Any Internet-based businesses looking to survive online need to take advantage of all the best tools available. Of course, if you ask around, digital markers will tell you that includes search engine optimization.
What’s just as important as the goods and services that you’ve got to sell is finding the right SEO strategy tool. There are lots of different SEO platforms to choose from.
Two of the industry leaders are SEMrush and SpyFu. There are many different things that one of these can do for you. Either one is among the more popular competitor research tools out in the market.
First, will start with a bit of history so that you get a good idea of where each of these companies comes from and where they are going. SEMrush had a predecessor in the marketplace launched way back in 2007. It was built as a browser extension before being renamed and rebranded in its current offering.
This platform offers a set of useful and efficient tools for important aspects like seed keyword ranking, site audit, on-page SEO, backlink analytics, and even keyword research.
One of the important aspects of any one of these SEO tools is keyword tracking. This provides you with industry-leading search data that can help you answer important questions like:
- How many people are searching for your goods and services online
- What exactly are people searching for
- In what format are they looking for the information
It’s important to compare the capabilities of these two tools concerning this type of important research. More about that and other important aspects to consider later.
SEMrush is an industry leader when it comes to keywords and keyword research. They manage almost 20 billion of them and over 18 million domains.
SpyFu is an excellent online SEO company too. They have a great history and business philosophy that’s geared towards helping different size enterprises put together PPC and SEO strategies that work.
The company was founded in 2006. It focuses on spying on your competitors’ analytics and online strategies. Users can gain insights that work for you.
With the histories out of the way, it’s time to find out what each of these tools can do for you. Before we dig in and drill a little deeper, here’s a brief overview of how the two services differ.
As we’ve already discussed, keywords are an important part of any comprehensive digital marketing campaign. SEMrush wins the battle of the best online keyword research tool. The one they offer up is much better than what’s offered through their competitor, SpyFu.
Understanding how to tweak any campaign is one of the big bonuses to using either tool. SEMrush wins again here with an excellent organic traffic analysis tool.
SpyFu is more of a competitor research analysis product. On the other hand, SEMrush has a lot of SEO tool capabilities.
SpyFu has more than a decade of competitor analysis data at your disposal. SEMrush has a history that dates back to 2012.
SpyFu offers search results that are unlimited on the higher-tiered plans. SEMrush has caps at each level
That’s just a high-level overview of the differences between the two. Next, we will start right at one of the most important elements which are the pricing plans.
Pricing Comparison
There is no doubt that you’ll want the best SEO software for the money. There are many other factors to consider when you’re comparing the two different companies. However, the pricing plans are usually at the top of anyone’s list
First, let’s start with SEMrush.
The pro plan here starts at $119.95 per month. There is a free trial. It is great for in-house digital marketers, start-ups, and freelancers who have small budgets. You can run a variety of different projects including your PPC and SEO campaigns. There are over 40 advanced tools available.
The next plan up is called the Guru and starts at $229.95 per month. There is also a content marketing platform available with Google data studio integration.
After that, there is a business plan at $449.95 per month. It includes sharing options, extended limits, and API access.
Now, let’s look at what SpyFu has to offer.
One big difference that you will notice when comparing the two plans is the unlimited data available here. Regardless of the one you choose; you’ll have access to all the SpyFu data you can use.
The basic plan can be billed annually at $33 a month or monthly for $39 a month. One of the best features is you can search any domain’s weekly ranking changes on selected keywords. You can also download as many keywords as you like. Right away, this option is ahead for searching competitor keywords.
The professional plan starts at $50 monthly for the annual version and goes up to $79 a month if you want to be billed every 30 days. This one allows you to look at as many domain overviews as you need. This kind of domain analysis is important when you’re tweaking a digital marketing plan.
There is also a team plan that gets billed at $199 a month. It is $299 for 12 invoices. You can search through common keywords in anchor text here to see what competitor keywords are used.
One of the other features that are worth noting is the custom reports that you can get every month. Check out a competitor’s landing page and get a good idea of the paid keywords any domain is using. SpyFu offers a moneyback guarantee on any of their plans.
That’s good for the first 30 days that you use any of these products.
Features Comparison
Both tools are considered industry leaders in the competitor research industry. As we have already discussed, SEMrush offers an online marketing toolkit. SpyFu is more about competitor analysis. They each do some things very well and others quite differently.
A small business can’t make a final decision based on pricing plans alone. That’s why we will dig into the important features that separate the two.
Keyword Research
Google keeps businesses wondering what to do next with constant algorithm updates. The one thing that stays constant through all these changes is the need for good keyword research.
Making sure that your keyword research is up-to-date, relevant while building your traffic and authority is important. Here’s how SEMush and SpyFu stack up against each other.
SEMrush Keyword Analysis
Keywords are the mainstay of many digital marketing programs. First, we will look at one of the industry leaders and how they approach keywords. SEMrush is well known as one of the top companies on the Internet in terms of keyword research.
Users get a keyword overview report which is a summary of organic keyword metrics. It includes keyword difficulty, monthly search volumes, and keyword suggestion options.
Magic Tool
There’s also a keyword magic tool that can help you with long-tail ideas. If you’re looking to use what you found for a PPC campaign, you can save results in the keyword manager.
SpyFu
SpyFu is strong in keyword research that’s competitor-based. That doesn’t mean they don’t have some traditional excellent options for keyword research. Here’s how some of those options work.
Start by typing in a competitor’s URL in the search box and get the corresponding overview report. That report will give you the top keywords at the top of the data. At the bottom, you’ll get the organic keywords.
If you’re looking for more traditional keyword-type research here, you’ll need to go to the keyword research section and enter in what you have. You’ll get a quick summary of all the major numbers involving estimated clicks and monthly volume. You can add on question-based keywords and similar ones from there.
The people at SpyFu also have a list of prewritten PPC Ads that you can find by clicking on the ad words template.
The Competitor Analysis Tools ForSpyFu
It is an important strategy for any successful digital marketing campaign. It researches the marketing strategies, sales, and products of your major competitors. It’s a good tool for creating a solid business strategy so you can stay ahead of the competition.
- It can give you a list of competitor keywords and do several other things.
- It tells you what the competition is doing well
- It tells you where the competition is not doing very well
- It can help you identify your unique value proposition.
Both SEMrush and SpyFu have competitor research tools. Here’s what’s the same and different for each.
SEMrush
The competitive research tools available here are divided into different categories:
the SEO section is one of the completers and more important. It includes critical metrics on organic research, backlinking gaps, and backlink analysis. The social media section includes a social media tracker.
There are even more traditional areas involving PR. This section includes a tool for tracking posts and brand monitoring.
Another traditional section includes advertising as well as display advertising.
Finally, there’s a big picture section where you can add on two different tools for viable metrics like traffic analytics.
The Competitor Analysis Tools ForSpyFu
As you might imagine, there are some differences between the two digital tools. Getting started with SpyFu is easy. All you need to do is type in your competitor’s URL in the search box. You will get a quick summary of important metrics like top paid keywords, monthly clicks, and organic keyword placement.
There are some extras here including inbound links and page one keywords. It is useful information if you’re getting started with your own business. Understanding what keywords the competition is using can help you get an upper hand.
Available Here
There’s another great tool available here. The Ad words section reports on the complete campaign history of your competitions’ Google Ads. This is useful for anyone who is looking to start one of these campaigns.
You’ll get the competitions’ keywords as well as the cost per click for each of their most trusted phrases and keywords.
This type of service allows you to focus on writing the content. That’s an important part of getting any Google Ads campaign right.
Which SEO Is Better?
In the end, there’s no comparison between the two because they do different things. However, the overall victory goes to SEMrush. The reason for the verdict is simple. Consider this tool is an all-purpose SEO platform and the fact SpyFu focuses on competitor analysis exclusively.
- When you do, it’s easy to see why SEMrush is a much better option for your business or personal use.
- There are several areas where SEMrush shows that it is the better choice and a decent spyfu alternative.
- It excels when you are looking at analyzing your competitions’ performance. This analysis would be incomplete if you could track their numbers on different social media. SpyFu doesn’t have that capability.
SEMrush has better and more geographic databases than its competition. SpyFu for only has two in the UK and the United States. On the other hand, SEMrush has 142 of these databases to look through. It is a much better way to get excellent results if you are trying to rank high in local SERP analysis.
However, there is only one area where SpyFu beats SEMrush. The free plan they offer is considered one of the best around. You might not get all the data you need, but you can upgrade to a basic plan. If you’re a start-up with a tight budget, this is an excellent way to begin your business journey.
In the end, the start-up business would do well to put together some money and buy into SEMrush. By being able to tweak your digital marketing campaigns on the fly, is one of the other bonuses to this tool. It’s great for other things like a site audit.