SpyFu Review – Competitive Research Tool for Intelligent Data Analysis in Your Marketing.

SpyFu is one of the tools in my arsenal which I use in my work of SEO & PPC. Even though this tool is full of rich features. But, it is having the least attractive interface out there. SpyFu is used to spy your competition about the SEO & PPC along with the keyword research. It covers US & UK markets majorly at the moment.

In this review I am going to be unbiased and I am going to a SpyFu Review about the features provided by there Keyword Research cum Competition Research Tool.
SpyFu Features Include: [toc]
  • SpyFu Kombat
  • SpyFu Classic
  • Keyword Ad History
  • Domain Ad History
  • Keyword Smart Search
  • A Variety of Top 100 Lists which can be used to find out information about top niches 
  • And lots more!
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SpyFu Kombat:

With this feature you can find out the overlappying & specific site keywords for upto 3 websites.
For PPC version of the same feature, you can see a chart which goes back over a period of many years which shows the overall amount of keywords being bid on by all three sites.
You can even change the option to select the best 2 websites out of those 3 websites that you target. Since, sometimes may be the 3rd website is not doing fairly a good job in your research.
It will not only show you this data. But, also show the budget for PPC of those websites along with the number of organic keywords ranking in top 50 results for those keywords.
SpyFu Kombat Feature in SpyFu
When you will click on any of the circle charts it will also show you keywords in that bucket you selected in the right side of the chart. You can then view these keyword sets or even download these keywords for your future use.
As you can see in the screenshot above, I have selected the ads tab but options are going to be very similar when you will click on the organic tab which can be found in the top box, this organic tab will show you the total organic keywords)
 When you switch between the organic tab & the PPC tab along with the overall no, of organic keywords & PPC budget. You will get an idea about which of your competitors are into the PPC & SEO side of things which will give you a fairly good idea about what keywords to look for & if you are concentrating on which area and which areas you can focus alternatively.
I have used this to get real insights about all the competitors who are fighting against each other in search engines & this gives a clear idea about the commonalities between the keyword strategy behind different websites.
ONLY ISSUE this tool is based out for US & UK Markets! Ouch!
Next,

SpyFu Classic

This feature is more like a “flagship” section of SpyFu. Here you a domain on the homepage & are shown several data which includes:
Daily Adwords PPC Budget of the website
Links from SpyFu Kombat
Average Position of Ads vs no. of Advertisers advertising for the same set of keywords
Estimated Value of Organic Traffic (Counted based on estimated traffic with a variable of CPC cost)
Paid Traffic in comparison with organic traffic (estimated)
Subdomains (This feature can be helpful in finding out how a website is breaking out parts of its main website, and also a good way to look at niche keywords being targeted)
Top Ten Paid Keywords with History of those Keywords (which links through full keyword ad history tool which they have) Total No. of Paid Keywords
Total no. of organic keywords
Competitors in terms of PPC (with a link of overlapping keywords)
Organic Competition (Linking with again, the common keywords)
Category of website
More then search for a domain name in SpyFu it will also let you search by keyword as shown below:SpyFu Classic Feature This research can really be useful because you can see:
  • Estimated PPC, Clicks, Cost Per Day, Total Advertisers along with all the trending data available for that keyword
  • Find out the top ten domains which are advertising on this keyword along with its ad history
  • Find out any additional keywords purchased by relevant competitors
  • PPC Copy being used by present advertisers with a link to keyword ad history.
  • Find out the top organic results with its title, meta description & more.
  • Find out related terms with that particular keyword
  • Find out any similar concepts based on the semantic relationship 
  • Find out different categories which it can be in.
As I said this information for the right marketer targeting keywords for whether SEO or PPC can be a goldmine. You can find out more details in less time without going through a manual research which can save you plenty of hours of hectic research.

Keyword Ad History

This section can you show in a very intuitive color coded manner, how many times the keyword appears in a domain’s PPC Campaign & if there is any changes made to the ad copy. Best part, you can export all this information into an excel file. And give you a good idea about what works for the advertiser.
This feature can you a year’s worth of data which you can compare to & it goes back to even 2006 via Bonus History Tab.
Keyword Ad History Feature in SpyFu
Now, I know this section alone will give you a clear picture of what REALLY works and what doesn’t. Its like your research department comes to you and says “Here’s the history of the keywords that we have to target”. As simple as that.
Now, typically when you see any keyword being advertised consistent-ally by any advertiser then its smart way to apply similar ad copy into your niche for a larger keyword also. For example if I wanted to advertise for a keyword “hotels in New York” I will be very attentive to what copy of ads have been successful + stayed for a very long time for a a particular main keyword “hotels”
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Domain Ad History

This section is more like Keyword Ad History just that it shows the history of a particular domain name:
Keyword Ad History in Spyfu
This tool can give you a good idea about which keywords have been successful for competitors (or big players in that niche) & which keywords have been tried & abandoned (you can take the lessons from your competitors & avoid those). But, all this information is only going to be useful if your competitor is a competent & regular advertiser in this niche. In short, more data. Better insights.

Keyword Smart Search

This feature uses semantic word relationships, which is publicaly available keyword data, & PPC Campaign data which will return different keywords which can be related to the keywords (up to 10) which you enter. As you will see below, you also have an option to filter by CPC, amount of search volume, and you can even exclude particular keywords from the search:
Keyword Smart Search
In the below provided screenshot, which is of the results page for Keyword Smart Search:
I personally prefer to use SpyFu to find more sights on PPC Keywords & Organic Keywords which can found either in there Classic or Kombat feature. I also use other tools to do pure keyword research in my targeted niche like:Google Tools, Microsoft Ad Center Intelligence, WordTracker, Keyword Research, Market Samurai & Niche Keyword Finder). I find that SpyFu can properly be utilized as more of a competitive research tool rather then a keyword research tool, because there are better tools available for keyword research (as told above)

Conclusion:

I frankly, don’t use much of their Keyword Smart Search as described. BUT, its really useful for competition research because the amount of data that you get about your competitors in a simple, straight forward way makes you ahead of your competitors in terms of understanding the market you are in. In result, you are smarter, better & more intelligent then your competitors. Making a perfect SEO/SEM Strategy for marketing in your niche. You learn from your competitors & avoid the mistakes.
This tool makes its way into my “Secret Weapon” in my toolbox to every project that I am involved in. For a price point they sell and the amount of money I have paid them I have increased my ROI multiple folds. I am not sure if you are a starter into Internet Marketing, if this will be the tool you want to get out starting.Still, if you want to use this tool: [OptinLink id=1] [OptinLinkButton button_type=3d link_type=optinlink color=#dd3d36 border_radius=3 button_text=” SIGNUP THROUGH THIS LINK AND GET 190$ VALUE BONUS”] [/OptinLink] BONUS FOR THOSE WHO SIGNUP WITH MY LINK: Once you signup from above link. Send me as email/fill out contact form on this site with the receipt and get my video which teaches some “ninja techniques” that I use in combination with this tool which took me long way & lots of mistakes.
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