Spyfu vs. Ahrefs: Which SEO Tool Delivers Bang for Your Buck?

Search engines are the start of most online experiences for consumers (as many as 68%). So it's no surprise that every business wants a part of the search engine traffic pie. After all, holding the #1 organic spot on search engines is estimated to win you 34.2% in click-thru rate. 

Plus, SEO ROI can be 12X your marketing spend.

Although SEO is a lot of hard work, having the right SEO tools can simplify matters and give you the results you seek.

Ahrefs and Spyfu are two of the most popular SEO tools in the market. But which should you go with for SEO research and planning?

In today's guide, we compare Ahrefs versus Spyfu to help you pick the right SEO tool.

Here's a Quick Overview of Spyfu vs. Ahrefs

Should you go with Spyfu or Ahrefs? Let's the showdown begin! 

Spyfu Overview

Spyfu is a competitor keyword research tool. As the name suggests, Spyfu helps you spy on your competitors. By spying, I mean peeping into your competitors' most effective and profitable keywords. This way, you get a leg up over the competition by having the latest data on keywords, traffic, and backlink data. 

Main Spyfu Features

• PPC Competitor Analysis
• SEO Keyword Research
• Domain Comparison
• Rank Tracking
• AdWords Competitors
• PPC Keyword Research
• PPC Keyword Suggestions
• Ad History
• Keyword Rank Checker
• SERP Checker
• Keyword Research 
• Keyword Grouping 
• Backlink Checker
• SEO Reports
• Domain Overview

Here's what you get with Spyfu's SEO Marketing Suite:

PPC Competitor Keyword Research

As mentioned earlier, the main superpower of Spyfu is PPC competitor research. Spyfu gives you the superpowers to find out:

• Which PPC keywords competitors rank for
• PPC keyword ranking trends over time
• Estimated number of PPC Clicks
• Estimated Google Ads budget

If you search for any domain, you'll see every keyword competitors bought on Google Ads and the organic rank over time. You'll also find every ad variation competitors have had over the last 16 years.

With Spyfu, data is granular. You don't just see the entire PPC budget. You also see how much competitors pay per keyword. Instead of seeing a single live ad, Spyfu lets you view the PPC split test competitors ran. All this is made possible by Spyfu's extensive access to data. This SEO tool queries 7 billion results spanning 109 million websites.

In addition, you also discover when competitors have a leg up over you. For instance, Spyfu reveals which keywords competitors bid for that you don't. 

PPC Keywords Recommendations

You'll also get recommendations of profitable PPC keywords you can bid for. Even better, you'll know which keywords to street clear off. 

For instance, SPyfu shows you negative keyword match recommendations. These are keywords that competitors tried and failed because they were either irrelevant or overly broad.

PPC keyword recommendations

Organic SEO Competitor Research

Spyfu is not only helpful in PPC keyword research. It also comes in handy in organic SEO research. This spy tool lets you in on organic keywords your competitors rank for. In addition, you find out which keywords competitors rank for that you don't or keywords you rank for, but competitors don't. 

Spyfu also tables out the backlinks that competitors get to individual blog pages. 

This feature will come in handy when looking for backlink opportunities. Plus, Spyfu shares the 'discovered contacts' of the backlink-potential websites to simplify your backlink outreach campaigns.

Keyword Research

You can also use Spyfu to find profitable keywords to help you snag the top spot on SERPs. You'll get the search volume, CPC, and SEO ranking difficulty with each keyword suggestion.

 If you have a group of random keywords related to your brand, simply paste them on Spyfu. The tool will group and categorize these keywords as well as show you the search volume, CPC, and difficulty. 

Rank Tracking

After all your efforts in implementing SEO strategies and techniques, you want to know whether your work is panning out. Spyfu comes in handy in this category. 

This tool shows your ranking progress and fluctuations over time. However, the rank changes are updated weekly, so it might not be ideal for every user. 

Spyfu Pros

• Affordable compared to tools like Ahrefs or Moz(Basic plan starts at $39/month)
• Great customer resources in the form of videos, guides, etc
• Custom branded reports will be super helpful for SEO or marketing agencies
• Has personal demos if you want to get the most out of Spyfu

Spyfu Cons

• The user interface might be a tad bit complex and outdated
• Inaccuracies in the keyword difficult data
• Niche market keyword data can be quite limited

Spyfu Rating

G2 rating: 4.6/5 (400+ reviews)

Capterra rating: 4.5/5 (120+reviews)

What Customers Say About Spyfu

"They've done a great job in making an affordable, effective tool. The amount of features you have access to, even without a premium subscription is mental. One of the best tools you can use, no matter if you're new to PPC campaigns, or if you have years of experience. Cons: The data on some of the niche markets and low-volume keywords can be very limited. Other than that, there's not much to complain about." — Capterra reviews

"Helpful information and data when doing search engine marketing, competitor & keyword research for clients. Super easy to set up multiple projects and reports. Subscription options are affordable, and they are very flexible if you want to pause your subscription for a few months rather than having to cancel it all together. Cons; Spyfu could use some work on the UI to better compete with additional tools in the space." — G2 Crowd

Ahrefs Overview

Ahrefs has been in the market since 2010, so it's a well-known and respected SEO tool. The main focus of Ahrefs is to help you rank higher and drive more traffic to your website.

This handy tool gives you tons of data on top-ranking keywords, competitors, backlink opportunities and keyword gaps. 

Main Ahrefs Features

• Site audits
• Competitor research
• Keyword research
• Content ideas
• Rank tracker
• Backlink tracker
• Broken link tracker
• PPC keyword suggestions
• SEO keyword suggestion
• Domain rating 

Let's breakdown Ahrefs main features

SEO Site Audit

Ahrefs SEO site audits are one of the best in the SEO world. Ahrefs relies on 100 pre-defined parameters cutting across technical, on-page and off-page SEO issues. 

What's more, the site audit tool runs on the cloud, so it's fast and doesn't use your computer resources. 

The site audit report by Ahrefs reveals;

• Overall SEO health score
• Number of backlinks
• Number of URLs crawled
• URLs with errors such as broken links
• SEO issues noted

Then, Ahrefs gives you a description of each error and a quick guide on fixing them. 

Competitor Research

With Ahrefs, you can analyze your competitor's keyword and traffic data. For example, know where their backlinks come from and the pages that give them the most traffic. 

Like Spyfu, Ahrefs' data is also granular, especially for the competitor research tool. You don't just get where competitors' backlinks come from. Ahrefs also reveals which specific backlinks send your competitors the most traffic. 

Content Gap

This is another Ahrefs feature you'll love. Content gap analysis reveals the keyword opportunities none of your competitors has taken up. This way, you can swoop up the keywords and rank on the first page for them. 

Domain Comparison

Ahrefs also provides a snapshot overview of your most fierce competitors. This snapshot tells you which type of backlinks competitors have, how many, and whether they are text, link, follow or no-follow links. You can compare one domain at a time or multiple at once. 

Source: Backlinko

PPC Keyword Research

PPC is always a reliable alternative to boost your organic traffic. Ahrefs simplifies your PPC efforts with the PPC keyword research tool. Basically, Ahrefs lets you know which keywords competitors are bidding for, competitors' live PPC ads and landing pages for certain PPC keywords. 

Also, you get to know how much traffic PPC keywords drive and the split between PPC and organic keyword traffic. 

However, if we're comparing Ahrefs and Spyfu, the latter is light years ahead in PPC competitor research. 

Keyword Research

After the site audit, keyword research is Ahrefs second superpower. With Ahrefs, you can generate tons of keywords in just a few minutes. 

The best part? These keyword ideas are not limited to Google only. Ahrefs provides keyword ideas across Youtube, Yandex, Bing, Amazon and other top search engines. 

Each keyword is accompanied by global search volume as well as country-specific search volume. Ahrefs also tables CPC, keyword difficulty and search intent for each keyword query. 

In addition, Ahrefs estimates the number of backlinks you need to rank in the top ten for a certain keyword. You'll see the percentage of clicks a keyword receives and whether those clicks came from organic results or PPC results. 

Ahrefs has a special keyword suggestion feature known as parent keyword to ensure you target the best possible keyword. For example, if you input a keyword like backpack for kids, Ahrefs will give you a more relevant keyword like kids backpack, which has more traffic and better-aligned search intent. 

Here are other features of the keyword research tool

• Search ranking trends of top results- if a competitor has ranked in the top spot for a long period, it might be harder to rank for that particular keyword
• Newly discovered keywords, so you can beat competitors and own the top spot
• Phrase match keywords to expand your horizon and increase ranking and traffic

Content Explorer

Ahrefs' content explorer helps you generate topic ideas for your blog. Simply input a phrase in Ahrefs, and it will give you the top-ranking pages and keyword ideas. 

Also, the Ahrefs content explorer function can be a great way to find guest blogging opportunities. You can filter the top-ranking pages to only show those with broken backlinks so you can reach out to these websites for a backlink opportunity. 

Rank Tracker

If you want to know how you fare in the SEO game, Ahrefs is there to make it possible. The rank tracker feature helps you follow your SEO journey, notice fluctuations, and understand your overall SEO performance. 

For example, you can see the keywords you currently rank for, the percentage of your featured snippets, and your past ranking history.

Ahrefs Pros

• Feature-packed for most of your SEO needs
• Great UI and UX, although it takes time to get the hang of every feature
• One of the most in-depth and conclusive SEO site audits
• Fantastic filter capabilities for more granular data

Ahrefs Cons

• Rank tracker updates weekly which is not ideal if you're in a fiercely competitive niche
• The learning curve might be a bit steep if you want to use Ahrefs to the maximum
• A 'break the bank' price(basic plan starts at $99/month) 
• PPC keyword research feature is not as robust as competitors
• Although Ahrefs offers most keyword suggestions compared to competitors, some suggestions can be outright irrelevant to your query

Ahrefs Rating

G2 rating: 4.6/5 (400+ reviews)

Capterra rating: 4.7/5 (300+ reviews)

What Customers Say About Ahrefs

"It really helps me to explore my projects. Ahrefs is very friendly and easy to use. There are many unique things that can be very helpful for my business like getting aggregated search traffic scores, we can do keyword surveys for 10 search engines, watching backlink growth, discovering content gaps, and much more that can be found on ahrefs. Cons: I am not happy to say it, but sometimes it suggests irrelevant keywords. Makes it difficult to remove irrelevant keywords from the results list." — G2 Crowd

"There is so much data and so many features inside of this tool that it gives you a 360 view of everything that is happening within your website. Cons: It can be hard to become familiar with because there are so many features, but once you are comfortable, it is really easy to navigate. Very expensive." — Capterra review

Final Verdict: Spyfu vs. Ahrefs

From the guide, you can tell both Spyfu and Ahrefs are handy tools that can help a great deal in your SEO efforts. 

However, each tool has its strengths and weaknesses. For example, Ahrefs is pricey and will almost cost you an arm and a leg! On the other hand, Spyfu is relatively affordable.

Ahrefs is a perfect match for larger enterprises, thanks to its many features. But smaller agencies and individual SEO experts will also find great value in Ahrefs.

Spyfu is more beneficial to smaller agencies, individual SEO experts, and small businesses. Spyfu might not be the best fit for large agencies and organizations. 

When it comes to customer resources, Ahrefs wins, partly because it has a larger community. However, Spyfu also has reliable customer resources and, unlike Ahrefs, offers customized training. 

Both Ahrefs and Spyfu have extensive data cutting across keywords, content ideas and backlinks. However, Ahrefs wins in this category. This tool queries 10 billion indexed pages and 20.8 billion keywords across 10 search engines and 243 countries. On the other hand, Spyfu queries 7 billion results spanning 116 million domains as of June 2022.

If we're talking organic keyword research, I'd say Ahrefs is better suited. However, if we're discussing PPC keyword research, then Spyfu wins by miles. 

Ultimately, whether you choose Ahrefs or Spyfu comes down to your particular situation and budget. But, go with Ahrefs for organic keyword research and Spyfu for the ultimate PPC keywords and competitor research. 

Complete the Puzzle with the Help of an SEO Content Writing Agency

Finding the most profitable keywords is only step one in winning the SEO game. If you want to get to page one and remain on the top, you'll need the aid of SEO-versed writers. You're guaranteed to find a capable team here at Zoey Writers to help with all your SEO needs.

Simply reach out to us, and we'd be glad to help you snag position one on the SERPs. 

Before you leave, check out these handy content writing tools reviews;

• Grammarly review for squeaky clean and error-free blog posts
• Jasper review for faster content production
• Frase— for SEO-optimized blog posts
• Spyfu— for competitor analytics
• Spyfu Vs. Semrush— who wins the SEO optimization battle?
• 12 Grammar tools— to simplify content writing

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