SpyFu vs SEMrush Which is Better for Competitive Research
SpyFu vs SEMrush Which is Better for Competitive Research
Here is the detailed overview of SpyFu vs SEMrush SEO research tools from competitors.
- You will find everything along with their pricing options (and a tutorial on how to use them).
- Are you confused between choosing the right SEO tools between SpyFu and SEMrush ?
Both SpyFu and SEMrush are great SEO tools used for competitor research. If you're someone looking for a detailed comparison of both tools, this post is a treat for you.
We'll talk about SpyFu and SEMrush features, pricing, pros and cons and how to use these tools for competitor research. Are you ready? Let's jump into the details.
Must Read
- Grab SEMrush 30 Day Free Trial (Pro Account) worth $ 99.95: unbiased SEMrush Review 2020
- SEMrush Black Friday deal: 3 limited-time offers [including 30% discount]
- How to use SEMrush to find profitable keywords and research Great content for your website
SpyFu vs SEMrush: The detailed comparison
SpyFuis great for competitor analysis and their pricing plans start at just $ 33 per month, while SEMrush is a full SEO toolkit that can be used for everything from keyword research to competitor analysis to site audits and their pricing plans start at $ 99.95 per month
Before we get into this SEO tools comparison, let's first discuss the two great SEO tools so you can understand what they really are.
Grab Your 30 Days FREE SEMrush Pro Account ($ 99.95 Value)
1. What is SEMrush?
SEMrush is an all-in-one SEO toolkit that you can use for extensive competition research. No matter what industry you are in, you can use SEMrush data to easily analyze your competitors and use that data to your advantage.
Here are some numbers from SEMrush
Used by over 3 million users
Has over 800 million keywords
Access to 100
Over 130 million domains million domains
geo databases 340 desktop 450 million desktop
keywords along with 80 million mobile keywords along with 300 million mobile domains
By looking at the above statistics, we can safely say that SEMrush is one of the BIGGEST and really useful SEO toolkits for all kinds of competition research bloggers.
Click here to try SEMrush for FREE (30 days)
What is SpyFu?
SpyFu is the most comprehensive SEO tool you can use to "spy" on your competitors' keywords. You can use SpyFu to search for any domain and see any place they've shown in search engines like Google.
SpyFu can help you spy on your competitors by giving you access to;
every keyword your competitors have bought on Adwords,
every organic rank they rank for
every ad variation your competitors have used over the past 12 years to get more organic traffic and more sales to their websites.
In short, SpyFu reveals all of your competitors' keyword data, so you can easily find highly profitable and low-hanging keywords to improve your website's search results.
Feature Comparison
Now let's talk about some of the incredible ones offered in both SpyFu and SEMrush. First, let's start with SpyFu's list of features.
Grab Your 30 Days FREE SEMrush Pro Account ($ 99.95 Value)
2. List of SpyFu Features
Here is the list of all the features you get with SpyFu.
Unlimited domains search results Unlimited Results
keywords
searchUnlimited backlinks searches
Unlimited results for competitors Unlimited results for
keyword groups
Unlimited (Kombat)
Unlimited exports for all search results
domain comparisonsTop(Top PPC spenders, etc.)
listsExport Advanced sales leads Info
Filter
your own keywords
Track and SEO rankings
10 years of historical data
Custom SEO and PPC reports reports
placementCustom brand(available only for "Professional" and "Team" accounts)
API access (available only for "Professional" and "Team" accounts)
Multiple User Accounts (only available with "Team" account)
This is what the SpyFu dashboard looks like;
As you can see from the image above, it shows you a monthly domain for each of the domains you enter and gives you access to things like;
Organic Search Results
Paid KeywordsPaid
CompetitorsCompetitors
Top, etc.
You can also easily find out how many keywords on the first page your competitors rank, along with estimated monthly views they get from different keywords from search results.
Grab Your 30 Days FREE SEMrush Pro Account ($ 99.95 Value)
3. List of SEMrush features
Here is the list of all the incredible features you get with SEMrush.
Keyword Research
Display Advertising
Domain vs. Domain
Social Media Tool
Domain Analytics
Site Audit
Backlinks
SEO ideas
Keyword Magic
Positioning
Video Advertising Research
PDF Reports
Content Tool
Organic research
Backlink Audit Tool
Product Listing Ads
Brand Monitoring
SEO Content Template
Advertising
Organic Traffic Understanding
Difficulty
Thus SEMrush dashboard looks;
As you can see from the image above, SEMrush shows you all organic results when you enter a domain name. This is what it means;
Top Organic Keywords
Organic Ranks
Number of Backlinks
Paid Search Results When
Applied Organic Search Results
List of Related Competitors (along with their keywords)
Read: Moz vs SEMRush: Comparing Two of the Best SEO Tools (2020 Edition)
Overall, both SEMrush and SpyFu offer a ton of useful features ranging from keyword research to position tracking to backlink analysis and so on, but here's more. They are both great tools for competitor research. Let's talk about it now.
For competitive
Both SpyFu and SEMrush are excellent analysis tools for competition. So let's get into the details on how to use both tools to do competitive research.
Grab Your 30 Days FREE SEMrush Pro Account ($ 99.95 Value)
4. Using SpyFu for Competitive Analysis
Here's how you can use SpyFu to perform competitive analysis.
Step 1: Go to SpyFu (you can also enter your email address and password to try it for free) and enter a domain name of your competitor.
Here's what it looks like;
As you can see from the image above, it generates a list of all closely related top organic competitors for the domain name entered. In our case, SpyFu for Backlinko.com shows results like;
Ahrefs
KWFinder
Robbie Richards
Moz and so on
The above data is fully relevant as all sites are related to SEO, link building and so on.
Step 2: Find the overlapping keyword data
When you scroll down a bit, SpyFu shows you a lot of useful keyword data that overlaps with your competitors. Here's what it looks like;
As you can see above, it shows a list of;
General Keywords
Number of Keywords
Monthly Clicks
Monthly Value of Clicks
Step 3: Using the Keyword To Find Your Competitors' Common Keywords
UniverseSpyFu also shows you a list of all keywords that are relevant to your competitors when you click the "Common Keywords" feature clicks. Here's what it looks like;
As you can see above, SpyFu shows us;
Keyword
Search volume for that keyword
CPC for that keyword
Difficulty for that keyword
The above information is more than enough to easily find the RIGHT keywords with the right search volume, high CPC and less difficulty to increase your overall search rank and also sales.
Step 4: Finding your competitors 'organic rating history
SpyFu also shows us your competitors' rating history. Here's what it looks like;
You can see that SpyFu shows "traffic peaks" so you can easily find out the organic history of your competitors. It also shows the main keywords where you can also find their positions, timeline and so on.
You can also find out the data from the past 6 months, 1 year, 2 years and so on to closely examine your competitors' organic ranking history.
Step 5: Finding Your Competitors 'Backlink Resources
The best thing about the SpyFu Competitor Research Tool is that it allows you to easily find a list of all your competitors' backlink resources.
In our case, here is a list of some of the backlink resources Backlinko has generated so far;
Read: How to do keyword research like a pro [even if you don't know anything about SEO]
The above data shows us the following things;
Monthly Organic Clicks from the Domain: The monthly organic clicks from the domain will help you see how much traffic they've led to all pages of unpaid search results in the past month. They estimate these clicks based on the rank of the domain and the organic clickthrough rate for the keywords on which it is ranked.
Monthly Organic Clicks From The Page: The monthly organic clicks from the page are counted only for the specific URL displayed here as the backlink. They estimate these clicks based on the clickthrough rate for the domain or the organic position of the page on a keyword, multiplied by the keyword's search volume.
Domain Strength: They rate domains to show how strong they are in a niche, so you can estimate how important a link from that site would be. A domain with a high score here (closer to 100) consistently scores on top searches.
Ranked Keywords: This "ranked keywords" metric shows the number of keywords for which the specific page stands alone. It helps you easily determine the SEO power of a potential link you are considering.
Outbound Links: This is the number of different pages that this specific page links to.
There you go! For example, you can perform competitive analysis to find a list of all keywords, top content, backlink sources from your competitors' websites.
Grab Your 30 Days FREE SEMrush Pro Account ($ 99.95 Value)
5. Using SEMrush for Competitor Analysis
Now let's talk about how to use SEMrush to perform a detailed analysis of your competitors' sites.
Step 1: Go to the SEMrush dashboard (here is the 30 day free trial) and enter a domain URL of your competitor. Here's what it looks like;
As you can see above, SEMrush shows you;
Organic Search
Paid Search Results
Total Backlinks (along with referring domains)
Organic Keywords
Paid Keywords and so on
Step 2: Finding the Best Performing Keywords of Your Competitors with SEMrush
One of the main reasons we've been using SEMrush for a long time is the ability to find profitable yet uncompetitive keywords. When you scroll down on domain overview results, SEMrush shows you the best organic keywords.
Here's what it looks like;
As you can see from the image above, show us;
Top Organic Keywords (along with the keyword, position, search volume, CPC value, traffic percentage and so on)
Top Organic Competitors (along with competition level, general keywords, search engine keywords and so on)
You can also click the View Full Report button to view a full get a list of all the keywords your competitors rank for.
Read: Top 10 SEMrush alternatives for all your SEO needs in 2020
Read: Top 10 SpyFu Alternatives That Are Shared With Advantages And Disadvantages
Step 3: Finding All Your Competitors 'Backlinks Along With Their Sources
SEMrush is known for giving you access to a ton of data from your competitors' backlink sources. Here are the backlink details from Neil Patel's blog;
As you can see above, you will find a lot of useful backlink data including;
Total number of backlinks
Referring domains and IPs
Site authority
score Indexed pages and
competitors of your competitors and so on.
When you click on the total number of backlinks, SEMrush will show you all the backlinks data along with their sources so you can easily find out which websites are linking to your competitors. With that data, you can easily figure out where to look if you really want to take your website's backlink profile to the next level.
Step 4: Find
traffic estimates from your competitors' websites Did you know that you can easily use the SEMrush competitor survey tool to estimate the traffic from your competitor sites? Yes, it is possible. Look at the following image;
As you can see above, the SEMrush traffic analysis report shows us;
Traffic Summary along with the Traffic
Sources Estimated Monthly VisitsVisit
Unique Visitors
AverageDuration
Bounce Rate
While there are many sites to monitor website traffic, SEMrush gives you really accurate information about finding traffic from sites.
Step 5: Finding Paid Search Results From Your Competitors
Another incredible feature you get with SEMrush competition research is that you can easily find paid ads along with their search rankings from your competitors.
Check it out;
As you can see above, SEMrush is shown;
Paid search positions along with the keywords
Paid search volume
CPC of the paid keywords along with the traffic
And overall results for the paid keywords of your competitors
Competitive research aspects of SEMrush
SEMrush also offers competitive research toolkit that offers you a lot of useful features, including;
Keyword gap
Backlink gap
Brand monitoring
Track your competitors articles
Let's talk about their features briefly so you will understand how they can be useful to your business.
Keyword Gap Keywords
You can compare your website to that of your competitors to easily identify your competitors' target and use some of them to increase your organic traffic and rankings.
It is also known as domain versus domain comparison, where you can compare your site to 5 other sites and SEMrush Keyword Gap will display the keywords of domains in general, unique and all searches, as well as search terms unique to the first domain entered.
You can also use filters to sort data by specific keywords, position, volume, CPC, competition, or number of search results.
Backlink gap
Backlink gap is one of the incredible features of the SEMrush competitor research toolkit that makes it easy to find and evaluate the websites that link to your competitors, but not to you.
That way, you can easily find a lot of backlink resources where you can get a list of domains to target in your link building campaigns.
Here's how it basically works. Go to the Backlink gap and enter your domain and your competitor's domains. SEMrush starts by analyzing the backlink profiles of all of these websites and discovers backlink capabilities that you can use to generate NEW and high quality links for your sites.
Brand Monitoring The
Brand Monitoring feature allows you to track any online resource that you or your competitors list on their website, articles and so on. Here's what it looks like;
As you can see above, the SEMrush brand monitoring tool will show you that information when someone else mentions your brand name (like the name of the website). You can repeat the same process by tracking your competitors' online reputation.
Track your competitors 'articles
Did you know that you can track your performance and your competitors' articles through major social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and soon?
Not only that, with the SEMrush "Post Tracking" feature you can keep an eye on your rankings and backlinks and your competitors' articles.
That way, you can easily discover your own strengths and weaknesses while comparing to your competitors' sites and using the best strategies that work well.
Pros and Cons
Here is a list of all the pros and cons of both SEO tools.
SpyFu Pros and Cons:
SpyFu has its own pros and cons, here are some pros and cons of using the SpyFu SEO tool.
SpyFu Pros:
Cost effective (the # 1 reason to consider SpyFu above most other SEO tools is that their basic plan starts at just $ 33 per month and gives you access to a ton of unlimited data)
Great competitor research tool (you can literally see what your competitors do)
The interface is so simple and easy to navigate (even if you are a beginner you will find it very easy to find everything you need on one roof)
Keyword research is pretty good as well as it shows you a list of highly profitable keywords and traffic that generate keyword ideas from your competitors at a glance.
Unlimited downloads is another reason most people go for SpyFu, which means you can get as many keywords as possible. They don't charge per row or so, so you can get as many keywords from as many competitors as you'd like.
Really large amounts of competitor data with this tool deleting millions of keyword listings to give you an in-depth look at your competitors. keywords, backlink sources, ad copies and so on.
Comparison tool of how your website ranks on similar websites is useful to easily understand where you are strong and where you can improve to get better search results
SpyFu Cons:
Competition research is not as comprehensive as we would like (because SEMrush offers almost every tool you need, from competitor keyword research to site audits to finding and estimating your competitors' traffic, ads and so on).
Some of the keywords we found with SpyFu are completely separate, which means that you sometimes want to do manual research for the best data data on
Keyword statistics and backlinks are sometimes inaccurate (which actually happens often with most SEO tools, so no NEW thing)
SEMr ush Pros and Cons:
Like any other SEO tool, SEMrush also has its own pros and cons, here are some of the pros and cons of using SEMrush.
SEMrush Pros:analysis
Run everything from keyword research to backlink to one-roof site audits.
You can choose the country before adding the URL of the domain you want to analyze (you can choose from over 100 countries).
You can analyze paid traffic along with paid keywords
Reporting via the API is extremely simple and the operational charts are so easy to understand and
SEO is a great tool for site auditing and keyword research. One of the biggest benefits of using SEMrush is for site audits where you can find the health of your website with your competitors. It also helps you solve your site problems easily.
Domain comparison is another incredible tool that allows you to compare your domain to several other websites of your competitors to easily find overlapping keywords
SEMRush also has a HUGE database that receives regularly updated databases of over 100 million keywords from over 26 regions of the US to Europe, the Middle East, China, India, Australia and so on
Read: SEMrush vs Ahrefs Ultimate Review: What's the Best SEO Tool for 2020?
SEMrush Disadvantages:
SEMrush Prices Are Quite High Compared To SpyFu Pricing Plans The Search Volume
Estimation Is Not So Accurate (We Don't Know If It Has Anything To Do With SEMrush Databases)Pricing Plans
Price Comparison
SpyFuStart At $ 33 Per Month , where you get unlimited search results, unlimited data exports, etc. while SEMrush pricing plans start at $ 99.95 per month, where you can do everything from keyword research to competition analysis to site audits.
Now let's talk briefly about the pricing plans of both SpyFu and SEMrush.
SpyFu Pricing: SpyFu offers 3 types of pricing options with monthly and annual billing options listed below.
Basic
Professional
Team
Here's an overview of the SpyFu pricing plans: Basic plan: the basic plan
1. is great for starters and really costs you less, where the annual plan costs you $ 33 per month and gives you access to the following features
Unlimited search results where you view all data
Unlimited data
export Unlimited domain overview PDFs
250 sales leads and domain
contacts 5k weekly keyword
rankings 10k top results list
2. Professional: this is great for bloggers, affiliate marketers and SEOs where the annual subscription will cost you $ 58 per month and give you access to the following features
Unlimited search results where you can see all the data
Unlimited data
export Unlimited domain overview PDFs
500 sales leads and domain
contacts 15k weekly tracked keyword
rankings 50k top lists results
10k API rows returned
Custom brand reporting
3. Team: This is great for teams and agencies where the annual subscription will run you $ 199 costs a month and gives you access to the following features
You unlimited search results where you can see all the data
Unlimited data
export Unlimited domain overview PDFs
2000 sales leads and domain
contacts 40k weekly keywords tracked
rankings 75k top lists results
10k API rows returned
Custom brand reporting logins
5 user
Click here to try SpyFu to your SEO
What is SpyFu's Money Back Guarantee? What if I am not satisfied with SpyFu?
SpyFu offers you a 30-day money back guarantee, which means if you are not satisfied with SpyFu you can cancel your account at any time via email, live chat or phone within 30 days and they will refund money without asking questions!
SEMrush Pricing: SEMrush also offers 3 types of pricing options with monthly and annual billing options listed below.
Pro starts at $ 99.95 per month
Guru starts at $ 199.95 monthly
Business starts at $ 399.95 monthly
Here is the breakdown of SEMrush pricing:
plans1. SEMrush Pro: SEMrush Pro is SEMrush's starter plan that will give you $ Costs 99.95, where you can get the following things.
Results per report: 10,000
Reports per day: 3000
Projects: 5
Keywords to track: 500
Pages to crawl: 100,000
Social media profiles: 50
Scheduled PDF reports: 5
2. SEMrush Guru: With SEMrush Guru account, you can access any feature of SEMrush Pro account along with the historical data since 2012, which will cost you $ 199.95 monthly, giving you the following features.
Results per report: 30,000
Reports per day: 5,000
Projects: 50
Keywords to follow: 1500
Pages to crawl: 300,000
3. SEMrush Business: SEMrush Business account is suitable for teams and agencies that will cost you $ 399.95 monthly and access you gives to the following things;
Results per report: 50,000
Reports per day: 10,000
Projects: Unlimited
Keywords to follow: 6000
Pages to crawl: 12.00,000 Get
a 30-day FREE trial of SEMrush Pro account (worth $ 99.95).
What is SEMrush's money back guarantee? What if I am not satisfied with SEMrush?
SEMrush offers you a 7-day money back guarantee, so you can request a full refund within 7 days of signing up if you're not really happy with the SEMrush features. You can send them a request at mail@semrush.com to cancel your account and request a refund!
Read: SpyFu Review: Is This The Best Competitor Analysis Tool?
Frequently Asked Questions
Here are some important questions you may want to know to gain a better understanding of both tools.
1. Why should I use SEMrush over SpyFu?
Without a doubt, SEMrush is the all-in-one SEO toolkit that beats SpyFu in most cases as SEMrush gives you all the tools you need to do almost everything from keyword research to competitor analysis to backlink checking, site auditing, position tracking and so on.
Read: 5 easy steps to get over 30,000 visitors / month using Long Tail keywords in 2020
2. Why should I use SpyFu vs SEMrush?
The # 1 reason to use SpyFu vs SEMrush is the price. SEMrush pricing plans start at $ 99.95 per month, while SpyFu pricing plans start at just $ 33 per month, which is so cool. Apart from that, SpyFu is also one of the comprehensive competitor research tools you can use to get a lot of your competitors' data including keywords, paid ads, organic ads and so on.
3. What are the Spyfu rate plans?
SpyFu offers three pricing plans, including Basic, Professional, and Team plans. Prices range from $ 33 per month to $ 199 per month.
4. What are the SEMrush pricing plans?
SEMrush offers 3 pricing plans, including Pro, Guru and Business, and prices range from $ 99.95 per month to $ 399.95 per month.
5 Which SEMrush pricing plan should I choose?
If you are a beginner and looking for keyword research, site audits and backlink analysis then SEMrush Pro (starter plan) is great for you which will cost you $ 99.95 per month.
If you're a blogger and or an SEO expert, the SEMrush Guru plan is right for you, where you can also get historical data and get comprehensive reports that will cost you $ 199.95 per month.
If you run an agency or collaborate with several other people, a SEMrush business account is definitely for you what will cost you $ 399.95 per month, where you can also add 9 additional users to access the same account.
6. What is the best SpyFu plan?
SpyFu's basic plan is good for entry-level beginners and bloggers, where you can access weekly 5k tracked keyword rankings and 10k top list results that will cost you $ 33 per month.
The professional SpyFu plan is great for bloggers and SEOs who want to get even more comprehensive data from 15,000 weekly keyword rankings and 50,000 top lists, as well as get custom branding reports that will cost you $ 58 per month.
The SpyFu team is great for agencies and internal SEO companies where you can give access to different people, where you can also have up to 5 users login to your account, which will cost you $ 199 per month.
Browse More SEO Tools:
Judgment
So far, we've covered almost everything about both SpyFu and SEMrush, so you may have already come to a conclusion that works best for your website and budget needs.
If you're on a budget, but looking for a comprehensive SEO tool for competitor research, SpyFu is definitely a great choice for you, while SEMrush is great for all types of bloggers, SEOs and marketers and a ton of SEO tools under one roof.
If you can spend a little extra money, a SEMrush pro is definitely a good choice for SpyFu. So what do you think of the review of SpyFu and SEMrush for 2020? If you have any questions, let us know in the comments below.
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