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SEO marketing tools vary widely in their capabilities. Some are highly specialized in one or two areas, while others try to cover all the SEO bases. The latter is the case with two enormously popular SEO tools, SpyFu and SEMrush.
Both SEMrush and SpyFu offer a suite of SEO features, from keyword research and tracking to backlink tools. They also both specialize in diving deep into what your competitors are doing, but which one comes out on top?
SpyFu has a powerful keyword research tool that gives you insight into how each keyword you enter is ranking and stats about search volume, daily clicks and more. SEMrush, however, provides this data and much more.
SEMrush has one of the best keyword research tools you’ll find. It gives you hundreds of suggestions, advanced filtering, including by broad, phrase or exact match, difficulty, words it begins or ends with, difficulty and many more filters. SpyFu’s related keyword results and filtering options are sparse compared to SEMrush.
When it comes to search volume accuracy, both companies have dedicated a lot of time and resources to make these reports as accurate as possible. We did not find a noticeable difference in the volume reports.
SEMrush’s backlink analysis tools far outshine what you get with SpyFu. SpyFu essentially is a keyword search tool for potential backlinks. You can find backlinks that already help other sites rank and common backlinks your competitors get.
SEMrush’s backlink checker, on the other hand, gives you in-depth analysis into your current backlinks. It shows you which links are pointing to your website. You can check these incoming links for a URL, domain, or root domain, view the URLs and titles of linking and target web pages and compare inbound links’ weight on competitors’ domains.
SEMrush also indicates how authoritative a referring domain is and its location. They give you handy charts that place each backlink type into categories based on percentages (follow vs nofollow, source country, links that are text, image or form, etc.).
SEMrush also lists backlinks that you’ve lost.
SEMrush and SpyFu blow other SEO tools out of the water with their competitor analytics. This area is SpyFu’s top selling point, but SEMrush gives them a run for the money.
Both allow you to “spy” on your competitors SEO and PPC strategies and practices. You can see how all of their keywords are ranking, including their most profitable keywords and ads for paid and organic searches.
You can also get a thorough picture of which keywords your competitors are bidding on and how much traffic they’re generating. Some differences between SEMrush and SpyFu include:
SpyFu gives you unlimited search results with its two higher plans; SEMrush has caps with each pricing tier (but they’re generous).
SpyFu’s higher plans let you dig into your competitors’ data going back 10 years. SEMrush goes back to 2012.
SEMrush does a better job of analyzing your competitors’ social media and PR campaigns.
Both SEMrush and SpyFu have robust keyword tracking capabilities and come out about even overall. They allow you to track paid and SEO keyword rankings on Google, Bing and Yahoo. However, some key differences could be the deciding factor for your site’s needs.
While SEMrush lets you check keyword rank changes over any set period (up to a year looking back), SpyFu’s higher pricing plans go even further back (up to 10 years).
SEMrush tracks keywords daily; SpyFu tracks them weekly.
SpyFu isn’t the ideal tool for beginners. You get a lot of raw data that can be difficult to decipher if you’re not an SEO guru, and the UI can be confusing. SEMrush is simply easier to use for both beginners and pros.
If you need tech support, both SEMrush and SpyFu offer live chat, phone and email ticket support Monday through Friday. SEMrush’s hours are 10am-6pm EST. SpyFu’s are 7am-8pm.
SpyFu is one of the most affordable SEO tools on the market, so they have a clear advantage in this category over SEMrush.
If you’re a small business or startup, SpyFu could be a wise, budget-friendly choice — provided you don’t need the well-rounded suite of SEO features you’ll get with SEMrush and the learning curve you’ll need to master SpyFu.
SEMrush offers an Enterprise level plan, but you must contact them for pricing. They also provide custom plans. For example, you can pay a la carte if you just want to add another session (simultaneous login) or user.
Free Trial/Money-Back Guarantee
Neither product offers a free trial. SpyFu, however, comes out ahead with a 30-day money-back guarantee, while SEMrush only offers a 7-day money-back guarantee.
It’s difficult to compare the specific features of different SEO tools, but we want to give you a summary for each company.
SEMrush
5+ years historical data
Site audit
On-page SEO checker
Position tracking
Social media tracker
Backlink audit
Marketing calendar
Brand monitoring
Post tracking
Content audit
PPC keyword tool
Organic research
Keyword research
Keyword magic tool
Organic traffic insights
Ad builder
Advertising research
Display advertising
Backlinks
SEO content template
Keyword difficulty
Gap analysis
Traffic analytics
Lead generation tool
Topic research
My reports
API access
SpyFu
10+ years historical data
Unlimited searches
Unlimited data exports
Unlimited backlink results
3-way domain comparisons
Advanced contact information
SEO performance analysis
AdWords advisor reports
Keyword cost-per-click
Request keywords
Customizable branded reports
Keyword rank tracking
Estimated advertising spend
Exclusive keywords
SERP analysis
Search filters
Ranking graphs
API access
Overall Winner
SEMrush wins our competition for its comprehensive suite of SEO tools. No other software comes close to SEMrush’s detailed ability to cover all of your SEO and PPC needs. SEMrush is also much easier to use and understand all the data than SpyFu.
However, if you’re mainly looking for competitive analytics and in-depth PPC/advertising data, you can’t beat SpyFu’s pricing. This could be a significant deciding factor for small businesses or startups.
Both SEMrush and SpyFu are industry leaders, and you can’t go wrong with either tool. Mainly, your choice comes down to your site’s specific goals and how competitive your market is. We are customers of SEMRush and use most of their features in our SEO marketing.
A rather simple video that does a basic comparison of SEMRush and SpyFu features with either a checkmark or an X (depending on whether the service supports that feature), along with some explanation of what each feature does.
How Do These Two Stack Up To The Competition?
SEMRush and SpyFu are only two players in a highly competitive niche. Our experts compare the top SEO solutions in a comprehensive showdown, with over a dozen providers covered. You’ll get a breakdown of each tool’s features, pros and cons, pricing and more. We also outline which tools are good for “all-in-one” use vs those that offer unique features that pair well with other tools.
While attending the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s graduate school for journalism and public relations in the late 1990s, Sally began a long career researching and writing about business, technical and scientific topics.
Her decades of experience as well as a passion to stay on top of the latest online tools and resources combine to help small businesses (and freelancers like herself) flourish. Her work has appeared in many notable media outlets, including The Washington Post, Entrepreneur, People, Forbes, Huffington Post, and more.
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