4. Otter
There are a lot of transcription tools out there, but Otter takes the top prize for us. It has the best free features and it's the most accurate speech-to-text tool we've found so far.
You can use Otter to transcribe speech in real time or upload an audio file for it to transcribe. I've found it struggles a little more with British English accents, but since you can go back and edit the transcript it's not a big deal. Great for interviewing people, or simply for making voice notes that get turned straight into text.
5. SpyFu
So TECHNICALLY this one isn't free, however since it's so much cheaper than other SEO tools (and just as good) we just had to include it.
SEO tools are expensive, and whether you're a freelancer or part of a bigger boat it can be tough to justify the investment. The cheapest SEMrush package is $129, for instance. But the thing is, SEMrush probably justify that because it has literally hundreds of different tools within it. And most copywriters will only use 10% of them.
Personally, I think it's better to only pay for what you actually use. Which is why SpyFu is my SEO tool of choice. It's way cheaper than the likes of SEMrush (packages start from $16 per month), but every bit as good. You can do keyword research, competitor analysis, backlink analysis and also track your search ranking. It's nice to have an affordable copywriting tool that freelancers and startups can actually afford.
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