SpyFu has offered a free educational partnership program to students and educators for nearly 20 years. Any instructor or student can get full SpyFu access to use in an educational setting. It’s a simple way to bring real SEO and competitive analysis tools into the classroom. Sharing it with students and educators was never a question, and this recent interview was a helpful reminder of why. Mike Roberts had a chance to sit down with a student who has been putting her competitive research lessons into action.

Meet Kate Denger, a business marketing student at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. Kate was introduced to SpyFu in her Digital Media and Marketing class, where students got hands-on with SEO, started blogs, and dove into competitive research using SpyFu.

Using SpyFu for Hands-On Brand Research

For her class project, Kate tracked five brands—including Gap and the haircare brand OUAI—to follow their keyword strategies, paid ads, and overall brand evolution.

Gap, in particular, stood out for Kate. They fell off in sales for a short time but then saw a resurgence in sales but also online performance. That rise is evident in SpyFu graphs, especially when live data and historical trends come into play.
“It was really cool to see their ads and their keywords related to that and the evolution of things.”

She also touched on a familiar topic in search marketing--brand misspellings. (We're no strangers to that at SpyFu/SpyFoo/SpyFli). Beauty brand OUAI (pronounced "way") is a great example to study, as Kate discovered, because they have to stay on top of different ways that people type to find them.

SpyFu Experience Pays Off in Job Interviews

Beyond the classroom, Kate has already used her SpyFu project experience to stand out in internship interviews:

“I think SpyFu was just a really good, like tangible source of experience that I could cling on to and use a lot of buzzwords and even bringing up brands that I researched. So it was fun to talk about that with them.”

How to Get SpyFu for Your Classroom

Kate's professor has been leveraging SpyFu in Cal Poly's university courses for years now. It's a way of giving students hands-on experience with real-world data, reflecting today's SEO and PPC trends. If you’re an educator wanting free SpyFu access for your class, reach out to Jeff@spyfu.com to get started.

  • SpyFu’s educational partnership gives students and educators free, real-world SEO tools.
  • Students like Kate use SpyFu for hands-on research and gain job-ready skills.
  • Access is quick and easy—just reach out to Jeff@spyfu.com.