Every online business thrives on traffic that comes from organic searches, and unless you have at least 80 percent of the traffic coming in from organic searches, your website may not turn into a passive income-generating machine. You can tackle this by investing in the right SEO tools before it’s too late to catch up with your competitors.
Let us now explore SEMRush and SpyFu, the two most popular SEO tools available, and figure out which one offers you the best value for your dollar. We have previously compared Semrush vs Ahrefs and Semrush Vs Moz so if you are interested in them, do read these articles for some insights.
Both the tools offer monthly and yearly subscriptions but unless you pick an annual subscription, you may end up paying more than you otherwise would. If you have a website then you probably know that having the right keyword lays down the foundation for your digital marketing and lead generation strategies. Depending upon the purpose for which you plan to buy an SEO tool, you must invest in the right plan.
Semrush Vs Spyfu – Feature Comparison
E-commerce and online businesses are highly competitive, so unless you unravel the Content Strategy of your potential competitors, you cannot take your online business to the next level. You need to make use of a reliable SEO tool, and to pick the best one, let us run a quick comparison between the two most popular keywords research tools, Semrush and SpyFu.
| Feature | SEMrush | Spyfu |
|---|---|---|
| Organic Research | Semrush lets you compile a list of competitors, based on which you can pull out the keywords that drive traffic to their website, starting from the highest to the lowest | With just one keyword, SpyFu lets you dig into a scientifically aggregated collection of keywords. SpyFu also provides an estimate of organic traffic that you can expect to drive to your site from search engines, for a certain keyword. |
| Ad Keyword Research | Semrush lets you take a quick peep into the keywords that your competitors are advertising for. You can also check how long they run the campaigns and plan your ad strategy, accordingly. | Want to know exactly how many people click on a relevant ad while looking up for a keyword? SpyFu’s average ad CTR provides just this |
| Competitive Analysis | You can narrow down the most relevant traffic generating pages of your competitors, and find out the exact keywords, backlinks and ad strategies that have made the page so popular. | You can look up for unlimited competitor results with all the plans offered by SpyFu. So that lets you spy on your competitor’s activities, without any limit or capping. Also, you can look at an estimate of your competitor’s ad spend, and plan your budget accordingly. |
| Tracking the Results | Semrush helps you figure out how you rank for every keyword and also helps assess the status of your backlinks and how it impacts your website. | SpyFu provides weekly SEO and PPC reports, which may seem casual but there’s more to it. SpyFu keeps track of your competitors and cautions you in case of any sudden aggressiveness in their online strategy. This tells you when you need to pull up your socks. |
| Customized Reports | You can create branded PDF reports with all Semrush plans, except for the Pro plan. | SpyFu lets you pull out custom reports for all the three plans, but restricts the number and type of reports based on the plan. |
| Usability | You need to spend some time with Semrush to be able to navigate through its 28 tools and that is going to cost you some time and money. So if you have never tried your hand at SEO tools, then consider a crash course on Udemy | SpyFu’s UI isn’t the most user-friendly, but what we genuinely like is that they have a whole bunch of resources that make it easier to use |
| Money-back Guarantee | Semrush offers a Free trial with 7 Day money-back guarantee, but it isn’t as convenient as it is with SpyFu. | SpyFu keeps it simple and straightforward. So if you aren’t satisfied and raise a claim for a refund within the initial 30-day period, then you get it. It’s as simple as that! |
Semrush Vs Spyfu – Pricing Comparison
Semrush offers an aggregate of four plans that you can choose from, while SpyFu offers three. The four plans offered by Semrush are the Pro, Guru, Business, and Enterprise. As you may have deduced from the names, the first two plans (Pro and Guru) are targeted towards individuals and small businesses, while the Business and Enterprise plans are for larger set-ups. Likewise, SpyFu offers Basic, Professional and Team plans, which are suitable for SEO and Digital marketing professionals, depending on the volume of work and team size.
Let us now discuss each of the plans and that should help you figure out which one is the best for you.
For Individuals and Small Businesses
The relevant plans that we shall now compare include Semrush’s Pro and Guru and SpyFu’s Basic and Professional. The Pro Plan by Semrush is priced at $83.28 per month for annual subscribers and $99.95 per month for monthly subscribers.
Now, this is more than twice of what SpyFu charges for its Basic Plan, which is either priced at $33 per month or $39 per month, based on the duration of your subscription. For small businesses that can’t do without the custom-branded report, SpyFu’s Professional plan does the needful and is priced reasonably between $58 and $78 per month.
However, if you are looking out for a Semrush plan to pull out branded PDF reports, then you need to choose the Guru plan, which requires you to spend a lot more. It is priced between $166.62 and $199.95 per month. This feature is extremely important when you are pulling out reports for your clients as it lets you customize the report by adding your company’s logo and details.
For Established or Large Businesses
If you are an Established agency or a team of professionals that remotely work together on SEO and digital marketing projects then the best option would be to consider Semrush’s Business Plan or SpyFu’s Team Plan. Semrush’s Business plan is priced around $333.28 and $399.95 and lets you add up to 9 additional users every month, but you need to cough up an additional monthly fee of $140 per user.
On the other hand, SpyFu is much more reasonably priced and provides 5 logins with its Team Plan, at no additional cost. Also, SpyFu’s Team plan is much more economical when compared to Semrush’s Business plan as SpyFu prices it around $199 and $299. However, if you have a certain set of specific requirements, then Semrush lets you work out a customizable plan that caters to your specific business needs.
So Which One You Should Choose?
If you are still wondering which of the two keyword research tools is going to be ideal for you, then let’s dig into the details and figure out which one should you invest in, to unleash the power of e-commerce.
You should choose Semrush if
- You have a revenue-generating website, that you wish to take to the next level, and are in the middle of planning the best strategy to achieve this.
- You are a freelance digital marketer and have a handful of clients, and a steady flow of revenue that lets you afford Semrush without cutting corners. If so, Semrush can help you nail down the strategy adopted by your clients’ competitors and provides resources to formulate a better one.
- You are an affiliate marketer and wish to maximize your profits, by investing in appropriate research tools.
- You are a seller with a handful of products and wish to analyze the right keywords for your PPC campaign.
- You wish to unravel the content strategy used by your competitors, in order to beat them and reclaim your market share.
- You want to take a sneak peek into the keywords that are driving most of the traffic to your competitor’s website.
- You are an established SEO consultant and wish to pull out audit reports for your clients.
You Should choose SpyFu if
- You are about to kickstart your own website, but not sure where to start from. So, to find the right niche and to get a clue of how stiff the competition is in that particular niche, you can use Semrush.
- If your website needs a content strategy to start off and all you have is the domain name, then with just your domain name, you can find out who your competitors are and can also find the relevant keywords.
- You have a website but that isn’t doing too well and you wish to run a detailed analysis and revamp your content strategy.
- You have just plunged into freelance digital marketing and wish to experiment in this field.
- You run frequent online ad campaigns but are on a cost-reduction spree and wish to get the most out of your online ad campaigns.
Our Verdict and Suggestion
After a thorough comparative analysis, we are of the opinion that SpyFu is a better choice for smaller businesses and also for businesses that require multiple logins. However, if you run an established business and you don’t mind paying more for reliable data, then consider Semrush. Finally, if you are new to SEO tools then we strongly recommend that you start with SpyFu because it is reasonably priced and also offers a 30-day money-back guarantee.