19 Best Tools To Spy On Your Competitors And See If They Copy You

Do you know one of the most effective ways to successfully build your business?

It's keeping an eye on your competitors. Yes, you read it right! In order to create smarter marketing strategies, you need to know your competitors really well.

Now, we all know that there are plenty of ways to spy on your competition. You can check their activities on Facebook, Instagram, and other social media platforms. You can even subscribe to their newsletters in order to stay abreast with the latest updates and promotions.

But all of these methods are extremely time-consuming and don't offer in-depth data on what your competitors are doing to increase their customer base and build their business.

So here's what you can do instead!

Stop wasting your energy on methods that don't offer enough output and take the route of technology. What we mean is ā use the best tools for spying on your competitors. Some of the tools out there also tell you if your competitors are spying on you.

In this post, we discuss the list of 19 best tools you need for the purpose of monitoring your competitors closely. Let's discuss each one of them in detail.

How Can I Spy on My Competitors?

As you operate in a competitive landscape, it's important to analyze both the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors. Here's a list of the top tools you can use to get a comprehensive view of where you competitors stand:

1. SEMRush

SEMRush is a famous SEO tool that helps you:

• Know about potential competitors
• Gather data on the marketing strategies of other businesses
• Analyze the paid traffic of your competitors

You can also use the tool to improve your current campaigns by recognizing content gaps and researching keywords. SEMRush also helps you perform competitor keyword research.

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As far as the pricing is concerned, SEMRush offers different packages between $119 and $449 a month, based on the number of brands you want to track. You can also check the broad range of add-ons they offer, such as market research tools, leads channel, etc.

2. Ubersuggest

Backlinks are crucial for any winning SEO strategy. Ubersuggest is a free tool that sheds light on how your competitors fare in this regard.

But why should YOU use the tool?

The answer is simple ā To build a foundation for a link building strategy that gets you ranked. Here's how you can leverage the tool for the same:

• Type in your competitor’s URL and click “Search.”
• Choose “Backlinks,” located in the sidebar.
• Go through the overview of the link profile of your competitor. Also check detailed data such as URLs, domain score, referring pages, and anchor text.
• Choose the “Traffic Analyzer View” to view domain score, number of incoming backlinks, and so on.

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After viewing this information, you can also make a list of sites that link to your competitors. Then, you can target these websites to get backlinks to your content as well.

3. Buzzsumo

One of the most popular tools for spying on your competitors is Buzzsumo. It provides you with some incredible ideas for your content marketing strategy by keeping a track of your competitor's content. It shows what content has gained popularity among your competitors' audiences.

Now, how to use it?

Simply open the tool and type in a URL in the search bar. It will display the most popular content for that website. You can even filter down your results by content type, date range, etc.

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After you use this tool and get to know what's working for your competition, you can adapt the same for your own target audience.

4. SimilarWeb

You also require a tool that effectively gauges the overall web performance of your competitors. SimilarWeb is one tool that offers you an overview of your competitor's traffic analysis. With the help of this tool, you are able to find out their monthly traffic, where these visitors come from, and which channels bring in the most visitors.

Here's how you can use the tool to spy on your competitors:

• Open the tool and enter a website of your choice.
• An overview of its traffic will appear. Here, you can check the traffic sources. Looking at the information, you will also come to know which is the most impactful channel for them.

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Another great feature of this tool is that you can compare traffic for different competitors.

5. Fanpage Karma

Fanpage Karma is a tool that allows you to track social media activity of brands on a simple-to-use dashboard. With the help of the tool, you can dive deeper into your rival's social strategy as you get to measure their engagement, response time, growth, and much more.

Another noteworthy feature of the tool is that it allows you to measure the success rate of the social media campaigns of your competitors. You can even view the posts that increased their followers.

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6. Adbeat

Adbeat is one of the best tools for spying on your competition. It helps evaluate the digital marketing strategy of any brand. Here's how the tool can benefit you:

• You can check which ad campaigns of your competitors perform well with their customers.
• You can learn how much your competitors spend on advertising.

The tool is perfect for brainstorming ideas for your future ad campaigns as well.

When it comes to pricing, Adbeat offers a standard package for $249 a month and an advanced package for $399 a month.

They also offer customer-tailored enterprise packages, which they provide to big companies that have specific business needs.

7. PlagiarismCheck

PlagiarismCheck.org is an easy-to-use online checker that helps you know if your rivals copy your content. In other words, you can use this tool to check if your competitors present your writings as their own.

Basically, this tool finds rearrangements in word order, poor paraphrasing, and any indirect matches of your content. All in all, it's a great tool to have in your arsenal.

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8. Copyscape

Copyscape is another effective tool that checks if someone has stolen your content. It even checks if your content is original enough to publish.

If you choose the premium version of the tool, you gain access to more powerful detection. This version even provides extra services like API, private index, batch search, and copy-paste checks.

Another noteworthy thing about the tool is that it scans the internet on a day to day basis and emails you in case it detects copies of your content.

9. Followerwonk

Next in our list is the Twitter research tool called Followerwonk. The tool offers you insights into the kind of audience your competitors have.

Now, you may be wondering how the tool can benefit you?

It lets you access demographic data about your competitor's followers and helps you find new followers. You can also use the tool to understand how to create content that strikes a chord with your customers.

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10. Hootsuite

While researching different ways on how to spy on your competitors, we recommend you use a popular tool called Hootsuite. It is considered as the best tool for tracking social media analytics.

The incredible thing about this tool is that it integrates with more than 35 social media networks. Pretty cool, isn't it?

To use the tool, set up streams and follow your competitor's activity. You can also track specific hashtags and keywords.

11. Moat

Moat Ad Search is a tool that helps analyze the ad creatives of your competitors. You can call it the largest digital-ad search engine.

To use the tool, open it, add a brand, and check and analyze the ads they have used in the past.

Here are the results when you search for Coca-Cola.ā

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Also, when you hover over a particular ad, you can know the dates during which it was active and its dimensions.

Note: The tool also allows you to create deals alerts every time your competitors create a new ad.

12. Sprout Social

When you talk of the most famous social media spying tools, Sprout Social deserves a mention. It monitors your competitors' campaigns and helps you improve your social media strategy.

Here's what you can do with the help of this tool:

• Know the recent changes/trends in your industry.
• Get valuable insights from your rivals.
• Research upcoming trends and sharpen your marketing plan.
• Manage your social campaigns from a single platform.

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When you talk of pricing, Sprout's premium packages start at $89 a month, enabling you to monitor five social profiles. If you need to track more accounts, you can choose their enterprise packages for $149 and $249 a month.

13. Ahrefs

Next on our list of tools for spying on other brands is the widely known tool Ahrefs. You can use it for every aspect of competitor analysis.

It provides you with all this information on your competitors:

• Referring domains
• Domain authority
• New referring domains

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Armed with this information, you can check how long it is taking for your competitors to gain new links. If they are gaining 90 links in a day, for instance, then you can set your own goal accordingly.

14. Kompyte

Kompyte helps you learn about any changes on your competitor's website. It also enables you to know about their ads and digital marketing campaigns.

If you go ahead and register for this tool, you will get an alert every time your competitor puts up a fresh banner, posts ads, or makes even the smallest modification on their site.

Another noteworthy feature of the tool is the hidden updatesā  feature. It monitors the changes that aren't even visible on your competitor's site. An amazing feature, isn't it?

Note: The pricing of the tool is not known, but you can always request a demo to know more.

15. Ontolo

While looking for effective ways on how to spy on your competitors, consider using a tool called Ontolo. It provides useful graphs and reports to let you easily understand the information it shows.

Essentially, Ontolo is a tool that lays key focus on content marketing. But, it's also a helpful backlink tool. With the help of this tool you can:

• Prioritize your content and get improved results
• Discover authors who link to your content
• Get tips and recommendations for link building opportunities

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16. SpyFu

SpyFu offers you detailed insights into the marketing campaigns of your competitors. For instance, you get to look at their Google Ads activity. This means, you can see every ad variation, every organic rank, and all the keywords they bought on Google Ads.

If you want to get a detailed rundown of your competitor's Google Ads campaign, all you need to do is open the tool and enter the brand you want to analyze.

This helps you check what they are doing correctly. You also get to see any improvements that they need to make.

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All in all, SpyFu offers you some great ideas you can use to improve your advertising campaigns.

SpyFu packages start from $39 a month. They increase according to the number of keywords you need to research.

17. iSpionage

iSpionage is one of the most powerful competitor analysis tools for spying on your competitors. It helps research keywords and examine your competitors' marketing campaigns.

Basically, this tool helps you dive deeper into the marketing activities of your competition. You can use it to obtain data on your rival's paid advertising budgets and check the keywords they are using for their pay-per-click ads.

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When you talk of pricing, iSpionage packages are priced between $59 and $299 a month. Companies requiring advanced competitor reporting features can contact iSpionage for custom subscriptions.

18. Serpstat

Serpstat is a highly reliable SEO competitor tracker tool out there. Top brands such as Shopify and Samsung use it to keep a check on their rivals and hone their SEO strategies.

Apart from this, businesses also use the tool to keep a check on their competitors' content strategies. One can even access it to know any upcoming keyword trends.

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As far as pricing is concerned, Serpstat's packages are priced from $55 to $399 a month, based on the number of daily searches you require.

19. KW Finder

KW Finder helps you carry out competitor analysis on the SEO strategies of other brands. All you need to do is type in the domain of a brand, and the tool will present you a breakdown of its top-ranking keywords. This data comes in handy to produce SEO-driven content that helps in getting more users to your website.

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When it comes to the pricing of the tool, packages fall between $29 to $79 a month, depending on the brands and number of keywords you wish to research.

Wrapping It Up

In this day and age, you need to stalk your competitors to find out ways to outsmart them. The tools we've discussed will allow you to keep an eye on your competition more closely. All these tools offer quick and smart insights, giving you the latest data on your rivals. Use the valuable insights you gather from these tools to create a plan that sets your business up for success. Ensure you use a combination of the tools we've discussed to connect the dots and view the bigger picture.

Now that you are armed with the knowledge of the top tools for spying on your competitors, you are in a well-informed position to move ahead in the game.

Get cracking!