SpyFu: Find The Most Profitable Keywords Your Competitors Are Using

Learning why your competitors are outranking you is important because it enables you to adjust your own strategy and fight back. In the world of content marketing, knowing which keywords bring money is key. We introduce you to a tool that shows you every keyword someone has ever bought on Google – SpyFu.

What is SpyFu?

SpyFu is a tool that enables you to look up any domain and check every place they’ve appeared on Google. Not only that, it also shows you all the keywords they’ve bought on Adwords, their rank, as well as individual ad variations. All within a time range of the previous 12 years.

SpyFu Logo

SpyFu is currently indexing more than 6 billion results across 86 million domains. That’s a huge database to draw potentially profitable keywords from.

SpyFu: Find The Most Profitable Keywords Your Competitors Are Using

Using SpyFu, you can simply search for any competitor out there and learn what worked for them and what not. This way, you can turn their successes into your own, while avoiding the mistakes they had made.

Here’s how to do it.

How to Use SpyFu to Discover Keywords Your Competitors Are Pouring Their Money On

Even though often frowned upon, especially by small businesses and new brands who think they can’t afford it, pay-per-click is still an important channel to consider for growing your website traffic.

What many of them don’t realize is that PPC doesn’t have to be that expensive and can even be utilized without much actual skill in the field. If you’re using the right tool, that is.

Why should you consider PPC advertising?

Data from CleverClicks shows that “PPC traffic converts 50% higher than organic traffic”. Plus, according to Google’s own estimate, on average, businesses make $2 in revenue for every $1 spent on AdWords.

In his interview the Marketing Nerds podcast, Mike Roberts, SpyFu founder and CEO, talks about the comprehensiveness of the SpyFu data:

“The reality is, if you want to be really successful, you need to look at what has worked in other people’s AdWords campaigns. The thing is, we have the entire AdWords campaign history, meaning, everything that they’ve ever done on AdWords, we have for nearly 99% of domains.”

The historical data is there to educate you, while the current data can help you boost traffic and conversions by spotting the gaps in your current marketing strategy.

For example, you can learn about trials and errors of successful companies and their paid marketing campaigns. As long as they were founded in the previous 12 years, all of their PPC campaign data is available in SpyFu. At least that’s what it should be like in theory.

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If you ever tried PPC ad campaigns, it may already have happened to you – spending the same amount of money on AdWords as some of your competitors but not getting as nearly as good results. That’s because they’re targeting profitable keywords and you’re not.

As Mike Roberts points out:

“When many of your competitors are all betting their money on the same keywords and you’re not, that is a really strong signal to look at that keyword. In addition, if you factor in that they’ve been buying it, repeatedly, over time and increasing their positions and increasing their bid, then that’s the strongest possible signal.”

How to discover which keywords are profitable? This is where SpyFu comes in:

“We’ve taken all of that wisdom, all of that knowledge, that we’ve learned over the last 10 years of doing this, we built it into a single report. This is called the AdWords Advisor Report. What it does is, it tells you, point-blank, “You should buy these keywords.”

How to Do PPC Competitor Research Using SpyFu

1. Search for a competitive website you want to research

Just go to Spyfu.com, enter your competitor’s website in the search box, and hit the search button.

SpyFu Search

2. Analyze your competitor’s keywords

Moments after you hit that search button, an overview like this will appear:

SpyFu: Find The Most Profitable Keywords Your Competitors Are Using

Here, you can compare the overall data for both organic (SEO) and paid search (PPC) keywords. Once you click on Paid Keywords, you’ll get a detailed list of your competitor’s most profitable keywords.

SpyFu Keywords

The sidebar on the left enables you to toggle between different analytics segments. So, you can check who the main organic and paid competitors are, which keywords you share with them, what are some of the top keywords they rank for, and so on.

Most importantly, it contains a report with recommendations on which keywords you should buy. The report is based on the keywords your competitors are already buying.

SpyFu Recommendations

Extra tip – Analyze your own website. It’s always good to do some introspection as it may help you realize what you’re doing well and what may need some improvement. You may also learn what your key advantages and disadvantages are.

3. Export and download the keywords

Once you’re ready to download your competitor’s keywords, just click on the Export tab. Here you can choose to export it either as a CSV (a spreadsheet) or a PDF.

SpyFu Export

That’s it, now you have the most profitable keywords in your niche to use in your future campaigns.

An extra tip from the SpyFu CEO, Mike Roberts – Spy on the best in your niche (the people you admire) and not just your direct competitors. In his own words:

“Ultimately, the goal is to spy on your competitors and figure out their secrets. Often times, we get focused on like, “Well, this guy is my direct competitor across the street.” Or you’re at Search Engine Journal, so you might be looking at Search Engine Land.

Often times, what you really want to look for are people who you admire. You want to look at the ones who are, executing well or growing fast.”

Other SpyFu Features You Should Check Out

The way we see it, SpyFu’s strongest suit is PPC competitor research. This is the area where this tool can offer more than other solutions available on the market. However, as a comprehensive competitor research tool, SpyFu offers a lot of features that may come in handy. We have handpicked the ones we liked best:

1. Adwords Advisor

Enter the URL of your own website and SpyFu will analyze your competitors’ bidding history and recommend the most profitable Adwords keywords for you.

2. Research Competitors Organic Keywords

It functions just like most keyword research tools. Simply search for a competitor, find out what they rank for and the number of clicks they receive, and download their keywords.

3. Quality Backlinks for Specific Keywords

SpyFu enables you to enter a specific keyword and get a list of sites and backlinks that can help you rank for it. The best thing is that these backlink recommendations are actively indexed by Google and thus 100% safe.

Mike Roberts confirmed this to the Marketing Nerds podcast:

“We built a backlink tool about 2 years ago. The guiding principle was, Let’s only show you backlinks that are going to be safe for you. Let’s never show any duplicates, either. Let’s just make the thing as highly productive as it can possibly be and make it so that you never have to worry about if this link is going to get you in trouble.

The core reason that these are safe backlinks, is that they’re all indexed by Google.”

SpyFu Pricing and Plans

According to SpyFu’s own pricing page, no matter which plan you choose, you get unlimited access to all the SpyFu data. Though there seems to be a catch, as the fine print says “Unlimited UK Data Included in all plans”.  

SpyFu: Find The Most Profitable Keywords Your Competitors Are Using

It’s important to point out that there’s no free plan. But there’s a 30-day money back guarantee so you can test it before deciding whether it’s worth the cost. You can choose between 3 different plans – Basic, Professional, and Team.

SpyFu vs. SEMrush

Both do what they advertise. Both are paid. Which one should you choose?

As I’ve already tried to introduce you to some of the most important SpyFu features and functionalities, let me just briefly introduce one of its fiercest competitors, SEMrush.

SEMrush advertises as an all-in-one marketing toolkit for digital marketing professionals. The toolkit contains 28 advanced tools and features for almost anything digital marketing-related. If you’re looking to learn more on SEMrush, we’ve already analyzed its top 5 features that can supply you with valuable SEO data.

SpyFu: Find The Most Profitable Keywords Your Competitors Are Using

Ultimately, the choice is yours and depends on your exact needs. My advice – if you’re looking for a PPC competitor research, you should choose SpyFu. If you’re looking for an all-around competitor research tool, you should probably opt for SEMrush. There’s the issue of pricing to consider as well – SpyFu being almost 3 times cheaper.

Whichever you choose, we hope the knowledge we shared here will help you learn more about the keywords that are bringing money to your competitors. Hopefully, by using those keywords, you’ll make some of that cash flow in your direction too.

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