Search Engine Optimization (SEO) helps people find your website through the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). SEO tools help target keywords that are commonly searched by your target audience. They provide crucial insights like search volume, the ranking of your competitors, the ranking of your website, and cost-per-click to help you plan your inbound and outbound marketing campaigns.
One of the great tools for Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is SEMRush and Spyfu. Both software offers a suite of features and functionality that will help your business rank high in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP).
SemRush and SpyFu
What is SEMrush
SEMrush is a cloud-based Search Engine Optimization (SEO) software that helps a business with their digital marketing and search engine optimization. It provides many helpful data-based digital marketing tools like keyword research, domain analytics, backlink insights, and other essential tools. SEO tools like SEMrush also help businesses with their paid advertising Pay-per-click (PPC) or Paid Search Advertising (PSA) campaigns by providing critical insights like search volume, cost-per-click, and other crucial information.
SEMrush Features:
SEMrush has plenty of features the will help companies improve their rankings in the search engine results page.
Analytics Report:
The Analytics reports allow you to get valuable competitor insights like display advertising, organic search keywords, paid search keywords, and link building campaigns.
Advertising Research and Display Advertising Tool
The advertising research tool allows you to analyze competitor ad budgets and keywords. Monitor ad copy and landing pages and discover new competitors in Google Ads. The advertising research tools help businesses localize Ad campaigns by providing you with useful information and insights.
Display advertising provides you with an overview of targetted competitors GDN strategies. The display advertising tool feature allows you to analyze competitor's display advertisements making it easier to find and target the right audience.
Backlinks
The backlink feature allows you to conduct in-depth link analysis to identify websites that have referring links to the business's website. The backlink tool will enable you to get crucial data from referring domains like domain authority of referring domains, the number of backlinks to the site, the anchor text of referring domains, and the domain authority of referring domains.
Keyword Research
The keyword research tools help you find and target the right keywords for their business. The tool helps you to identify the organic keywords on their website as well as identify the keywords targetted by their competitors.
Traffic Analytics
The traffic analytics features allow you to identify your own website's traffic and online performance. This feature also gives you important data on competitor websites like their marketing strategies and activities.
Pros
Cons
What is Spyfu
Spyfu is a search analytics tool and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) software that helps businesses track their search keyword rankings, keyword research, Adwords analytics, and other import search engine optimization tools.
Spyfu Features
Spyfu has plenty of useful features to help you and your business in your digital marketing campaigns and activities.
PPC Competitor Research
Spyfu's PPC Competitor Research tools allow you to discover what your competitors are doing with their pay-per-click campaign. The feature also includes useful tools like Adwords Competitor Keyword Spy Tool, Adwords Advisor, PPC Ad Rank Tracker, and other valuable tools to help you with your PPC campaigns.
SEO Competitor Research
The Search Engine Competitor Research feature allows you to see every keyword your competitors are ranking on. The tool enables you to discover the webpage or landing page that shows up in the search engine results page based on the keyword. The tool also allows you to track referral links and backlinks on your competitor's website.
Keyword Research Tools
The Keyword Research Tools allows you to search and generate targeted organic and paid keywords ideas. The tool provides useful filters to help choose the right keywords for your business, like search volume, CPC, SEO difficulty, and more.
Domain Leads and Top List
Spyfu has a Domain Leads and Top List feature that allows you to create a list of targeted domains and competitor websites quickly. The tool will enable you to organize domains and sites and filter them by industry, location, ad spend, search traffic, social media, and technologies.
Pros
Cons
SEMrush and SpyFu Head to Head Comparison
We compare both SEMrush and SpyFu to see which best fits your business needs and your budget. Both software is cloud-based and has a Software-as-a-service tiered pricing platform. This means that you don't need to buy expensive on-site computers or servers to run the software. All you need is your standard office laptop or PC and a stable internet connection.
Keyword Research
Both SEMrush and SpyFu provide excellent keyword research capability allowing you to quickly see which keywords are relevant for your business and industry. Both software also provides crucial data for the keywords like search volume, cost per click, keyword difficulty, and other filters to help you sort through thousands of keywords. Both also have great keyword suggestions features like phrase match to help you discover more relevant keywords for your business.
In terms of keyword suggestions and advanced filtering, SpyFu is outclassed by SEMrush. SEMrush provides more accurate keyword suggestions thanks to its advance filtering feature. You can adjust the precision of the keywords match from an exact match, phrase match, and broad match.
The Choice: SEMrush
Backlinking and Backlink Analytics
Keyword Tracking
SEMRush and SpyFu both offer great keyword tracking functionalities allowing you to accurately track the targetted keywords of your website and compare it to targetted competitor websites. Both platforms allow you to track organic and paid keywords from major search engines like Google and Bing. SEMrush tracks and updates the changes of the keyword rankings and positions delay while SpyFu updates them weekly.
The Better Choice: SEMrush
SEMrush has data from at least different countries around the world compared to SpyFu, which source its Data only in the US and UK, this is especially important for enterprise-level businesses that have a presence in multiple countries.
The Choice: SEMrush
Backlinking and Backlink Analytics
Both platforms have backlinking and backlink analytics features. SEMrush has a powerful website backlink checker that allows you to scan and audit your domain or website and discover all links that point to your site. SEMrush also allows you to perform in-depth link analysis to help you check incoming links from other websites and domains. SEMrush also has a useful domain authority rating to help you check the quality of incoming links to your site.
This feature of Spyfu allows you to search for a specific domain's inbound links.
SEMrush definitely takes the lead with Backlinking thanks to its suite of backlink reports and analytics. SEMrush also provides essential information like the domain authority of the referring domain to help you determine if the links provide good quality traffic to your website.
The Choice: SEMrush
Competitor Research and Analytics
Competitor research is fundamental in search engine marketing because it allows you to plan your marketing strategy and find the right keywords that are relevant to your business. Competitor research tools will enable you to see the organic and paid keywords for your targeted competitors. Choosing the right keyword helps you create relevant content for your target audience. SEMrush has Organic Research tools that provide you with the right competitive intelligence to allow you to rank in the search engine results page (SERP). The Organic Research tool will enable you to see your competitors' top keywords at the same time, discover new competitors to your business.
SpyFu also has a powerful competitor research tool that allows you to get the full scope of your competitors. SpyFu will enable you to discover similar websites that are relevant to your business at the same time identity and track the rankings of their top keywords. SpyFu is also able to measure the click-throughs and cost-per-click to help target high-value keywords at lower costs.
The Choice: Both, SEMrush and SpyFu both have excellent competitor research and analytics capabilities. However, SEMRush's seems to have a more significant and more reliable spectrum of data.
Pay-Per-Click Tool
SEMrush and SpyFu both have great PPC tools that can help you start and improve your PPC campaigns. PPC campaigns help you bring the right message to the right audience. SEMRush has PPC Keyword Tool that allows you to collect keywords through multiple channels. The tool will enable you to manage your targetted PPC keyword list easily and quickly optimize it according to your budget. The tool also allows you to cross-match negative keywords to avoid competition in your Ads, which can help you optimize your ad spends.
SpyFu has a PPC research feature that allows you to find, track, and monitor new and existing keywords for your PPC campaigns. The SpyFu PPC tool also allows you to quickly search and identify paid keywords that are being targetted by your key competitor enabling you to optimize your PPC budget conveniently. SpyFu also has an AdWords advisor that provides crucial data on your competitors' PPC campaigns.
The Choice: Both SEMrush and SpyFu have great PPC features and tools, allowing you to quickly and efficiently start PPC campaigns for your website.
Dashboards and Reporting
Having an intuitive dashboard that displays essential information is vital because it can reduce the risk of clerical errors and can cause delays in your Search Engine Marketing (SEM) campaigns. SEMrush and SpyFu have both great dashboards and reports that will help you efficiently analyze data and provide you access to relevant information in a few simple clicks. Both tools have useful filters to help you sort through thousands of keywords and competitors.
SEMrush has a My Reports tool that allows you to gather all the data you have collected in SEMrush into an easy to read and transferrable PDF file. SEMrush also allows you to share and schedule reports as well as design customized reports with white-label branding.
SpyFu also has a reporting feature that also allows you to gather the data into one detailed and comprehensive report. The report also has features that help report recipients understand the f the metrics and rankings and what they mean to your business.
The Choice: Both, SEMrush and SpyFu have excellent reporting tools that help transform data into actionable information for your business.
User Experience and Usability
SEMrush has a very intuitive user interface that is understandable and easy to navigate. First-time users will have no problem learning how to use the tool as they go. The full suite of features and tools are accurately labeled and smartly placed to ensure seamless usage across the platform. SpyFu also has a very navigable platform, but new users can potentially get lost, especially in switching in-between tools and dashboards.
The Choice: SEMrush
Training and Knowledge Base
Both platforms have a useful tutorial and knowledge database that are readily available online. New users can find tutorials the will help them quickly learn the ropes to utilize the platform fully. SEMrush is superior to SpyFu in providing training to new and existing users. SEMrush provides certification courses that users can take for free online in their knowledge platform.
The Choice: SEMrush
Pricing
The Choice: Both, Although there is a big difference in the pricing for both, SEMrush offers more features increasing its value for money.
Stand out Features
SEMrush
Content Marketing Tools
SEMrush is more than just your keyword research and PPC tool. It also provides helpful features to help you create meaningful content for your target audience. The Content Platform helps you kickstart your content marketing efforts by allowing you to create a content plan quickly. You also get to have access to the SEMrush SEO-friendly content templates to help you start writing good quality blogs and articles to help push your search engine rankings.
Social Media Marketing Tools
SEMrush also goes beyond Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Search Engine Optimization with its Social Media Tool. Social media tools allow you to analyze the performance of your company's social media accounts. The social media tool also allows you to schedule posts across social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and Linkedin.
SEO Writing Assistant
The SEMrush SEO writing assistant helps you create content that is optimized for search engine rankings and your target audience. Get crucial insights on your targetted keywords and also get recommendations on how to create the right content.
SpyFu
Kombat Tool
The SpyFu Kombat Tool allows you to search two other competing domains and compare them head-to-head against their keywords. This feature is extremely helpful in quickly compiling keywords from your competitor's website.
Top Pages Feature
The Top Pages Feature allows you to identify the top content like webpages, landing pages, and blogs of your competitor's website. The tool will enable you to find new opportunities for your own site.
Conclusion
Use SEMrush if:
Use SpyFu if:
Angelo Sorbello
Angelo Sorbello is the Founder of Astrogrowth, the fastest-growing business software directory on the web that helps thousands of entrepreneurs every day to select the best software for their needs.
