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Semrush vs SpyFu: The Definitive Comparison (2023)


In this article, I’m going to compare Semrush and SpyFu.

I’ll focus on 6 common use cases:

  • Competitor Analysis
  • Keyword Research
  • Content Creation
  • PPC Advertising
  • Rank Tracking
  • Link Building

Let’s begin.

Disclaimer: This article does contain some affiliate links. If you purchase a tool through one of my links I will receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. This is how I fund the blog and its promotion. Thanks for the support.

Comparison Summary
If You Need To Make an Instant Decision

This article is 6,649 words long.

Don’t have time to read through the entire comparison?

Semrush is the best solution if you’re looking for an all-in-one digital marketing platform to execute SEO, PPC, competitor analysis, content marketing, social media, and campaign reporting. I’ve personally been a Semrush user for over 8 years now.

SpyFu is a solid option if you’re looking for a more cost-effective way to perform keyword research and analyze competitor Google ad campaigns.

That said, I do recommend grabbing a free trial of both tools using the links below to follow along with this side-by-side comparison and see which solution works best for you.

Start a free 30-day trial of Semrush
Try SpyFu for free

You can also use the jump links below to quickly navigate to specific sections in the post.

JUMP TO CONCLUSIONS

(Click to Jump to Matrix)

(Click to Jump to Price Comparison)

(Click to Jump to Final Verdict)

Overview of Semrush
“The Swiss Army Knife of Marketing Tools”

Semrush has over 55 tools for keyword research, Google PPC advertising, competitor analysis, link building, content creation and optimization, SEO audits, rank tracking, and even social media management. You might expect the saying “jack-of-all-trades, but master of none” to apply here. But it doesn’t. Most of Semrush’ different toolkits are category leaders, in many cases beating out standalone tools.

Semrush boasts over 10M users around the world, including household brands such as Tesla, Amazon, Walmart and IBM. The platform has a range of pricing plans with different feature offerings that cater to all types of users, from individuals and small teams to agencies and mid-sized businesses, all the way through to enterprise companies.

If you’re a hands-on type of person, you can try Semrush for free for 30 days if you use this link.

Overview of SpyFu
“The Google Ads Memory Book”

SpyFu, at its core, is a Competitor Keyword Research Tool for PPC Advertising on Google. They claim to have saved every Google Ad that they discovered since 2005. Making SpyFu an invaluable tool for finding profitable ads that you can use for your campaign.

Their primary target market is SEM specialists and small business owners running their own Google ads campaigns, but they do also offer a plan for larger teams. SpyFu also has other SEO tools, which, combined with their low price point, any marketer would appreciate.

If you want to take SpyFu for a test drive, you can get a free trial here.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

(Click the links below to jump to each of the full comparisons)

Semrush vs SpyFu:
Which Is Better For Keyword Research?

As of 8 October 2022, Semrush has 22.3 billion keywords and 808 million domains in their database [*], while SpyFu has 7 billion keywords and 119 million domains [*].

These statistics show that Semrush has the largest keyword database, which is a potential differentiator for those looking for the most complete keyword data to fuel their SEO and PPC campaigns.

However, that’s the backend. How users access this data and find what they’re looking for is just as important. That’s why, in the rest of this section, we’ll compare Semrush and SpyFu’s three most popular tools for keyword research.

  • Keyword Discovery tool
  • Keyword Overview report
  • Keyword Gap analysis

Let’s begin.

Semrush vs SpyFu: Keyword Discovery Tool

Semrush

Semrush’s Keyword Discovery tool is called the Keyword Magic tool, and it’s by far the most important tool for topical keyword research. Users can input a seed keyword and quickly generate hundreds, or even thousands, of potential target keywords. 

Here’s a list that shows up when I search for “boxing gloves”:

Finding keyword opportunities in Semrush

SEMRUSH DISCOVERY MODES

The top bar has various keyword discovery modes and filters.

The Broad Match discovery mode finds any variation of your seed keyword (“boxing gloves” could turn into “glove box”); Phrase Match makes sure keywords contain the exact spelling of your seed keyword (“boxing gloves” can be “gloves for boxing”); Exact Match only finds keywords that have your seed in the exact order (“boxing gloves” can discover “boxing gloves for beginners”); and Related discovery mode lists keywords that are similar to your seed keyword (“boxing gloves near me”, “boxing gloves clipart”, “winning boxing gloves”) which is perfect for discovering random keywords for your silo that you didn’t think of before. 

You can also combine each discovery mode with the Questions filter to only show up question-based keywords:

Question based keyword ideas in Semrush

The image was slightly modified for clarity

This is an important phase in the keyword research process: finding related keywords to include in your articles to make them more relevant to the topic… finding secondary keywords that you can also rank for with the page you’re currently working on… or finding long-tail, question, and silo keywords that ensure you have complete topical coverage over your niche.

And Semrush, with these discovery modes, nails it.

SEMRUSH METRICS

Among standard metrics—search volume, keyword difficulty, and Cost per click—Semrush also offers more complex metrics to help you make even more accurate SEO decisions. These metrics are Related %, which measures how closely related a keyword is to your target one; Intent, which guesses the search intent for the keyword; and Competitive Density, which gauges the level of competition between advertisers bidding on the keyword.
Semrush’ Keyword Magic Tool makes it easy to quickly uncover loads of new keyword ideas from a single seed keyword. You can use a range of filters to quickly cut through the noise and find only the most relevant opportunities for your business. You can also click the “+” icon next to a given keyword in order to add it to a master list that you can later export.

SpyFu

By contrast, SpyFu’s Keyword Discovery tool is simply called Related Keywords.

SpyFu Related Keywords report

SPYFU DISCOVERY MODES

Like Semrush, SpyFu’s keyword discovery tool also has a Related discovery mode, which they call Similar Keywords. And, like Semrush, they also have a Questions filter.

What’s unique about SpyFu is their Also Ranks For and Also Buys Ads For discovery modes. The Also Ranks For finds domains that rank for your seed keyword, and checks which additional keywords they rank for. While Also Buys Ads For finds advertisers that are bidding on your seed keyword, and checks which other keywords they’re bidding on. Semrush doesn’t have these discovery modes.

The Also Ranks For discovery is great for finding new keywords within a topical cluster, much more than the Related discovery mode, which is best suited for finding new topical clusters.

SpyFu, however, doesn’t have the Broad, Phrase, and Exact Match discovery modes.

SPYFU METRICS

While SpyFu has all standard metrics—Volume, KD, Clicks, and CPC—it is missing SERP features, Trends, Search Intent, and Search Results.

Previously, I pointed out that Semush has a unique metric called Competitive Density. SpyFu’s alternative to that are two metrics called Ads and Homepages. The Ads metric tells you the total number of advertisers bidding on this keyword in the last 14 months, while the Homepages metric tells you the number of homepages (root domain URLs) that rank in the top 100 results for the keyword.

These two metrics together are a great way to find bottom-of-the-funnel keywords. If a keyword either has a lot of Ads or Homepages, then it likely means it has a high search intent. For example, here are some results I get if I search for “CRM”:

Keyword results in SpyFu

Keywords that stand out here are “crm tools”, “crm systems”, “seed to sale crm”, and “agile crm”: a lot of advertisers are bidding on these keywords and a lot of homepages are ranking for them. If I’m looking for some keywords to improve my sales, it would be wise to look into these keywords more.

Conclusion

When it comes to the frontend, SpyFu Keyword Discovery tool does have its strength: the Also Ranks For discovery mode and the Ads and Homepages metrics.

However, Semrush has three extra discovery modes—Broad, Exact, Partial match—and unique metrics like Intent and Trends and Results, which are good quality-of-life additions that help save time from manually searching for this data on Google Trends and Google Results page. Finally, we also have to consider that SpyFu has a 3-times smaller keyword database.

These differences do matter a lot for SEO and PPC specialists. For content creators, link builders, and social media managers who don’t need to spend as much time analyzing keywords, SpyFu and Semrush Keyword Discovery tools are both quality options.

Semrush vs SpyFu: Keyword Overview Report

Semrush

Here is Semrush Keyword Overview report, which you’ll land on after clicking on a keyword in the Keyword Discovery Tool.

Semrush Keyword Overview report

The screen here shows you much of the same data as the Keyword Discovery Tool, but it’s displayed more clearly.

SEOs and Content Marketers will enjoy the bottom three panels: Keyword Variations, Questions, and Related Keywords. SEOs will use these for further keyword research, while content marketers will use these for section ideas to include in their articles.

SpyFu

In comparison, here’s SpyFu’s Keyword Overview report: 

SpyFu keyword overview report

While SpyFu displays similar data to Semrush, it is missing the Intent and Trends data. Plus, it doesn’t provide the bulk keyword analysis option that Semrush provides. 

What is unique about it is that the data in the left column (volume, clicks, difficulty) has benchmarked ranges which help beginner SEOs interpret what the numbers mean.

Conclusion

Both Keyword Overview Reports provide valuable data and are easy to navigate. Semrush displays two more types of data (Intent and Trends), while SpyFu has benchmarked ranges. In terms of the user experience, both Semrush and SpyFu offer a quality solution. 

Semrush vs SpyFu: Keyword Gap Analysis

Keyword Gap analysis helps you identify keywords that your competitors are ranking for, but you do not.

Semrush

This is another staple feature that SEO tools offer, but Semrush took it a step forward with a total of 7 relational segments: Shared, Missing, Weak, Strong, Untapped, Unique, and All.

Semrush keyword gap filtering

The Weak segment filter shows keywords for which you rank lower than competitors, while the Strong segment filter shows keywords you rank higher. This is a great filter not just for discovering new keywords, but also for finding keywords you already rank for, but could use an extra push via a content update or a backlink campaign.

The Missing segment shows keywords that your competitors are ranking for, but you are not. You can even compare organic vs paid keyword gaps. This is a unique feature that makes it easy to identify high-value keywords that your competitors are bidding on that you aren’t targeting yet in your SEO or PPC campaigns. 

You also get to see the ranking positions of your and your competitors’ keywords, along with Volume, KD, Competition density, and Results. This seems trivial, but let’s keep it in mind for a second.

SpyFu

SpyFu’s Keyword Gap Analysis is called Kombat, and it’s like a lite version of Semrush.

Keyword gap analysis in SpyFu

For starters, it only offers 3 relational segments: Missing Keywords, Core (overlapping) Keywords, and All Keywords.

Then, for some reason, SpyFu does not give you the ranking positions of the keywords — neither yours nor your competitors. For me, this is a big minus. Sure, I get to see which keywords my competitors are ranking for that I don’t, but without knowing how well they are ranking for them, it feels like walking in the dark. It does not feel complete.

Conclusion

Semrush’ Keyword Gap Tool is superior to SpyFu’s in a number of areas. First, it provides more segments and filters to analyze the keyword gap data, and it also allows you to compare organic versus paid keyword data sets.

You can see how I use Semrush for advanced keyword gap analysis in this post.

Final Verdict For Keyword Research

For thorough Keyword Research, you have to use:

  • Keyword Discovery tool
  • Keyword Overview report
  • Keyword Gap analysis

Semrush has the leading keyword discovery tool that presents the most data and filtering options. The Keyword Overview report is a nice-to-have, and both tools offer a quality solution in this regard. Semrush Keyword Gap Analysis is again, excellent, while it’s SpyFu’s weakest feature. Semrush’ enormous keyword database and robust feature and filtering options make it the better choice for keyword research across the board.

Semrush vs SpyFu:
Which Is Better For Competitor Analysis?

Whether you’re trying to decode your competitors’ PPC or SEO strategy, the three main tools you will need are:

  • Domain Overview
  • Top Pages Report
  • Keyword Positions

Semrush and SpyFu both have these tools. And in the following three sections, I’ll compare them one by one before giving my final verdict at the end.

Note: at the end of this section, I’ll show you how one of these tools makes it possible to analyze all traffic sources – organic, direct, paid, social, referral etc – from a single dashboard.

Semrush vs SpyFu: Competitor Analysis – Domain Overview

Semrush

Semrush has a thorough Domain Overview dashboard.

Semrush Domain Overview report

This screen has everything you need to: A) quickly determine the overall strength of a website compared to others in the niche (Authority Score and number of Backlinks), B) the amount of effort they’re investing in content marketing and top-level traffic trends (Organic Traffic and Keywords charts), and C) where their traffic comes from (Organic and Paid keyword distribution by Country).

SpyFu

Here’s SpyFu Domain Overview Dashboard:

SpyFu SEO Overview Report

There are no flags marking Google algorithm changes. And although you can choose to view this data for a different country, the distribution by country report is lacking. There is also no Domain Authority score.

Now, there is a histogram for keyword distribution with these buckets:

  • page 1 keywords,
  • rank 11-16, and
  • rank 11-100

But, the range selection is a little awkward. On top of that, SpyFu offers only numbers without a visual aid (like a graph). This design choice makes it difficult to quickly comprehend what the numbers mean.

SpyFu keyword distribution data

Conclusion

The goal of the dashboard is to help us determine the vital signs of a website at a glance. And I believe that SpyFu’s dashboard—even though it looks clean—is actually harder to grasp than Semrush’ dashboard. Simply because there is a lack of data visualization.

Moving on to the next Competitor Analysis tool…

Semrush vs SpyFu: Competitor Analysis – Top Pages Report

If you want to take a deeper dive into your competitors’ SEO and content strategy, both Semrush and SpyFu offer Top Pages reports. This report helps us see all the pages of a domain that are currently sending traffic from Google.

Semrush

Here’s what the Semrush Top Pages report looks like:

Semrush Top Pages report

Semrush’ intuitive user interface makes it quick and easy to analyze the top traffic pages on any website. Each URL comes equipped with only the most essential metrics: traffic and traffic percentage, organic keywords and ads keywords, and the number of backlinks it attracted over its lifetime.

Let’s take a closer look at the Keyword column.

It has a bar that’s unevenly split in four colours. These represent how many keywords have Informational (blue), Navigational (purple), Transactional (yellow), and Commercial (green) intent.

For example, a page with a higher percentage of commercial intent keywords should mean that the people who land on that URL are looking to buy a product or service.

Besides, you can select Historical Data that goes back all the way to February 2012.

View historical keyword data in Semrush

But, I really like that I have the option to see in detail how my competitor’s SEO strategy has evolved over time.

Check out the video below to see step-by-step how I use URL filters to quickly uncover a competitor’s highest-value pages and keywords:

SpyFu

And here’s how SpyFu Top Pages report looks like:

Top Pages report in SpyFu

I like that we have a meta title and the URL right below it. This makes it easier to comprehend what kinds of content the domain is publishing.

SpyFu does tell you how many clicks the page is getting every month. (Which it compares to the number of clicks the keyword got last month — which is fixed. There is no historical data.), no traffic % or even number of backlinks. There are a number of keywords in the last column to the right, but the tiny font, narrow margins, and poor contrast make it very difficult to read.

But, unlike Semrush, you can expand the keyword column:

Expanded keyword report in SpyFu

This is a handy feature that provides additional context – keywords, position, clicks and more – about the organic footprint of a given page. For keyword research, this is everything you need. You can even copy this list to clipboard and paste it into excel.

Conclusion

Although SpyFu has made some good design choices—like showing both URL and Page Title, and having a dropdown keyword list— it is missing some key features and filters. I still prefer the Semrush Top Pages report due to the advanced filtering options.

Semrush vs SpyFu: Competitor Analysis – Keyword Position Report

Once you have selected a page you’d like to look at more closely, you can use the Keywords Position Report.

Semrush

Here’s how Semrush Keyword Position report looks like:

Semrush Keyword Position report

The upper half of the report gives you a detailed view of the current and past page traffic and keyword ranking distribution. The lower half of the report is a list of keywords the page is ranking for—in the selected month. 

You also have the option to filter the positions report as granularly as you like. i.e. by Root Domain, Exact URL, Subdomain and Subfolder: 

Analyzing at the Domain level in Semrush

Overall This is a very detailed report — you have the option to display 16 different metrics in this table:

Reporting filters in Semrush

Clicking on the little “>” arrow next to the keyword in the list opens a historical view of the SERP position for a given keyword. You can also select a month (I did May 22 here, in grey) and it will tell you which SERP features were active in that month:

Semrush historical ranking report

This is not necessarily your SERP feature. It could be anyones.

SpyFu

Here’s how SpyFu’s Keyword Position Report looks like:

SpyFu position tracking report

It has volume, ranks Clicks, KD, CPC. The columns are customizable, with a total of 14 metrics. Including Number of Ads and Homepages the keyword is ranking for in the SERP.

I like that they added URLs right below keywords, with a hyperlink that opens in a new window.

Besides the fact that SpyFu doesn’t have historical data or trend graphs, I can’t say anything bad about the keywords position report. It’s a solid report that any SEO would appreciate. If you need to see which keywords your competitor is ranking for, you’ll get it; alongside all the essential SEO information.

SpyFu also has filters on the left side panel (which I’ve deleted in the above screenshot for clarity)

Position tracking filters

Although I prefer Semrush’ design, this panel has everything you need to filter your results by any of the 14 metrics SpyFu offers, including rank and traffic changes.

Conclusion

Both Semrush and SpyFu offer detailed reports, powerful filters, and various metrics that come in handy while performing keyword research. Although SpyFu delivers on its promises and has better quality-of-life features (like URLs below keywords), Semrush has excellent historical data and trends, while SpyFu has none.

Semrush vs SpyFu: Competitor Analysis – Traffic Analytics (Bonus Tool)

Semrush Unique ✨ SpyFu does not have Traffic Analytics capabilities.

Although I haven’t mentioned it as a core feature for Competitor Analysis, Semrush Traffic Analytics tool is too good to leave out.

It gives details about your competitors’ websites that you simply cannot get on SpyFu or other SEM tools. Semrush generates insights by analyzing clickstream data from actual internet users, including:

Unique visitors to the website, pages per visit, average visit duration, and bounce rate:

Website Traffic Analytics report in Semrush

Audience insights by age and demographics:

Audience Insights report
Traffic by location report

Traffic journey that tells you where the traffic came from and where it’s going:

Traffic Journey report in Semrush
Traffic by sources report

Even the number of members in their households, employment status, and income and educational level:

View household demographic data in Semrush

It’s as if you’d received access to a website’s Google Analytics account, and is why Semrush is one of the top Similarweb alternatives. 

This is not only insanely powerful for media buyers, but also for SEOs who want to replicate the entire traffic strategy their competitors are using, and make sure they’re targeting sites that attract their target persona. You can see how I use the Traffic Analytics tool to dissect competitor traffic strategies in this in-depth guide. 

The basic version of the tool is free, but the full historical trends cost an additional $200 per month. It’s also important to mention that the accuracy of these results varies: the more popular the site, the more accurate the data.

Enter a domain in field below to see Traffic Analytics in action:


Spy on your competitors today with the Semrush 30-day free plan.

Final Verdict For Competitor Analysis

To analyze your competitor’s SEO strategy, you have to use:

  • Domain Overview,
  • Top Pages Report
  • Keyword Positions Report

Each of these plays an equally important role.

Despite having similar SEO data to Semrush, SpyFu’s domain overview report doesn’t provide the same level of data visualizations that make it easy to quickly extract actionable insights.

Next, unlike Semrush, SpyFu’s Top Pages report is lacking: it’s missing essential metrics that will help aid your SEO decision-making. Finally, when it comes to the essentials, the Keyword Positions Report is equally strong both for SpyFu and Semrush, but Semrush goes the extra mile with historical ranking data.

My final scores are as follows:

Semrush vs SpyFu:
Which Is Better For Content Creation?

Semrush Unique ✨ SpyFu does not have content creation capabilities.

The SEO Content Templates tool is actually two tools in one: an SEO Recommendations tool and Real-time Content Check.

After you enter a target keyword, the SEO recommendations tool will show you a list of semantically related keywords, common backlinks, readability score, and suggested text length for your article.

Semrush on-page SEO tool

It will also give you other basic on on-page recommendations:

SEO recommendations from Semrush

You’ll get a more detailed view in the Real-time Content Check tool. It monitors the quality of your content in four dimensions: Readability, SEO, Tone of voice, and Originality.

On-page SEO report in Semrush

Your Readability Score improves as you use simple words and short sentences.

Your SEO Score improves as you include more semantically related keywords in your text, which Semrush suggests in the column on the right.

The Tone of Voice score warns you when the sentences are too formal or too casual. And the Originality Score acts as a safety check against accidental plagiarism.

You can also download this tool as a Google Docs or WordPress plugin.

The Semrush SEO Content Template tool has all the features that most content optimization tools have, such as Frase, Clearscope, or Surfer SEO. On top of that, it can also replace your plagiarism checker.

In my opinion, Semrush does content optimization just as well as many standalone tools. So, if you have an active subscription to one of them, you may be able to offset that amount on a Semrush plan you’re considering because you likely won’t need it anymore.

Feel free to try these tools out yourself with the Semrush 30-day free plan.

Semrush vs SpyFu:
Which Is Better For Link Building?

Here’s how a typical link building campaign looks like:

  • Find good opportunities
  • Save those opportunities in a CRM
  • Find who is responsible for the content
  • Find their contact information
  • Write and send them emails
  • Keep track of the conversation
  • Analyze results

Both Semrush and SpyFu have built-in link building tools that automate (nearly) every aspect of link building mentioned above.

Semrush

In Semrush, you start by adding keywords you want to rank higher for, and competitors you want to outrank:

Link building tools setting

Semrush will find websites that are linking to competitors ranking for your keywords and list them as Domain Prospects.

Semrush Link Building analytics

The Keywords and Competitors tabs (1) are related to prospects you found either through keywords or competitors you provided.

The All Prospects view will merge both. You can add more keywords or competitors at any time by clicking the “+ Add” button (2).

The two most important metrics to look at here are the Domain Authority Score (AS) and Rating (3). The rating metric uses proprietary technology to calculate how impactful getting a link from this domain will be, and how easy it will be to get it.

These two metrics will help you filter out any bad websites right from the start. You will, of course, still have to open the rest and find link opportunities manually. Once you’ve found an opportunity, you can select one of the premade outreaches strategies:

Find link building opportunities in Semrush

These are basically different email outreach templates.

Here’s how your prospect shortlist looks like:

Tracking link building campaign progress in Semrush

This screen is similar to cold outreach tools with the standard analytics: delivery, open, reply, and backlink earned rates.

When you’re ready to contact your prospects simply click “Contact”. You’ll be taken to a screen where you’ll be able to build your outreach campaign:

Semrush will automatically find contact emails.

Check the ones you want to reach out to. Keep in mind, though, that the contact finding tool is not a replacement for a specialized lead database. It lacks that level of accuracy.

Now all you have to do is connect your mailbox to Semrush and you’re ready to start sending emails.

SpyFu

SpyFu’s workflow is similar: enter a keyword you want to rank higher for, and you get a list of link prospects:

SpyFu backlink report

SpyFu’s tool is drastically simplified.

Instead of Relevancy Score or Backlink Quality Score, SpyFu has Outbound Links and Domain Strength.

Outbound Links is a useful metric. The more outbound links a page has, the less “link juice” each individual outbound link will pass. It could also be an indicator that the site is selling links (but that is a topic for another post). 

As for the Domain Strength metric, well, I’m not sure I know how its calculated. SpyFu’s official definition is “domain with high strength pulls in high amounts of quality traffic and carries high authority across any competitive keywords,” which doesn’t explain much.

Adding prospects will import them to your Project Manager:

Link building opportunities in SpyFu

Opening one will show additional detail: 

The design is less inviting than what Semrush has.

In the bottom right panel, SpyFu suggests potential contacts. I find that these are usually guest post authors or C-suite executives. Guest post authors typically don’t have influence over their posts once they go live. And most executives won’t bother with link partnerships.

Hovering over or clicking on the contact will give you their role in the company and contact information:

SpyFu link building CRM

Here you’ll see a short bio, email address, and as many social media profiles as SpyFu could find. This is better than Semrush, which only gives you email addresses and company social media profiles.

That said, SpyFu does not have email sending capabilities.

It works as a project notebook: you have to “Log a Contact” yourself every time you reach out:

It’ll open a popup box where you describe the interaction you’ve had with your prospect.

Final Verdict For Link Building

Without a doubt, the winner is Semrush. It has:

  • More intuitive user interface and experience.
  • Bulk keyword and competitor analysis
  • Better prospect suggestions
  • Built-in sorting mechanism and shortlisting that feels like a CRM
  • Built-in email sender
  • Essential outreach analytics

SpyFu is better at finding contact information, but still not a substitute for other standalone tools such as Hunter. Semrush provides a level of functionality that would allow you to replace a dedicated link building solution. 

Finding quality opportunities

Finding contact information

Semrush vs SpyFu:
Which Is Better For Rank Tracking?

A Rank Tracking tool tracks the position (rank) of your webpage for a given keyword in the SERPs of your choice.

Therefore, frequent position updates and change history are crucial features of a rank tracking tool. In this section, we’ll compare how Semrush Position Tracker compares to SpyFu’s.

Semrush

Before a rank tracker can work, you have to give it keywords to track.

You can ask Semrush to A) generate a list of keywords for your target domain automatically, B) import them from another campaign, or C) pull them from your Google Analytics account:

Setting up keywords to track in Semrush

Here, I’m using Semrush suggestions, and have selected the domain report source:

Semrush keyword suggestions

Semrush has a very advanced rank tracker. Not only is the standard Ranking Overview table packed full of helpful data like Search Intent, Starting Position, and SERP Features that you own:

Semrush ranking overview table

You also get the option to see your Ranking Distribution:

Semrush ranking distribution table

Your Top Keywords and how they improved or declined since being imported: 

Semrush ranking impact report

And even Keyword Cannibalization risks:

Semrush keyword cannibalization report

And the best part? Semrush updates Position Tracking data every 24 hours.

SpyFu

Here’s SpyFu’s interface for importing keywords:

Importing keywords into SpyFu

Just like Semrush, SpyFu also helps you generate a keyword list for importing. It has four suggested groups for keywords you may want to track:

SpyFu suggested keyword groups

You can select one or multiple keywords groups and open a list view.

SpyFu keyword universe

And that’s the rank tracker.

It does what it promises: shows your traffic and SERP positions for selected keywords.

Unlike Semrush, SpyFu shows the position history for your keyword from even before you started tracking it. It goes all the way back to 2016.

SpyFu Organic Visibility report

Besides this, SpyFu does not have any other statistics or special features like Keyword Cannibalization monitoring.

And a big shortfall is the fact that keyword positions get updated weekly as opposed to daily.

SERP positions vary during the week. I was wondering if SpyFu actually tracks the positions daily in the backend, but just shows the average position over the week on the frontend. I couldn’t find anything on their self-help section, so I asked support:

SpyFu chat support

And the answer is, sadly, no.

SpyFu chat support response

Final Verdict For Rank Tracking

SpyFu’s Position Tracker does deliver on its promise, and has a great historical view that is useful even before you started tracking the keyword. However, it updates the keywords only once a week, while Semrush updates rankings on a daily basis. On top of that, Semrush has a plethora of other useful analytics and reports making it the superior Rank Tracking tool.

User Interface & Experience

Semrush vs SpyFu:
Which Is Better For PPC Advertising?

Finding keywords for PPC Advertising is much like finding keywords for SEO.

First you analyze competitors, create a list of seed keywords, expand those seed keywords, determine which will bring you closer to your goal, and finally track positions once you’ve placed your bids.

To do all this, you use the same tools as you do when performing keyword research for SEO. Meaning there is no need to go over them again here, as my conclusion will be the same. If you haven’t read the chapter on SEO Keyword Research, Competitor Analysis, or Rank Tracking, the following links will take you there.

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That said, there is ONE tool that’s very important for PPC advertising that’s not important for SEO: Ad History. We’ll compare the Semrush and SpyFu Ad History tools in the next section.

Semrush vs SpyFu: PPC Advertising – Ad History Tool

The goal of the Ad History tool is to help you discover keywords that competitors are bidding on (or have bid on) and see the ad copy and landing pages they’ve used for the ads.

This tool is invaluable for leveraging the hard work your competitors have already done in finding message-market fit. You can find their unprofitable ad variants and save your ad budget.

Semrush

Here’s Semrush Ad History window showing a list of keywords a website has bid on in the past 12 months:

Semrush Ad History report

The Coverage % metric will help you determine how long they’ve been bidding on a given keyword. For example, if they’ve been bidding on a keyword for 2 months out of 12, their coverage would be 16%. I like to sort by this filter to find keywords they’ve been bidding on for a long time, as that could mean that those keywords are profitable for the company.

When you find the right keywords, clicking on the blue squares opens snapshots of the ads that ran for them.

Ad history snapshot report

The number in the blue square tells you the highest position that the ad got placed in that month.

Below it, you can find the landing page URL and the Google ad copy. At the bottom, you can see the Volume and CPC metrics for the keyword in that month.

Three areas for improvement:

First, the panels only show the ad copy for the body of the ad. They do not show the headline.

Editor’s note: Semrush also has a tool where you can do the reverse: enter a keyword and see a list of competitors who placed bids in the past 12 months.

Here, if you open the ad snapshot panel, it will show ad headlines.

Second, the panels are too small to fit the entire ad copy, which makes doing month-by-month comparisons difficult at times.

Third, there are no indicators that would say if the ad copy has changed from month to month. Or if it did change, how much it changed. With this, you could easily determine whether:

  • The ad is a clear winner (no ad changes in the past few months),
  • The ad copy is not quite there yet (few ad changes),
  • The ad is still in the heavy testing phase because the competitor couldn’t find a profitable version (heavy ad changes).

SpyFu

Here’s SpyFu Ad History view:

SpyFu Ad History report

The ad boxes represent ads that this domain has run for the keyword. Ad boxes that are in the same color mean that the ad has the same headline, but not necessarily the same ad copy. (A step up from Semrush’s interface. I also like that SpyFu’s panels are big enough to fit the entire ad. It makes month-to-month ad comparison effortless.)

Looking at these boxes and the colors can get confusing. If you’re feeling lost, SpyFu has another panel on the right side that shows the most frequently used ads:

SpyFu frequently used ads report

Again, the goal of the Ad History tool is to find which ad copy works best for your competitors and kick off your next PPC campaign from there; leveraging all the testing your competitors have already done. With a panel like this, you can read top ads from 15+ of your competitors in 5 minutes, and get a crystal clear idea about what kind of messaging works in your industry.

On a final note: SpyFu has an impressive backlog of PPC ads that goes back to 2007. (By comparison, Semrush goes back to 2012). It makes sense. SpyFu started as a Google Ads intelligence tool back in April 2005.

On their help page, SpyFu claims that “[they] keep cached pages of every Google SERP [they]’ve ever captured. And Cache goes back as long as [they]’ve been around.”

Final Verdict for PPC Advertising

When it comes to PPC Keyword Research, Competitor Analysis, and Rank Tracking, the overall winner is Semrush.

But when it comes to spying on your competitor’s ads, I have to give it to SpyFu. Their design choices make more sense, and their ad snapshot panels make it easy to see which changes your competitors have made to their ads over time.

Semrush vs SpyFu:
Comparison Matrix

Semrush vs SpyFu:
Price Comparison

Now the question is: which tool will give you the most value?

That depends entirely on who you are and how you’re planning to use the tools. But before we go into that, let’s first get a better feeling for the price and value that each tool delivers in its plans.

Semrush

Here are the monthly costs of Semrush plans. All of these are for a single user. The cost of additional users is noted in brackets:

  • Low-tier: $119.95 [+$45]
  • Mid-tier: $229.95 [+$80]
  • High-tier: $449.95 [+$100]

Semrush offers a modest 17% discount (2 free months) to everyone willing to buy a yearly license.

Semrush pricing plans

With their base, low-tier plan you’ll get access to most of their key features (including SEO and PPC Keyword Research, Competitor Analysis, Rank Tracker, and Link Building Tool). You won’t, however, have access to the Content Creation Suite or their Historical data—that means no Ad Histories.

Their mid-tier plan extends the use limit by roughly 3x across the board. For example, the number of tracked keywords goes from 500 to 1500. You also get access to some powerful features, like customizable reporting and an integration with Google Data Studio. This tier also unlocks access to the content creation and optimization toolset.

Finally, the high-tier plan extends use limits by an additional 3x. You also get access to more niche features such as their API.

SpyFu

Here are the monthly costs of SpyFu plans:

  • Low-tier: $39
  • Mid-tier: $79 (first month is $39)
  • High-tier: $299 

SpyFu offers a whopping 50% discount if you commit to a yearly plan.

SpyFu pricing plans

SpyFu’s high-tier plan is the same as its mid-tier plan. It’s essentially a mid-tier plan bundle for 5 users. Speaking of user seats, SpyFu doesn’t offer them. If you want to get SpyFu for your other team members, you’ll simply have to buy them a plan individually.

Right off the bat, with the SpyFu base plan, you get nearly all features. The only two missing are API access and customizable reports. The mid-tier also increases the amount of data you can access.

Semrush vs SpyFu:
The Winner

For SEOs: Semrush

While SpyFu’s SEO toolset is solid, Semrush is a category leader when it comes to the quality of its SEO Toolkit. Users get access to some of the best keyword research, competitor analysis, link building, content optimization, site audit and rank tracking tools on the market, all from a single integrated platform. 

For Google PPC Specialists: Both

Unless you’re planning on the Semrush mid-tier ($229.95/month) plan which has the Ad History tool, your best bet would be to use the Semrush low-tier ($120/month) plan—for PPC keyword research and competitor analysis—in combination with SpyFu low-tier ($39/month) plan—for it’s Ad History tool.

For small budgets, just the SpyFu plan will do.

For Link Builders: Semrush

SpyFu’s link building tools have a way to go. Even if you have a shoestring budget of only $40/month, spend time finding your link opportunities on Google for free and use that budget on email finder software.

For professional link builders or agencies, or even part-time link builders who want to be more effective with their time, Semrush is a great solution, especially since it is part of an all-in-one SEM platform.

For Marketing Teams: Semrush

If you’re using more than 2-3 tools, or if you manage a marketing team of any size, I highly recommend Semrush.

Although it’s more expensive, you can also consolidate a lot of marketing tools and workflows into a single platform — especially with the mid-tier ($229.95/month) plan which unlocks the Content Marketing Suite and Historical Data, granting you access to all the tools discussed in this article.

Semrush also provides several project and campaign management tools that make it easy to monitor progress across a range of digital marketing areas – SEO audits, keyword rankings, backlink audits, PPC keywords, organic traffic, and social media engagement – from a single dashboard.

With this in mind, Semrush provides an extremely high value-to-price ratio.





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