SpyFu Under the Microscope in 2023: A No-Fluff, All-Encompassing Review

"I could pay anything to peek at my competitor's knitter-sweater SEO strategy, even if it's just for a minute."

 

Five bucks, that's been your solemn wish for God knows how long. Heck, you've been fantasizing about those beautiful six figures on Neil Patel's website every single day and twice on the weekend (and who hasn't?).

 

If only there were a tool to help lift the lid on your competitor's high-ranking, valuable keywords…

 

If only you could spy on your competitor's ranking history, domain contacts, and sales leads as often as you bat your eyelids…

 

If only…

 

What if we told you that there's actually a way to put an end to all those endless wishes, sleepless nights, and incoherent, guilt-ridden mumbles?

 

Say hello to SpyFu, a solid contender for the best competitor analysis tool ever created.

 

Now, don't take our word for it; this unbiased, no B.S. SpyFu review has got you covered.

 

These other content tool reviews can help you build a full-fledged content writing tool stack;

 

 

In today's guide, we'll strip down this popular competitor analysis software down to its barebones, from its pricing to its most-coveted features, to its flaws. By the end of it all, you'll either be scrambling for the tool's user logins or shaking your head in disappointment (honestly, we'd hate for it to be the latter).

 

Drumroll, please.

 

What is SpyFu, In the Simplest of Terms?

 

SpyFu is what LeChiffre is for the Soviet Union in the movie Casino Royale; essentially, a spy.


 


 

It's a cloud-based competitor analysis tool that allows you to peek at any (underline: any) domain's ranking history.

 

With just a few clicks, you can see every single backlink, keyword, and PPC campaign your competitor has ever worked on. Even better, all that juicy data is presented in the form of succinct, well-fleshed-out reports that leave you craving for more.


 


 

As we speak, SpyFu is indexing 7 billion search results and over 108 million different domains. Yep, you read that right—1, 2….108 million domains!

 

That's one powerful database if you ask us (Google's long-lost brother, is that you?). No wonder most digital marketers today consider Spyfu a solid alternative to SEMrush, Ahrefs, and Frase.

 

Is Competitor Analysis Really that Important? The Numbers Behind the Hype

 

You're probably thinking; it's just competitive analysis; it's just a tiny little aspect that won't matter much in the grand scheme of things of my content strategy. Why invest in SpyFu when I'd rather blog from scratch and pursue organic traffic instead?

 

Well, we hate to break to you, but if your SEO strategy is still not founded on solid competitor analysis and keyword research, you're chasing shadows. And these statistics speak to that fact:

 

  • 90.63% of pages get no organic traffic from Google. (Ahrefs)
  • 43.7% of the top-ranking pages have some reciprocal links, meaning that some of the sites they link to also link to them. (Ahrefs)
  • Traffic funneled through PPC advertising yields 50% more conversions than organic advertising. (Digital Marketing.org)

 

Still skeptical? We'd be surprised if you still are, but if that's the case, this next section will help clarify things further.

 

What Does SpyFu Do? A Deep Dive into the Tool's Promise Land

 

We'd be lying if we termed SpyFu as feature-deficient.

 

For the years that it's been in the game—17, to be exact—the tool has grown in leaps and bounds, so much so that it's now (affectionately) referred to as the "old guard of SEO." 

 

For those of us who've dared to use SpyFu, it's literally been the biblical sea-splitting staff, opening up a world of possibilities in ranking history and beyond. And it's all thanks to its bevy of features.

 

Here are some outstanding ones:

 

1. PPC Competitor Research

 

If spying on your competitor's PPC best practices was that easy, then we'd all be sitting pretty at the crest of the SERP Mountain. Unfortunately, it's not.

 

Even for those who've mastered the art, pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns can get complicated very quickly. You want to ensure you're spending your hard earned money on a few high-ranking, highly specific keywords.

 

With a helpful tool like SpyFu, you'll have access to dedicated workflows that allow you to drill into your competitor's PPC strategy like it's your backyard. Specifically, you'll enjoy insights about:

 

  • Your competitor's top-ranking keywords
  • Competitor Google Ads campaigns and ad test history
  • Core keywords your competitors are buying, but you don't
  • Every domain bidding on your Google Ads
  • Each PPC campaign's clicks per month 
  • PPC negative match recommendations

 

2. SEO Competitor Research

 

Learning a thing or two about a competitor's secret marketing formula is the thing that gets many site owners out of bed in the morning. That said, not finding a thing is what keeps them up at night.

 

A competitor research tool like SpyFu can help you unpack your competitors' high-flying SEO strategy like it's candy on a child's hand.

 

SpyFu will lift the lid on their current SEO keywords, find out the backlinks that they've been turning a blind eye on (so you can explore them), as well as catch any changes in their content over the past couple of years (so you can find out exactly what caused their rise or fall).

 

Yet that's just the tip of the iceberg. Here's what else SpyFu software can help you learn about your competitors' SEO:

 

 

Heck, SpyFu software all but delivers your competitor's complete SEO report on a silver platter. As they say, all is fair in content and war.

 

3. Keyword Analysis

 

The thing about the art of keyword research is that everyone thinks they've mastered it only to find their content buried deep in the pit of SERPs a few months into their foray. On page 1001, to be exact.

 

Thankfully, this is a trend you can put a stop to if you decide to make SpyFu the Hart to your Johnson. For good.

 

With SpyFu, you can easily see every keyword your competitors have ever purchased on AdWords, as well as the specific keyword groups they belong to. Let that sink in for a moment. As you do, consider the kind of keyword research possibilities you'll have on your hands if you had ready access to:

 

  • Targeted keyword ideas with the potential to rank highly on organic search
  • Keyword difficulty reports for specific domains
  • Quality backlinks (inbound links) for particular keywords
  • Low-volume keywords your competitors are ignoring but worth tapping into
  • Specific ranking factors for each keyword on your roster
  • Profitable keywords that everyone else is sweeping under the rug
  • Organic keywords for domains ranked within the first 50 search results
  • Keywords organized into categories and added CPC and search volume data onto them

 

Two words: endless possibilities.

 

Put differently, if you've always been obsessed with target keywords and keyword rankings, SpyFu can help you nail their intricacies in a way no tool ever could. Yeah, I said it.

 

What Will Make You Fall Head Over Heels in Love with SpyFu: The Pros

 

If there ever were a 10/10 competitive analysis and keyword research tool, then SpyFu would be it. Hands down (forgive our obvious bias here). And it's all because of a strong set of advantages:

 

1. Supplies Smart, Timely Recommendations

 

All the bells and whistles we've mentioned about this competitive analysis tool can be summed up in one word: smart recommendations. In other words, every other little nugget—from organic keywords to quality backlinks to competitor keywords—that SpyFu throws your way is simply the best out there.

Beyond that, SpyFu will also pinpoint bad, low-ranking keywords and ditch them instantly. How's that for an efficient and reliable source?

 

2. Unlimited Number of Features

 

You'll often find yourself having one tool for monitoring and amplifying your PPC campaigns and another solely dedicated to finding high-ranking target keywords. Fun as that may sound, it eventually pokes a hole into your marketing budget that only gets bigger with time.

 

With SpyFu, that's a problem you'll only ever see on those creepy Indian YouTube videos. The amount of awesome features you can access, even without a premium subscription, is simply mental.

 

3. Favorable Pricing

 

The last thing you want to do when purchasing a content analysis tool is to be tossed into the classic dilemma of price vs. features. Impressively, that's something you'll never experience with SpyFu.

 

All the key features you've ever wanted in a search marketing software are readily available in SpyFu's basic plan for the price of a pizza (or two).


 


 

For as little as $39 a month, you get instant access to 10k row search results (read: unlimited search), 10k row data exports, 5k weekly tracked keyword rankings, and a lot more. The costliest tier (aka the professional plan) goes for no more than $79 per month—which is still cheaper than the cost of three pizzas (wink!).

 

What's Not-So-Pleasing about SpyFu: The Cons

 

Quoting Jesus' popular utterance in the book of John 8:7:

 

"Let him who is without sin cast the first stone."

 

Look, I'm not the fiercest SpyFu supporter that ever lived. All I'm saying is that even the best Search Engine Optimization tools have some blemish on them.

 

With that said, here are a few things that the SpyFu team can look into and hopefully rectify with time:

 

1. The PPC Reporting Can Be Inaccurate at Times

 

Perhaps one of the most outstanding flaws about SpyFu is its inherent inability to produce spot-on PPC reports every single time, particularly for competitors.


 


 

And if you're not using the paid version of the software, prepare to encounter this bottleneck more often than not. Phew, such a big flaw for such a well-known tool!

 

2. The Coverage May Not Always Be Up to Scratch

 

For a big-league SEO tool like SpyFu, you'd expect nothing short of web-wide keyword searches, right?

 

Well, unlimited access isn't necessarily a word you can use with SpyFu. 

 

While SpyFu's crawler does a pretty good job at uncovering accurate results, it certainly isn't in the same league as Google or Yahoo.

 

Sure, the tool's database brims with keywords from pre-selected domains, but that's just it. Moreover, novice users might have a hard time slicing through the results—they're far from digestible.

 

Our Verdict: Is SpyFu Worth a Plunge in 2022?

 

At this point in the article, you can already tell that we love, love, love SpyFu. Heck, it's literally the butter to our marketing strategy bread. So yes, the tool very much deserves to be part of your content strategy this year and beyond—in our very humble opinion.

 

You'll particularly love this competitive analysis tool for its:

 

  • Reliability (monthly searches or custom keywords if and whenever you need them? Done)
  • Ease of use (the user interface is simply the stuff of dreams)
  • Diversity of features
  • Pricing (the team plans are particularly attractive)
  • Impressive track record (who would dare say no to a tool that Microsoft worships?)
  • And a lot more!

 

Simply put, once you start using SpyFu, there's no going back. It's that good.

 

Wait, What if You Could Get SpyFu and a Top-Notch Content Writing Team as a Bonus?

 

This might as well be the craziest proposition you'll ever hear, but it's all true; not a shred of bluff in it.

 

Just imagine the kind of peace of mind, time savings, and convenience you'll enjoy if you could retain a writing team that's already privy to SpyFu and all its complexities (or should I say niceties?).

 

Well, it's time you stopped imagining because you're looking at that team right now. At Zoey, we're staunch SpyFu users and can't wait to infuse its vibe and awesomeness into your marketing copy.

 

The cherry on the icing on the cake? We won't ever ask you for a subscription fee. I mean, ever. It's all part of the Zoey package from the get-go.

 

Your target audience (like the rest of us) is waiting for you to make the best choice going forward. That's not too much to ask now, is it? Contact us for more information, and we'll be more than willing to lend a hand!

 

Photo by Alberto Rodríguez Santana on Unsplash. Thank you Alberto :-)