Who we help / Painters
SEO for painters
Painting has the biggest metro market of any trade we have measured — 10,070 searches a month — and the softest head terms, at difficulties of 4 and 7. It also has the least to distinguish one painter from another, which is the real problem and the one this page is actually about.
Same day, written by a person, no obligation. Or email louie@superseo.com.au.
First, the basics
Three ways to show up. They are not the same thing.
Worth two minutes, because the rest of this page keeps them apart.
The ads
Paid slots at the very top. You bid, you pay per click, you are there this afternoon. Decided by your credit card.
The map
Three businesses. That is the whole map pack. Fourth place is a link nobody taps. Decided by your Google profile: how close you are to the person searching, your categories, your hours, your reviews. Your website barely comes into it.
The list
The ordinary results underneath. Decided by your website: your pages, your words, the sites linking to you. When we say “organic” further down, this is what we mean.
Demand
The biggest market of the four, and the softest.
Three head terms at difficulties of 4, 4 and 7, on 6,100 searches between them. Nothing else in this research comes close.
| Search | A month | Difficulty in the list | Paid difficulty | Cost per click |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The three head terms | ||||
| “house painters melbourne” | 2,400 | 4 | 51 | A$20 · US$14.08 |
| “painters melbourne” | 2,400 | 4 | 55 | A$14 · US$10.38 |
| “painter melbourne” | 1,300 | 7 | 67 | A$13 · US$9.30 |
| The other buyers | ||||
| “commercial painters melbourne” | 590 | 5 | 53 | A$27 · US$19.55 |
| “rendering melbourne” | 480 | 11 | 25 | A$8 · US$6.03 |
| “exterior painting melbourne” | 140 | 7 | 16 | A$23 · US$16.71 |
| “interior painting melbourne” | 140 | 6 | 20 | A$16 · US$11.24 |
| The cost cluster — real demand, hard ground | ||||
| “house painting cost” | 880 | 26 | 34 | A$6 · US$4.13 |
| “interior painting cost” | 590 | 30 | 6 | A$5 · US$3.82 |
| “exterior house painting cost” | 390 | 57 | 6 | A$10 · US$7.28 |
| “lead paint removal” | 390 | 80 | 18 | A$6 · US$4.18 |
| The suburb probe — thin | ||||
| “painter dandenong” | 210 | 5 | 50 | A$13 |
| “painter frankston” | 70 | 2 | 46 | A$21 |
| “painter brunswick” | 20 | 9 | 95 | A$37 |
| “house painters [suburb]” | 0–20 | — | — | — |
Pulled 16 September 2026, Australia-wide, except where the To confirm block below says otherwise. Cost per click comes out of the keyword tool in US dollars, converted at 1 USD = 1.395 AUD, with the US figure beside each one.
Rent or own
What it costs to buy this traffic, and what it costs to earn it.
| Share of searches captured by #1 | Monthly clicks | Equivalent ad cost | Campaign cost | Value vs ads |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| One-third | 800 | A$16,000 | A$1,500 | 10.7× |
| One-quarter | 600 | A$12,000 | A$1,500 | 8.0× |
| One-sixth | 400 | A$8,000 | A$1,500 | 5.3× |
| One-tenth | 240 | A$4,800 | A$1,500 | 3.2× |
| 3.1% | 75 | A$1,500 | A$1,500 | 1.0× |
Cut the assumption to a tenth — deliberately pessimistic — and the campaign is still worth more than three times the ad spend.
The problem
Soft ground is only an advantage if you can stand out on it.
A difficulty of 4 means the door is open. It also means it is open for everyone else.
The other three trades on this site each have something a customer can check. A plumber’s work over $750 needs a compliance certificate. An electrician’s prescribed work needs a safety certificate. Metal roofing is licensed plumbing and tile roofing is not.
Painting has no equivalent. There is no certificate to show, no licence class to point at, and no test a homeowner can apply from the footpath. Which is exactly why the head terms sit at a difficulty of 4 — the ground is soft because nobody has built anything solid on it.
So the differentiation has to be manufactured, and there are only three things that reliably do it.
Timing
Exterior work follows the weather. Interior work fills the gap.
Exterior painting needs dry weather and a surface that will hold, so spring through early autumn is the run. Winter is when the interior work should be carrying you — and it is the half of the trade most sites forget to sell.
Common mistakes
Five things we fix on nearly every painting site.
A gallery of somebody else’s houses
Painting is bought entirely on appearance, and stock photography is visible from a mile away. Your own jobs, captioned with the suburb and the substrate — weatherboard, render, brick, a Victorian frontage — is both the proof and the only local signal this trade naturally produces.
No answer to the cost question
1,860 searches a month across three cost terms. People will not fill in a form to find out whether their house is a $4,000 job or a $14,000 one. A range with the factors that move it wins trust even where it does not win the ranking.
Commercial and domestic on the same page
“Commercial painters melbourne” is 590 a month at a difficulty of 5 and carries the dearest click in the trade. A body corporate and a homeowner want completely different proof, and one page addressed to both convinces neither.
Selling only the exterior
The seasonal curve has a hole in it from May to August. Interior work is what fills it, and most painting sites treat it as an afterthought — which is why the phone stops in winter.
Twelve suburb pages nobody searches for
This is the one trade where the suburb strategy mostly does not apply. “Painter brunswick” is twenty searches a month. Build the metro page properly, take Dandenong, and put the effort into photographs instead.
Areas
Painting SEO by suburb.
Thin, and we would rather say so. This is the one trade on the site where the metro page does nearly all the work.
Dandenong
Frankston
Brunswick
The rest
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