This post shows all you need to know to get started using Spyfu. The benefits derived from reading this Spyfu review includes:
- Detailed overview of Spyfu including features, benefits, advantages and disadvantages.
- Insights on how Spyfu can be used to understudy your competitors’ use of keywords.
- How Spyfu arrives at your competitors’ keywords and ad spends on Google search.
Now that you have a preview of what to expect, let’s dive right in to explore Spyfu’s opportunities and find out if it is best for you.
In this post you will find the following sections:
- What is the Meaning of the Term Keyword?
- About Spyfu
- Basic Features of Spyfu
- 8 Powerful Reasons to use Spyfu
- Pros and Cons of Spyfu
- Conclusion
What is the Meaning of Keywords?
Keyword is an important word or phrase that describes the content of a sentence, paragraph or article. Keywords are prevalent in online usage, and are mainly deployed in defining key concepts on a post like titles, topics, images, paragraphs, documents and general content flow.
Keywords are also used by search engines to identify, store, index and generate search results for users. Knowledge of keyword usage and optimization is an essential requirement for every SEO practitioner. The proper use of keywords in websites and blogs helps in boosting their PageRank on Google’s Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs).
Keywords are also important for driving traffic to a website or blog. SEO entails the use of keywords and related tools to strategically position web pages on Google search results, while SEM (Search Engine Marketing) deals with paid advertising for keywords. While SEO is used for organic search results, SEM is best suited for inorganic traffic boosting activities through search engines.
There are lots of tools available for keyword management, each having its own peculiarity in usage and results. We throw a spotlight on one of the most popular keyword management tools – Spyfu.
About Spyfu
Spyfu is a research tool useful for obtaining insights and analysis on SEO, PPC and keyword related activities. Spyfu is an essential business tool for spying on your competitors. On Spyfu search, you can find information on organic usage of keywords, identify how keyword usage has changed over the past decade, and pinpoint trends occasioned by changes in Google’s search algorithm.
Spying on your competitors isn’t just for the sake of knowing their keyword secrets. This information is essential for identifying particular keyword usage and their search results for your guidance. This is how every success-oriented business owner should think.
Companies have had to run A/B tests on particular keywords with a view to finding out the best converting keywords. Using Spyfu, you can find out all the keywords that companies use for their tests, go through the history of these tests results, and learn how companies arrived at current keywords in use. This tool is indeed a must-have for business owners interested in knowing what others are up to.
Spyfu comes packed with so many features that aid keyword management. The next section covers the most basic of Spyfu’s features.
Basic Features of Spyfu
I. Search Websites
On Spyfu, you can type the URL of any website and find out every keyword that has been bought on Google. You will also find all organic keywords that have been used in their SEO activities dating back as far as 10 years ago. From this, you will discover changes in keyword usage caused by Google algorithm changes.
This search result will give you insights into the particular website’s keyword campaigns and how the ad copy has changed over time. Notice also the changes in conversion rates for particular keywords. This arms you with the information to tweak the keywords on your ad campaigns for achieving better results.
II. Search for Keywords
You can obtain the Spyfu Ad History for keywords through this keyword management tool. Your search for particular keywords on Spyfu will produce the results of everyone who has ever advertised with those keywords.
The keyword search feature on Spyfu can be used to provide A/B test results carried out through paid ads of particular keywords. Looking at the history of keyword usage, you will find out the test results and the reasons a particular keyword was chosen by your competitors.
III. Spy on Competitors
Spyfu is well-known for its ability to effectively spy on what your competitors are using. The goal is essentially to find out what they are doing right with the keywords, and adopting ways to replicate this success in your business. It is much smarter to adopt and adapt a working solution rather than “reinventing the wheel”.
Through research on Spyfu, you can find the best converting keywords of competitors and then download the keywords. Their entire campaign history and all their Adwords activities can be found and downloaded for your use.
IV. Adwords Advisor Report
Spyfu’s Adword Advisor Report is a tool that tells you the right keywords to buy for your niche, gives a list of top keywords that you may have overlooked and advises you on whether you should buy the phrase match, exact or broad match of the keywords. It is a great tool for estimating how much to spend and expected traffic for using those keywords.
If you’re buying keywords that none of your competitors is using, the Adword’s Advisor Report will make it known to you. Information on keywords that competitors are buying and having their bids increased on them tells you that the keywords are producing positive results. This is a signal generator for those businesses in the same niche who are yet to use or buy these keywords.
To use this report, you have to first type the domain name of a competitor and then run the report. The Adword’s Advisor Report will then give you advice on the keywords found.
V. Building Backlinks
Spyfu helps businesses in building backlinks by providing information on competitors’ backlinks. These backlinks have been filtered by weeding out duplicates and unhealthy backlinks and then storing useful links that have been indexed by Google.
The backlinks are organized based on their link equity and users can access this information to help in building safe and reputable backlinks.
8 Powerful Reasons to use Spyfu
If you have come this far in our Spyfu review and yet to find particular reasons to use this Keyword tool, here are 8 powerful reasons for you to use it.
1. Great Tool for Digital Marketers
While Spyfu may seem complex for first-time users, it is a very important tool for all the activities embodied in SEO. Digital marketers can analyze high performing keywords, track the usage history, and find out how successfully sites have been handling their keyword campaigns, analyzing link equity of competitors’ backlinks, and many other digital marketing activities.
Digital marketers are able to save a lot of productive time by finding out what works, and adopting same for their SEO.
2. Friendly Pricing
Spyfu packages are grouped into categories and payment plans to suit particular users. There are 3 different plans on the platform and these are:
I. Basic Plan – This plan offers users a total capacity of 250 sales leads and domain contacts including 10 PPC (pay per click) reports generated from Spyfu’s Adwords Advisor tool. Also on the Basic plan is a cap of 10 domain reports alongside a weekly total of 5,000 tracked keyword rankings.
The pricing on this plan begins at $33/month for subscriptions on a yearly basis, and $39/month for monthly subscriptions.
II. Professional Plan – Best suited to businesses with higher demands on keywords reporting. This plan has a total sales lead and domain contacts of 500, with a total tracked keyword rankings of 15,000 weekly. Subscribers on the Professional Plan have access to custom branded reports and Skyfu’s API.
The subscription pricing for this plan begins at $58/month for yearly subscriptions and $78/month for subscriptions on a monthly basis.
III. Team Plan – This plan is designed for businesses with higher volume demands. It comes with a total capacity of 2,000 sales lead and domain contacts with a total tracked keyword ranking of 40,000 weekly. This account also allows for a maximum of five users on it.
The subscription pricing starts from $199/month for yearly subscription and $299/month for monthly subscription.
3. Unlimited Search Results
Spyfu allows for unlimited search volumes, keywords, keyword group and backlinks. These unlimited searches come with all plans. Search results on Spyfu are not capped so the users have access to make as many searches as desired.
4. 30-day Money Back guarantee
Spyfu offers a 3-day money back guarantee for users who are unsatisfied with their product.
5. Well Organized Navigation
The Spyfu dashboard is well organized with a nicely structured navigation bar on the top, featuring multiple tabs for SEO, PPC, and keyword research. Also found on the navigation bar are tabs for backlinks, List Builder, Tracking and Reporting tabs.
There is improved user experience while using the dashboard allows users to easily navigate within these features in Spyfu.
6. In-depth Keywords Search Results
Spyfu provides in-depth results for keyword and domain search results. The tool can estimate how much a keyword is worth, its overview and advertisers history. Further drilling can produce information of related keywords, backlinks, and keyword grouping SERP.
There is also information on daily and monthly cost breakdown on the keywords. The keyword search results also reveal unique advertisers that have bought the keywords. There is so much information available on keywords searched on Spyfu.
7. Export Selected Keywords
On Spyfu, you can export selected keywords in either Excel files, CSV or PDF.
8. Spyfu’s List Builder
On its List Builder, Spyfu allows you to list targeted domains and keyword based “Domains that spend most on Adwords” and keywords that have the highest CPC (Cost Per Conversion). Other lists include most expensive keywords which you can filter according to industry and state.
Ad buying platforms and Business Leads tab are also found with the Spyfu List Builder.
Pros and Cons of Spyfu
Of course our review would be incomplete without a proper mention of the advantages and disadvantages of Spyfu. Many of the advantages of using Spyfu have already been mentioned in the previous section, “8 Powerful Reasons to use Spyfu” with just a few listed here.
Pros of Spyfu
- Offers digital marketers and businesses a wide range of keyword management tools and resources to effectively run PPC, SEO and Keywords campaigns.
- Offers tools to build backlinks using links that have equity.
- Get all needed information about competitors and what keywords they are using to achieve successful campaigns.
Cons of Spyfu
- Spyfu crawler does not have web-wide coverage. The database contains keyword records of selected domains.
- Results that are generated can be quite complicated for novice users of the platform.
- Spyfu allows for just exporting of data making export of tables and charts impossible.
Conclusion
To summarize the details on our Spyfu review, let’s highlight the main takeaways for you.
Spyfu is a great keyword research tool to help augment your SEO activities, with suggested keywords usage for better results. Also find out keyword stats and search volumes for your CPC ad campaigns.
Research your competitor’s usage of particular keywords, track their backlinks, and help monitor their SEO activities online. Spyfu has a database with complete keyword research results of all known PPC campaigns.
Spyfu’s database does not have a complete world-wide coverage of domains, though there are more than 7 billion search results on it. Users can still enjoy a large selection of search results on their particular keywords.
Unlike some of its competitors, Spyfu comes a little complicated for beginners. The SEO results require some more efforts before they can be used.
You can start using Spyfu with the free trial available for new sign-ups. You can access a number of the features mentioned in this review. To enjoy the premium features, you will have to upgrade your subscription to a paid one.
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