You may not be the most skilled in SEO (Search Engine Optimization), and that’s ok because many business owners are not. To become proficient at integrating SEO into your marketing strategy, it takes time to do your own research and learn how to make it work for you, as well as a teacher that can walk you through everything and show you what it all means.
SpyFu actually does this for you, too, but their service does a lot more than that and can empower you with information about your competitors that will actually be of great use to you—not just a ton of meaningless data.
What is SpyFu?
SpyFu is a competitive intelligence tool for search marketers. You can type in a domain to see all of the keywords it ranks for (including the content that ranks), the ads it buys on Google, and an estimation of how they compare to their competitors in the marketplace.
You can also type in a keyword to find the domains that buy it, the domains that rank for it, and how that has changed over time. With deep insights into both SEO and PPC, SpyFu is a solid tool for people who are starting a campaign and those who are improving what is already in motion.
Spyfu is a cloud-based marketing tool designed for businesses of all sizes.
SpyFu Features
Key features include SEO performance analysis, API access, keyword rank tracking, SERP analysis and more.
Spyfu helps SEO and PPC professionals analyze competitors, increase website traffic, monitor their websites' rankings on search engines and generate quality sales leads. The solution’s AdWords advisor provides campaign-specific keyword recommendations, tracks competitors' AdWords billing history and recommends keywords that are being used by competitors.
Additionally, marketers can use Spyfu to build a relationship with social media influencers, create customizable reports, estimate advertising spending and find quality backlinks to drive traffic. Spyfu also comes with an API that can help users automate requests and find data efficiently.
The SpyFu dashboard is smartly laid out with a navigation bar across the top with tabs for SEO Research, PPC Research, Keyword Research, Backlinks, the List Builder, Tracking, and Reports. There's a lot SpyFu can do across the spectrum of SEO tooling, but for this review we're focusing primarily on its ad hoc keyword research capabilities. When a business is looking to identifying the best possible search engine results pages (SERP) to target with an optimization strategy, keyword-driven investigation is the legwork to get pages to rank higher. Keyword recommendations and management capabilities are built in throughout SpyFu, but I started in the Keyword Research tab.
Keyword management is baked into SpyFu throughout the platform. Within each of its three main research tabs—SEO, PPC, and Keyword—there are options in the drop-down menus for SEO and PPC-specific keywords, and Keyword Groups.
The Keyword Groups features in each tab are fairly similar, populating a table with monthly search volume, CPC, difficulty score, and monthly cost. These are SpyFu's four main metrics where keyword research is concerned. On the left of the table are either the keyword you've researched and grouped yourself, or top keyword group suggestions from SpyFu. On the top right of the table you can then add selected keywords to lists, or export your selected keyword as an Microsoft Excel file, CSV, or PDF. This basic keyword grouping functionality is similar to SEMrush and executed better in Moz Pro and KWFinder.
SpyFu Pros and Cons
Pros
Full suite of core keyword search and management tooling. Affordable pricing. Sleek user experience. Interactive reporting. Deep PPC/CPC and paid advertising metrics. Backlink tracking. Ongoing site monitoring. Unlimited search results.
Cons
No web-wide crawling capability. Ad metrics can be confusing for a novice SEO user.
Steps for getting the SpyFu free trial
- Go to SpyFu website at spyfu.com
- And click on the Try SpyFu Today Risk-Free button
- Select a plan from Basic, Professional, and Team and either pay monthly or annually.
- You have a 30-day money-back guarantee. You can cancel anytime by email, live chat, or phone.
- So, select a plan and click on Select
- Create an account by entering your email and password and then type in your payment details and click on Create account.
- You will get access to the plan and all the features it contains immediately they confirm your credit card information and process your payment.
- Apparently, there is no SpyFu free trial but you can use the platform FREE to analyze any website.
Since there is no SpyFu free trial, to start using SpyFu service free, type a keyword of a competitor into the main search bar on the website. Also, there is no limit to how long you can use it for free. And if you share an email address with SpyFu, you can search as often as you want for as long as you like.
Plans and Pricing
SpyFu has three different plans. The basic plan costs $33 per month and comes with 250 sales leads and domain contacts as well as 5,000 weekly tracked keyword rankings. This plan is best suited to new startups and small companies with a limited online footprint.
If you are in need of more advanced keyword analytics, you can opt for the professional plan for $58 per month. It comes with 500 sales leads and domain contacts as well as 15,000 weekly tracked keyword rankings and custom branding for your company.
The most feature-rich plan is the team plan, which comes with 2,000 sales leads and domain contacts, 40,000 weekly tracked keyword rankings, custom branding, and five user logins. This plan is ideal for fully-fledged marketing departments that have resources dedicated to SEO and keyword-based online advertising.
In addition to the plan-specific features outlined above, all of SpyFu’s service tiers come with unlimited search results, unlimited data exports, and unlimited domain overview documents.
Let see reviews from member who used SpyFu
- I'm loving Spyfu for it's competition analysis and volume tracking. I've had a lot of success KW planning with this tool, but it's tracking seems to be wonky.
- I honestly am brand new to SpyFu. I love the keyword tool, the competitive backlink analysis and overall competitive analysis tools. I think I might even prefer it to SEM Rush mainly due to the interface. Great work on this tool!
- SpyFu is amazing for keyword research and mapping competitors. Worth the $80 for sure. The Kombat tool is insanely useful.
- My team started using it recently. It helps round out presentations when clients ask for information on competitors. It was interesting to see the estimates on spend (ie did any competitors ramp up their efforts recently), view actual competitor ad copy (ie how does their messaging differ from ours), and get a sense for how their keyword targeting compares to our own. We’ve found it to be a nice complement to auction insights.
- I have been using SpyFu for a long time. Keyword Kombat is an incredible timesaver in a new space.
- I ended up going with SpyFu for various reasons. The main reason being that it offered the specific tools that I needed at a price point that is more in line with my budget. The interface is really nice I have to say.
Conclusion
SpyFu goes the furthest of all the SEO optimization tools we tested in directly bringing value to sales, marketing, and the business' bottom line. SpyFu manages to give SMBs a tool that anticipates their needs and is easy to use. One big bonus is its affordable price compared to other tools in this roundup.
There’s no limit to the amount of useful information that you can collect about your competitors through SpyFu, and the best part is that you’ll be able to make sense of it, so that you can draw increasingly more targeted traffic to your business’ site.
Services are offered on a monthly subscription basis that includes support via live chat and phone.
