SpyFu Tool Review | Scripted

Published by Ciara Antolini on Wednesday, February 9, 2022 in Marketing Agencies, Tool Review, Tools, Tools Reviews.

Understanding the keywords your competitors are targeting can help you rank better in search engines and even boost audience engagement, all while you build a reputation that converts more leads for your business. Of course, competitor research tools are a dime a dozen, and that's why SpyFu stands out. SpyFu isn't just another research tool; it goes below the surface to help expose the content marketing strategies of your most successful competition.

What is SpyFu?

If you plug in any domain, SpyFu claims it can reveal "every keyword they've bought on Google Ads, every organic rank, and every ad variation in the last 15 years." This makes SpyFu different from other competitor research tools because it digs deeper and goes back further, all while offering you accurate, tailored, and pinpointed metrics to help you make sense of a competitor's approach.

Compare SpyFu to most other competitor keyword research tools and you'll find that the other tools focus only on generating lists of ranking keywords for a competitor. Or they may tell you how much traffic a competitor generates with each keyword, but they can't show you the keywords your site needs to target to keep up. Or they'll leave out important advertising stats, confusing organic and paid traffic results.

SpyFu is a tool built from the ground up to help website owners like you decipher what your best competitors are doing so you can do even better. With SpyFu, you'll be able to reduce the guesswork that goes into your strategy and put your website on a fast track to better results.

Features and Benefits of SpyFu

The long list of features SpyFu offers is enough to impress anyone. Here are the top features you'll enjoy with this tool.

PPC Competitor Research

• Discover PPC words your competitors are targeting and see how many clicks they're generating for each keyword.
• Monitor your competitors in PPC and see who else is bidding on Google Ads. This will help you spot emerging competitors and even reveal changes in ad spend.
• Reveal the top keywords your competitors are buying that you aren't yet targeting, helping you find new opportunities.
• Get recommendations on the most profitable keywords by entering your domain and letting SpyFu analyze you and your competitors side-by-side.
• View campaign history for every ad and campaign your competitors have run, seeing split tests and early keywords that they ditched due to poor results.
• Get negative match recommendations by scanning your ad history to rule out keywords that are too costly or broad so you don't waste money.
• Track impression share and ranking for your most recent keywords so you can see how things improve over time.

SEO Competitor Research

If this shortlist of features impressed you, note that these are only the advertised features associated with SpyFu's PPC Competitor Research functions. There's a whole host of other features that accompany SpyFu's SEO Competitor Research tools, like:

• Search for any competitor and download a complete list of all their SEO keywords, with metrics on how much traffic each keyword generates.
• Watch the competition as their rankings and keywords change over time by tracking every website in your niche.
• Gain instant insights into the top keywords your website should be targeting that your competitors are already ranking for.
• Discover a website's ranking history for any keyword and see the site or algorithm changes that improved or decreased their ranking over time.
• Find the backlinks your competitors have that you're lacking so you can start filling in the gaps of your strategy.
• Build relationships with influencers who will help you rank for a specific keyword using social outreach tools.
• Track your keyword rankings over time and get expansion suggestions automatically, so you can stay on top.

Keyword Research Tools

• Get targeted keyword ideas using SpyFu's Google Keyword Tool alternative, showing you volume, CPC, difficulty, and more.
• Let SpyFu automatically organize your keywords into groups and add data whenever you bulk upload a list.
• Type in a keyword and see the most profitable keywords in its niche, complete with advice for running your campaign.
• Enter a keyword and get a list of the best backlinks to help you rank for that keyword to fuel your social outreach.
• See the top websites by search traffic and Google Ads spend to help you better understand your niche and its top performers.

SpyFu Plans and Pricing

All SpyFu plans come with unlimited access to all the platform's data.

Basic

Pay monthly at $39/month or annually at $33/month and get:

• Unlimited search results with access to all data
• Unlimited exports for all data you discover
• Unlimited downloads for domain overviews
• Up to 250 domain and sales lead contacts
• Up to 5,000 tracked keyword rankings each week
• Up to 10,000 top lists results

Professional

Pay monthly at $79/month or annually at $58/month and get:

• Unlimited search results with access to all data
• Unlimited exports for all data you discover
• Unlimited downloads for domain overviews
• Up to 500 domain and sales lead contacts
• Up to 15,000 tracked keyword rankings each week
• Up to 50,000 top lists results
• Up to 10,000 API row results
• Custom branding for all of your reports

Team

Pay monthly at $299/month or annually at $199/month and get:

• Unlimited search results with access to all data
• Unlimited exports for all data you discover
• Unlimited downloads for domain overviews
• Up to 2,000 domain and sales lead contacts
• Up to 40,000 tracked keyword rankings each week
• Up to 75,000 top lists results
• Up to 10,000 API row results
• Custom branding for all of your reports
• Up to five user logins

Customer Reviews

"It took a moment to get used to the interface (I'm a hardhead and often go at it without instructions). Once I watched a couple of the videos that were conveniently sent to my inbox, it was a breeze to use. I use the insights to see what's working for my businesses, what's working for competitors (that I need to make work for me), and get optimization ideas to make my PPC and SEO spend more effective." via G2

"Spyfu offers lots of valuable information. I don't want to list all of the things it can do for you here, but my top 3 are 1) The Estimated Ad Spend 2) The List of Competitors and 3) The List of Keywords. All of this makes it super useful when planning your next marketing strategy or how to adjust your SEO plan. There is a steep learning curve when it comes to navigating and understanding all that Spyfu has to offer. Occasionally, there are websites that Spyfu has no record of. This is frustrating but understandable. After all, you can't have a list of every website on the internet. Although, that would be useful, too..." via G2

"I absolutely love this software. Primarily I love how easy it is to grab competitive data about a client's competitors to truly show them who's eating their lunch. It has helped me in so many sales conversations because this type of third party information truly demonstrates to people where they're falling down and where they can make improvements (and where my agency can add value to them)." via G2

Power Your Content Marketing

SpyFu is an extremely powerful tool that can help you uncover game-changing information about your competitors so you can fill in the gaps of your strategy and start climbing the search rankings, all while optimizing your PPC game. It's a tool that goes far beyond what most competitor research tools offer, but it's also reasonably priced with hefty annual discounts for those looking to make a long-term commitment.

With that said, although SpyFu can help you uncover the keywords and backlinks you need, the only way to earn them is through quality content.

Interested in learning more? Get start with Scripted and start getting better results for your website.