Last updated: 2026-09-14
TL;DR
- Checking competitor keywords tells you which search terms are pulling paying homeowners toward other painters in your market, so you can target the same terms or find gaps they missed.
- Start free: Google Keyword Planner reveals which keywords Google associates with a competitor’s site, and Google Ads Auction Insights shows exactly which advertisers are bidding against you in the same auctions.
- Paid tools like Semrush, Ahrefs, and SpyFu go deeper (full ranked-keyword exports, keyword gap analysis, paid-ad history) and start around $39/month for SpyFu Basic, up to $449/month for Ahrefs Advanced.
- A five-step process (identify local rivals, export their keyword lists, filter for painter intent, score gaps, ship content or ad copy) turns raw exports into a working plan without spending a full day on research.
Checking competitor keywords means finding the search terms your local painting rivals rank for organically or bid on in Google Ads, then using that list to sharpen your own SEO content and paid-ad targeting. You can do it for free with Google Keyword Planner and Google Ads Auction Insights, or go deeper with paid tools like Semrush ($117-$456/month), Ahrefs ($129-$449/month), or SpyFu (from $39/month). The workflow is the same either way: identify three to five local competitors, export the keywords they rank or bid on, filter for keywords a homeowner would actually search when hiring a painter, and pick the ones your site hasn’t covered yet.
Why Competitor Keywords Matter for Painting Contractors
Local painting is a small-market fight. The competitors you actually need to beat aren’t Sherwin-Williams or Behr, they’re the three or four painters within a 20-mile radius of your service area. When a homeowner in your city searches “painters near me” or “kitchen cabinet painting,” they see one of three surfaces at the top of the page: Google’s Local Services Ads (the green-checkmark ones), the Map Pack of three local businesses, and the organic ten blue links. Every one of those surfaces is a competition.
Checking competitor keywords tells you which of those spots your local rivals are winning, on which specific search terms, and how much they’re spending to hold that ground. That’s the whole point. Instead of guessing which keywords to build content around or bid on, you start with a shortlist that has already been validated by another painter’s budget.
The value shows up on both sides of your marketing:
- Organic side. If a competitor ranks page one for “cabinet refinishing [your city]” and you don’t have a page for it, that’s a content gap you can fill in a week. See our SEO for painters guide for the on-page work that follows.
- Paid side. If Auction Insights shows the same competitor bidding aggressively on “commercial painting contractors,” you know two things: the keyword drives real leads (or they wouldn’t keep spending), and you’re going to pay a premium to compete head-on. Our Google Ads for painters guide covers the follow-through.
Competitor keyword research is not about copying, it’s about pattern recognition. You’re looking for gaps (keywords they rank for that you don’t), overlaps (keywords you should both be defending), and blind spots (keywords no local painter has claimed yet). The next sections walk through the specific tools and the process to get from a competitor URL to a shortlist you can actually ship against.
The Free Tools Every Painter Should Start With
Before spending anything on a paid subscription, get comfortable with two free tools that Google itself provides. Between them, you can build a working competitor keyword list for the price of a Google Ads account.
Google Keyword Planner (Free, Google Ads Account Required)
Google Keyword Planner is a free keyword research tool inside every Google Ads account. You need the account, but you do not need to spend any money on ads to use it (Google Ads, 2026). The most useful feature for competitor research is often overlooked: instead of typing seed keywords, use the “Start with a website” option and paste a competitor’s homepage or a specific service page.
Google will return the keywords it associates with that page, along with monthly search volume and a rough competition score. This is the fastest free way to see the search terms your competitor is optimizing for, straight from Google’s own index. The tradeoff is that you’re seeing what Google thinks the page is about, not the full ranked-keyword footprint a paid tool would export.
Google Ads Auction Insights (Free Inside Google Ads)
If you’re already running Google Ads, the Auction Insights report is the single most direct look at your paid competition. It shows the other advertisers who participated in the same auctions as you, plus six specific metrics: impression share, overlap rate, position above rate, top of page rate, absolute top of page rate, and outranking share (Google Ads Help, 2026).
Two things to know before you open the report:
- You need at least 10% impression share on the keyword, ad group, or campaign for insights to show up. On a brand-new campaign with tiny volume, the report will be blank.
- Auction Insights only shows advertisers you actually competed against, so you’re seeing real local rivals, not a theoretical list. This is why PPC managers treat the report as the ground-truth view of paid competition (Search Engine Land, 2024).
A Manual SERP Scan Costs Nothing but Time
Open an incognito window, search “painters in [your city],” and write down the top three organic results, the top three Local Services Ads, and the top three Google Ads. Repeat the exercise for your five most valuable service+city terms: interior painting, exterior painting, cabinet painting, commercial painting, deck staining, or whatever you actually sell. That short list is your working competitor set. You’ll feed those domains into the tools in the next section.
Paid Competitor Keyword Tools Worth the Money
Once the free tools stop feeling like enough (usually when you want the full list of every keyword a competitor ranks for, not just what Google associates with their homepage), the three most-cited paid tools are Semrush, Ahrefs, and SpyFu. Pricing below is the direct-from-vendor rate as of September 2026, quoted on annual billing where noted.
| Tool | Best For | Entry Plan (Monthly) | Highest Tier (Monthly) |
|---|---|---|---|
| SpyFu | Cheapest way to pull a competitor’s organic + paid keyword history | Basic, $39 | Professional, $79 |
| Semrush | Broad all-in-one SEO + PPC + content research with the largest keyword database | SEO, $117.33 (annual) | Advanced, $455.67 (annual) |
| Ahrefs | Deep organic keyword and backlink research; strong keyword gap and content gap tools | Lite, $129 | Advanced, $449 (Enterprise $1,499) |
Pricing sourced from vendor pricing pages (Semrush, 2026; Ahrefs, 2026) and current SpyFu plan documentation. Annual billing typically discounts the monthly rate by roughly 17 percent on Semrush and Ahrefs, and up to 25 percent on SpyFu.
Which One Makes Sense for a Painting Contractor?
For most painting-company owners doing this themselves, SpyFu Basic at $39/month is the lowest-risk entry point. It’s built specifically around competitor keyword and PPC history, which is exactly the use case here. If you already write regular content and want the deeper keyword-gap and content-gap features, Ahrefs Lite or Semrush’s SEO tier is worth the step up. Anything above the entry tier is usually overkill for a single painting company; those plans are priced for marketing agencies managing many client accounts.
Do not sign up for three tools at once. The overlap between them is high, and the time cost of actually using a keyword tool is much larger than the subscription cost. Pick one, use it for a full quarter, and only add a second if you hit a specific limit you can name.
How to Check Competitor Keywords: A 5-Step Process for Painters
Tools are only half the job. The process below turns a raw keyword export into a shortlist you can hand to a writer or paste into a Google Ads campaign. Budget one to two hours the first time; less on repeat runs once you have a saved list of local competitors.
- Identify three to five local competitors. Use the manual SERP scan from the last section, and cross-check with any names that show up in Google Ads Auction Insights. Prioritize the painters who appear on more than one of your target search terms. One-off rankings are noise; consistent rankings are the ones worth studying.
- Export the competitor’s keyword list. In Semrush or Ahrefs, run the competitor’s domain through the Organic Research or Site Explorer view. In SpyFu, use the SEO Overview and PPC Overview. In free Google Keyword Planner, paste the URL under “Start with a website.” Save the export as a spreadsheet.
- Filter for painter intent. A domain export will include a lot of noise (navigational terms like the competitor’s brand name, plus service terms that don’t match your niche). Delete the brand terms and anything that’s clearly for a service you don’t offer. Keep only the search terms a homeowner (or commercial buyer) would type when they’re looking to hire a painter.
- Score gaps against your own site. Sort the surviving keywords by monthly search volume, then check which ones your site already ranks for. Semrush’s Keyword Gap and Ahrefs’s Content Gap tools do this comparison automatically; in a free workflow, just search your domain for each term. Anything the competitor ranks page one for that you don’t rank at all for is a gap, and gaps are the point.
- Ship: content or ads (or both). For each gap keyword, pick a lane. A high-intent commercial term (“kitchen cabinet painting cost”) usually deserves both a dedicated page and a Google Ads keyword. A more informational term (“how long does exterior paint last”) is a blog post, not an ad. If you’re not sure what “shipping” looks like, our guide on how to get painting leads covers the conversion side.
Save the export. A dated snapshot of your competitor’s ranking keywords is a valuable reference three months from now when you want to see what changed.
Common Mistakes Painters Make with Competitor Keyword Research
Most painting contractors who try this on their own hit the same handful of traps. Avoiding them is worth as much as the research itself.
Targeting the Word “Painter” Alone
“Painter” and “painting” as standalone keywords are national, generic, and dominated by huge sites, retailers, and definitions. A local painting company will never rank for either. Every useful painter keyword includes a service modifier (“interior,” “cabinet,” “commercial”), a location modifier (“Denver,” “north Austin,” “Cache Valley”), or both. The competitor keyword lists that are worth studying are the ones with those modifiers.
Copying Competitor Content Word-for-Word
Ranking for a keyword doesn’t mean the competitor’s page is well-written. Half the time you’ll find their page is thin, dated, or missing the key information a homeowner actually needs. Use the keyword as the target; write a better page. Google rewards pages that answer the query more completely, not pages that mimic the top result.
Bidding Against All Three Local Rivals on the Same Term
If your Auction Insights report shows two or three competitors already stacking bids on “painters in [city],” the cost per click is going to be brutal. The smarter move is to bid on the modifier terms they’re ignoring, or on service+city combinations where you’re one of only one or two advertisers. Competitor keyword research isn’t just “bid on what they bid on,” it’s “find the terms they missed.”
Doing It Once and Never Again
Local painting SERPs shift every quarter. New Local Services Ads-verified painters enter the market. Google’s AI Overviews increasingly answer top-funnel queries directly, which drains organic clicks from informational keywords. A competitor keyword list from six months ago is probably 30 percent stale. Rerun the process every quarter, at minimum, and after any major Google update.
Ignoring Your Own Ranking Data
The single biggest miss is looking outward at competitors before looking inward at yourself. If Google Search Console shows you’re already ranking on page two for a keyword, that’s a much faster win than trying to steal a keyword from a competitor who’s been ranking on page one for two years. Check your own rankings first; use competitor research to fill in the gaps.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need to pay for a keyword tool to check competitor keywords?
No. Google Keyword Planner and Google Ads Auction Insights are both free, and between them you can identify local competitors, see the keywords Google associates with their sites, and see who is actually bidding against you in paid auctions. A paid tool becomes worth it once you want the full list of every keyword a competitor ranks for, historical PPC data, or automated keyword gap analysis.
How many painting competitors should I actually analyze?
Three to five local competitors is the right range for most painting companies. Fewer than three, and you’re probably missing patterns. More than five, and the keyword lists get long enough that filtering them consumes a full workday. Focus on the painters who show up in more than one of your target search terms; those are the ones consistently taking traffic you want.
What’s the difference between organic and paid competitor keywords?
Organic keywords are the search terms a competitor ranks for in the free ten blue links or the Map Pack, thanks to their website content and local SEO. Paid keywords are the terms they bid on in Google Ads. The lists usually overlap heavily but not completely. A well-run painting company competes on both, and competitor keyword research should cover both.
Which free tool is best, Google Keyword Planner or Google Ads Auction Insights?
They answer different questions. Keyword Planner tells you what keywords a competitor’s website is optimized for, whether or not they run ads. Auction Insights tells you exactly which competitors are bidding against you in Google Ads and how often. If you have to pick one to start with, use Keyword Planner for SEO planning and Auction Insights the moment you have a Google Ads campaign live.
How often should I check competitor keywords?
Quarterly is the right cadence for most painting companies. Local painting SERPs shift every few months as new competitors enter the market, Google adjusts its ranking algorithm, and AI Overviews change which queries send organic clicks. Any less frequently than quarterly, and your target keyword list is probably out of date; any more, and you’re spending time on research instead of shipping pages and ads.
Can I bid on a competitor’s brand name in Google Ads?
In the United States, Google generally allows you to bid on a competitor’s brand name as a keyword, though you cannot use the trademarked brand in your ad copy without permission. Whether it’s smart is a different question: bidding on competitor brand terms is expensive and often has low conversion rates. Most painting companies get more return from bidding on service+city terms their competitors are neglecting.
Ready to Turn Competitor Keyword Research Into Painting Leads?
Checking competitor keywords is one piece of a much bigger picture: the ranking pages, the ad campaigns, the follow-up on every lead. If you’d rather have someone run the analysis and turn it into leads for your painting business, let’s talk.
