Local SEO Canada: get found on Google Maps by customers near you

Google Business Profile optimization: a checklist for Canadian businesses

Many profiles are set up once and then left alone. Check yours against this list, based on Google's own Business Profile guidelines, or let us do it in the free audit.

• Business name exactly as on your signage. Adding a city or keywords breaks Google's rules and can lead to a suspension.
• The most specific primary category, plus only the secondary categories that truly apply.
• Service areas by city or postal code, up to 20, within about two hours of driving from your base.
• Real hours, plus holiday hours for Canada Day, Thanksgiving and the winter holidays.
• A local phone number you control, not a call-centre line, and a link to the page for that location.
• New photos of your team, vehicles, premises and finished work every month.
• A reply to every review, positive or negative.

Storefront, service-area or both: set up your profile the way Google expects

Google sorts local businesses into three types, and getting this wrong is a common reason a good business is missing from the map. Storefronts such as clinics, shops and restaurants show their address. Service-area businesses such as plumbers and mobile mechanics travel to the customer and should hide their address, Google says. Hybrid businesses, like a garage that also offers roadside service, can show both, as long as staff receive customers at that address during the stated hours.

Working from home is fine: Google's own example is a plumber who runs the business from home and hides that address. Renting a mailing address where you do not operate is not; Google says such virtual offices are not eligible.

Service areas describe where you work; they do not pull in map rankings from far away. A Brampton contractor who wants Oakville jobs needs a strong Oakville page that can rank in regular results, real projects there and reviews from customers there.

Affordable SEO Canada: what low-cost plans cut, and what we never cut

Many SEO retainers are built for national brands that compete across the whole country. A single-location business usually needs something narrower: a strong profile, clean listings, a review routine and a few excellent pages. That focus is what keeps our local SEO packages affordable, and we size each one to your locations and your market after the free audit.

Focus has limits. If your market is crowded, say personal injury law in downtown Toronto, a small local plan will not be enough, and we will tell you so after the audit.

Before you hire anyone, including us, watch for these shortcuts:

• Bought or rewarded reviews. Google can remove them, block new reviews for a set period and warn customers that fake reviews were removed.
• Keywords or a city stuffed into your business name.
• Paid directory bundles. The Competition Bureau has warned Canadian businesses about directory scams, so double-check before writing a cheque.
• City pages with only the town name swapped, which Google's spam policies class as doorway abuse.
• Long lock-in contracts, and profiles or analytics set up in the agency's name instead of yours.

Reviews, French and anti-spam: the Canadian rules behind local marketing

Local SEO in Canada touches three sets of rules, and we build every plan to respect them. This is general information, not legal advice.

Reviews. The Competition Bureau said in January 2024 that employees who review their employer must disclose that connection, even when the review is honest. Our review system asks every customer, with no rewards and no filtering.

French. Article 52 of Quebec's Charter of the French Language requires commercial publications, including website content, to be in French, and in March 2023 the OQLF reported that a company had paid a fine over a website that was not in French. If you serve Quebec customers, plan French versions of your location pages and profile details, written or reviewed by a fluent speaker, never raw machine translation.

Follow-up messages. Under Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL), an inquiry gives you implied consent to send commercial electronic messages, including emails and texts, for six months, and a purchase gives you an existing business relationship for two years. To keep in touch beyond that, ask for express consent. Every message must identify your business, include your contact information and offer an unsubscribe that takes effect within 10 business days.