SpyFu is one of the leading competitor research tools on the market and it is very well respected in the industry.

I first became aware of SpyFu several years ago when working in a largely ppc environment and it has been something I have gone back to from time to time when I have needed to carry out an in-depth analysis of my client’s competitors and their keyword and ppc ad strategies.

Spyfu presents its data in a clear and easy to read manner

SpyFu is one of a growing number of such tools that carry out their own website crawling procedures and build their own databases of domains, keywords, ranking and ad copy.

Whilst such systems will never be as accurate on a per company basis as having access to the actual Analytics of that company, it is surely the next best thing and can prove invaluable when trying to figure out why a competitor is apparently doing so well in the natural search and in ppc campaigns.

What can you do with Spyfu?

Good question. Spyfu is a paid-for competitor research tool that does rather more than just let you research your online competitors although that is, by far, its most important function.

According to the publishers themselves, “SpyFu exposes the search marketing secret formula of your most successful competitors.” So, now we know. Actually, it als does all of these useful things:

• Keyword Research – a useful alternative to Google’s Keyword Planner with a host of additional features.
• Backlink finder – finds backlinks for specific keywords
• Keyword ranking history – lets you trace the ranking history of any page or website on a keyword and work out the algorithm change or change to the site that caused changes to the ranking.
• Keyword Rank Tracker – well, it had to have one of those, didn’t it?
• AdWords Campaign Advisor – Browse your competitor’s complete AdWords campaign history. See the results of every ad split test they’ve ever run and the early keywords that didn’t work out.

It’s a very comprehensive toolkit, with lots of research facilities to satisfy even the most in-depth campaign research. I liked it when I first saw it and I still do.

If you haven’t tried SpyFu yet, and you run PPC or SEO campaigns, or both, then you owe it to yourself to take a look at this.

Pricewise, you can get on board with a fairly full-featured plan from just $33/month and although there’s no free trial as such you can use some of the features in a limited way for free – probably enough to whet your appetite and make you want it – job done Spyfu!