SpyFu Review: Is It the #1 Competitor Analysis Tool to Use in 2024?

This is my review of the SpyFu tool.

I have tested SpyFu’s key feature to provide you with firsthand insights.

The SpyFu tool is renowned for its competitive analysis capabilities, providing competitors’ SEO and PPC strategy insights.

You get data on competitors’ keywords, ad campaigns, and search rankings, making it a valuable asset to outperform your competitors.

After using SpyFu, I must say Spyfu is a great option if you are looking for a competitor research tool at an affordable price.

If you take a look at tools like Semrush, Moz, and Ahrefs, their basic pricing plans start at $100 per month. Whereas SpyFu plans start at just $16 per month.

Here’s the detailed tutorial of SpyFu, along with the pros, cons, features, and available alternatives, so that you can make an informed decision.

In-depth SpyFu Review 2024: Is It The Most Affordable Competitor Analysis Tool?

SpyFu SEO Tool Features: List Of All The Features

Before diving into the review details, let’s first have a look at some of the incredible features offered by SpyFu.

---

7 Incredible SpyFu Tool Features

Here are the 7 biggest features that make SpyFu worth paying for.

1. Keyword research made easy

One of the primary reasons to go for SpyFu is the ability to find great keywords really quickly.

SpyFu has an easy-to-use interface where you can simply log in to the account and go to the Keyword Research tab.

Once you enter your target terms, SpyFu immediately returns incredible keyword data.

I searched for the keyword “SEO plugins” to test the results.

I get a quick keyword overview where I can find both monthly and global searches for the keyword, along with the CTR and average ranking difficulty for the keyword.

SpyFu also gives you a list of all the related keywords to your target keyword. Just click on the “Related Keywords” tab and you’ll instantly see this;

SpyFu gives you a ton of related keywords along with a wide range of keyword metrics;

• Cost Per Month – a cost metric that Google estimates you would spend, on average, to advertise this keyword each month.
• Advertisers
• SEO difficulty score – tells you how hard it is to rank for a certain keyword, 100 being the hardest.
• Broad CPC – is the average amount advertisers pay to Google anytime someone clicks on their ads for this keyword.
• Global searches – the average number that Google users search for this exact keyword worldwide.
• Local searches – the average number that Google users search this exact keyword, in local (country) searches.
• Clicks per month
• Broad CTR – estimation of the number of clicks an ad gets vs. the total impressions the ad receives).

Spyfu provides various options to filter keywords based on their volume, keyword difficulty, clicks, and CPC.

Above all, SpyFu keyword analysis tool also gives you in-depth information on the following metrics including;

1. Organic Ranking History: SpyFu has tracked the SERPs of millions of keywords for 17 years. You can check the history of any domain ranking for a keyword at any point in time. This feature allows you to track how a website’s rankings have evolved over time, helping you identify trends, opportunities, and mistakes to avoid.
2. Advertiser History: You can access the advertising history of your target keyword over of period of 17 years. This feature allows you to find who succeeded, who failed for a keyword, and how they improved their ad copy over time. You can learn from their mistakes without having to try them yourself.
3. Keyword Backlinks Information: SpyFu provides insights into the backlinks associated with specific keywords. You can see which websites are linking to pages that rank for your target keywords. This information can help you identify link-building opportunities and assess the backlink profiles of competing websites.
4. SERP Analysis: SpyFu’s SERP analysis allows you to view the search results for specific keywords. You can see which websites are ranking on the first page of search results and analyze the elements of their pages, such as meta titles and descriptions.
5. AdWords Advisor: It provides recommendations for optimizing your Google AdWords campaigns. It analyzes your competitors’ keywords and gives recommendations for keywords you’re missing. You just need to enter a keyword, and confirm the top competitors. That’s all. You will get new keyword suggestions that fit your niche.

SpyFu has a fantastic user interface to find highly profitable keywords really quickly in almost any industry. You get in-depth keyword data ranging from keyword metrics to SERP analysis to advertising history, which is enough for you to decide whether a keyword is profitable or not.

Read: The Ultimate SEO Tutorial for Beginners In 2024 [Step By Step Easy Guide]

2. #1 Competitor analysis tool

SpyFu is mostly known as the #1 competitor analysis tool. It gives you a plethora of information about your competitors’ top ranking keywords, backlink sources, and ads.

You need to visit the SpyFu dashboard to use competitor analysis.

Click on Overview and enter any of your competitors website in the search box.

Here’s how the domain overview looks like;

As you can see, I entered Backlinko.com in the Domain Overview of SpyFu, and it instantly shows us a ton of useful competitor analysis data including;

• Organic search (including organic keywords along with their estimated monthly clicks per month)
• Inbound clicks from Google (including organic and paid)
• Paid search (PPC ad information along with the keyword details, and clicks)
• It also gives you a list of keywords that top competitors are also ranking for
• Shows you the top competitors for the domain, including paid competitors, if any.
• Competitor shared keywords
• Top keywords of the domain
• Organic ranking history
• Inbound backlinks data which extremely useful if you are looking for link building opportunities.

The best part is that you can easily export all the above data into a PDF and share it with anyone.

When you click on the Organic keywords, SpyFu gives you a list of all the keywords that your competitor is ranking on Google.

Here’s what the data looks like;

As you can see above, you’ll see a ton of golden keyword information including;

• The most valuable keywords list
• Change in their keyword positions, including improved and declined keyword ranking changes.
• Cost per click value
• Ranking difficulty for the keyword
• Monthly searches
• Estimated clicks per month, along with their value.

By analyzing your competitors, not only you’ll know their strengths and weaknesses but you can also find out what works well.

Read: Common SEO Mistakes to Avoid As A Blogger In 2024

Here’s where a tool like SpyFu comes into play, as its domain overview can be your savior when it comes to carefully analyzing any website or domain. It helps you easily find a ton of information on your competitor websites, including;

• Their most profitable keywords, including their content and top pages.
• Estimated monthly traffic along with the traffic value.
• PPC ads information and the budget they are spending on an average every month.
• Backlinks information of your competitors.

3. Discover high quality link building opportunities

SpyFu’s Backlinks feature is a powerful tool that allows you to get insights into the backlink profile of any website.

Backlinks play a crucial role in SEO and can significantly impact your website’s authority and search engine rankings.

In fact, out of 200 ranking factors, backlinks are the #1 determining ranking factor by Google. So if you really want to get ahead in SEO and bring more search traffic to your sites, you should be building quality backlinks.

You can identity thousands of link building opportunities in your industry with SpyFu Backlink Builder.

When you enter your competitors’ domain or a keyword of your choice in SpyFu Backlink Builder, it shows you data like this;

I entered a competitor in the backlink tool from SpyFu, and it instantly gave us their backlink sources.

You can sort them however you want, such as showing high Domain Strength results first, as shown above.

You can also enter any keyword terms (I entered SEO in the above example) to find relevant links that belong to that particular keyword. This will save a ton of time in finding the right sites to find link-building opportunities.

Here are some of the backlink metrics you can find on SpyFu Backlink Builder.

• Domain monthly organic clicks – helps you see how much traffic they got this past month to all of its pages from unpaid search results.
• Page monthly organic clicks – counted only for the specific URL shown here as the backlink.
• Domain strength – how powerful and authoritative a domain is; getting a link from high domain strength can boost your search rankings quickly.
• Ranked keywords – shows the number of keywords that the specific page ranks for on its own.
• Outbound Links – the number of different pages that this specific page links to.

Backlink outreach from SpyFu

Backlink Outreach is an amazing tool that allows you to research prospects for link building and helps you reach out to them.

You can use it to find the best link-building opportunities, and it also helps you with bloggers’ data, including emails, phone numbers, and social media profiles for the people behind that site.

So, if you’re someone who is looking to implement a blogger outreach strategy to build high-quality links, this tool comes in handy. Generally, blogger outreach involves a lot of tedious tasks including;

• Making a list of relevant bloggers along with their sites.
• Finding link-building opportunities
• Finding their contact information such as email, social media profiles, and phone numbers.

All the above tasks can be simplified with the SpyFu backlink outreach tool.

4. Get excellent results with PPC

Paid advertising on Google is called AdWords ads (also known as PPC advertising), where you spend money on showing ads on Google to get results such as driving traffic, leads, and sales to your websites.

PPC is great, but you need to implement the RIGHT strategies, such as using the “converting keywords” to be able to get incredible returns on your investment made on PPC ads. Otherwise, you’ll be simply wasting money on PPC ads.

The best part about using SpyFu is that you can learn from your competitors’ ads that they have been testing for years. You can easily find and analyze only those keywords that are driving great results for your competitors.

Here are a few benefits of using SpyFu PPC keyword research.

• You can easily find and analyze any site’s paid keywords and ad spend history.
• You can also discover your competitor’s keyword weaknesses and wins, so you can easily filter out the bad keywords from your PPC campaigns.
• You can discover things like ad copies along with the keyword groups

To use SpyFu PPC feature, Go to the PPC keyword research tool and enter any domain of your competitors to see their PPC ad strategies.

Here’s what it looks like;

As you can see above, you can easily find out a ton of things like;

• Paid keywords – total number of unique paid keywords we have seen for this domain.
• Estimated monthly PPC clicks – number of clicks this domain gets from all of its paid keywords, calculated off of its average ad position for each individual keyword for that month.
• Estimated monthly PPC budget – an estimate of what the domain spent in AdWords during the most recent month)

Not only that, when you click on their “Paid Keywords” section, SpyFu returns you a list of all the PPC keywords that your competitors are using on Google AdWords to get more traffic and leads to their sites. It also shows you other information like;

• Top-paid competitors for your target domain
• Most profitable paid keywords
• AdWords history
• Top Adwords buy recommendations
• Google Ads Templates

Read: Link Building Strategy for Niche Sites: The Ultimate Guide

5. Rank tracking

SpyFu’s Rank Tracking feature allows you to track and analyze the performance of your website’s keywords in search engine results pages (SERPs). Rank tracking is essential for SEO professionals, digital marketers, and website owners who want to keep a close eye on their keyword rankings and assess the effectiveness of their SEO efforts.

With rank tracking, you can see exactly where your work paid off or took a hit. You can repeat the efforts that give you the right results.

To be able to track your keyword rankings, you just need to create a new project with your website URL. Start adding keywords, and you’re pretty much done.

Once you add keywords to a project, SpyFu reports you back every week with your domain’s keyword positions on Google and Bing (both for organic and PPC keyword listings).

You can also easily organize all your keywords with your own group names and labels, or you can simply get started with SpyFu keyword suggestions.

6. List builder

SpyFu gives you a feature called “List Builder,” where you can find domain top lists, keyword top lists, leads information, and custom list.

In the domain top lists section, you can find information like;

• Domains that spend most on AdWords
• Domains with the most organic traffic
• Companies that provide you information like email, and social media details

In the keywords top lists section, you can find a ton of useful information like;

• Keywords with the highest CPC
• Keywords with the most clicks
• Expensive keywords list
• Expensive keywords listed in various industries such as real estate, credit cards, and fitness

In the custom list section, you can get access to your most profitable audiences based on the important key performance indicators.

This is what’s included in every list.

7. SEO reports

SEO reports from SpyFu provide you incredible insights on how you can increase your organic traffic and also provide you information like;

• Number of keywords in top search results
• Number of unique pages that are ranking organically
• Top organic clicks per month
• Value of organic clicks per month
• Biggest gains
• Most valuable keywords
• Newly ranked organic pages

These were the Spyfu features that you can use for running SEO and PPC campaigns. Now, let’s delve into some customer reviews to gain insights into the SpyFu tool’s real-world performance and user experiences.

---

SpyFu Customer Reviews & Rating

SpyFu is used by more than 200,000 monthly users worldwide and received positive attention and praise from its users.

SpyFu got a 4.6-star rating from about 500 60 users on G2. More than 77% of users give a 5-star rating to SpyFu.

---

SpyFu Pricing Plans: How Much Does It Cost?

So, how much does SpyFu cost? SpyFu offers you two options;

• Monthly plans
• Yearly plans (where you can save more)

Pricing Plans	What's the monthly pricing?	What's the yearly pricing?	Weekly Tracked Keyword Rankings
Basic	$39 per month	$16 per month	5k
Professional	$39 for the 1st month ($79/month thereafter)	$36 per month	15k
Team	$299 per month	$149 per month	40k
What's the link to buy?

Let’s first quickly talk about the pricing plans offered by SpyFu.

1. Basic plan
2. Professional plan
3. Team plan

1. Basic plan: This SpyFu starter plan is great for beginners, and the yearly subscription plan costs you just $16 per month (whereas the monthly pricing plans cost you $39 per month). You can save $23 flat every month if you’re going with their yearly plans.

You’ll get the following features with basic plan.

2. Professional plan: This is the most recommended plan for growing bloggers and SEOs. The yearly subscription plan costs you just $36 per month. If you choose the monthly plan, then you will pay $39 for the first month and $79 thereafter. You can save $43 flat each month if you’re going with their yearly plans.

You’ll get the following features with a professional plan.

3. Team plan: This advanced plan is a great option for agencies and teams. The yearly subscription plan costs you $149 per month (whereas the monthly pricing plans cost you $299 per month). You can save $150 flat each month if you’re going with their yearly plans.

You’ll get the following features with team plan.

---

Pros And Cons of SpyFu

Let’s now talk about some of the pros and cons of using SpyFu.

Pros of SpyFu:

Here are some of the biggest benefits of using SpyFu in 2024 and beyond.

Cons of SpyFu:

Here are a few cons that we’ve noticed so far in SpyFu.

Read: SpyFu vs Semrush: Which is Better for Competitor Research?

---

SpyFu Alternatives: Are There Any?

There are currently 2 better alternatives to SpyFu;

1. Semrush
2. Serpstat

1. Semrush: Semrush is one of the widely used SEO tools (used by more than 10 million people worldwide). I have been using the Semrush at Bloggers Passion for more than 8 years now.

If you’re looking for an ultimate SEO toolkit and a better alternative to SpyFu, Semrush is definitely one of the top contenders out there, which gives you access to a ton of features like competitor analysis, keyword research, and site audits.

Here’s a list of features that Semrush offers;

Quick note: We also have written a detailed guide on SpyFu vs Semrush, where you can find a ton of details, including the comparison of their features, and pricing.

Browse More:

• Semrush Coupon Code 2024 + FREE eBook!
• Best Semrush Alternatives for 2024

2. Serpstat: If you’re looking for an alternative to SpyFu that is affordable, Serpstat should be a great choice for you as Serpstat pricing plans start at $50 per month, and you’ll get a ton of features like in-depth URL analysis, keyword research, competitor analysis, and on-page SEO audits.

Although the basic plans from Serpstat have few limits on keyword usage or URL analysis, it’s definitely one of the cheapest SpyFu alternatives you can give a try in 2024.

Here’s a list of features that Serpstat offers;

If you’re curious to know more about it, you can read our detailed Serpstat review to know more about their pricing plans and features.

Read: Serpstat Coupon Code + 7 Days Free Trial

---

FAQs About SpyFu Tool

Here’s a list of a few important questions about SpyFu review 2024 that you need to know for better understanding.

Read: Semrush Review: Is It the Only SEO Tool You Will Need in 2024?
Read: SEO PowerSuite Review 2024: Is It The Most Amazing SEO Tool?
Read: Surfer SEO Review 2024: Is It the Best Tool to Get Top Rankings on Google?

---

Final Thoughts

SpyFu is the #1 competitor analysis tool used by more than 2,00,000 users worldwide, and it’s also the most affordable SEO toolkit out there.

If you’re looking for a robust yet affordable tool to perform everything from competitor research to keyword analysis to backlink analysis, SpyFu is definitely a great choice for all your SEO needs.

So, what are your thoughts about the SpyFu tool? Do you’ve any questions? Share your thoughts in the comments below.