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SEO for small businesses in Canada, explained

No jargon: what Google looks at, what you can do this week, and what’s worth paying someone for.

Pinlight7-minute read

SEO (search engine optimisation) just means helping the right people find you when they search. For a local business, that happens in three places.

The three places you can show up

  1. The map pack. The map with three businesses that appears for searches like “plumber near me”. It’s driven mostly by your Google Business Profile, your reviews and how close you are to the person searching.
  2. The regular results. The list of websites below the map. Driven by your website: what it says, how it’s built, and whether other sites link to it.
  3. AI answers. Google’s AI summaries and assistants like ChatGPT increasingly recommend local businesses. In a 2026 survey of US consumers, 45% had used an AI tool to find a local business, up from 6% the year before.1 They lean on pages that answer questions clearly.

Start with your Google Business Profile (this week, free)

  • Claim and verify it at business.google.com if you haven’t.
  • Pick the most accurate main category, then add secondary ones.
  • Fill in everything: hours (including holidays), service areas, services, photos of real work.
  • Use exactly the same business name, address and phone number everywhere: profile, website, directories.
  • Post an update now and then. A profile that looks alive gets more clicks.

Reviews: ask everyone, the same way

Reviews influence both rankings and decisions. In a 2026 survey of US consumers, 97% read online reviews and 74% look for recent ones, from the last three months.1 So the habit matters more than the total.

  • Ask every customer, the same way, with a short link. Don’t only ask the happy ones.
  • Never offer a discount or gift for a review, and never tell people what to write. Google’s policies forbid it, and Canada’s Competition Act covers misleading reviews too.
  • Reply to every review, briefly and personally, including the bad ones.

Your website: one page per thing you want to be found for

Google ranks pages, not businesses. If you want to show up for “furnace repair in Ottawa” and “AC installation in Cambridge”, each deserves its own page that answers that need properly: what it is, the area, typical price or price range, how to book, and real photos.

  • Title and description. Each page needs a clear title (“Furnace repair in Ottawa · Same-day service”) and a one-line description.
  • Headings that make sense. One main heading, then sections in order.
  • Plain answers. Write the questions customers actually ask, and answer them in plain words. That also helps you get quoted in AI answers.

Speed and phones

Most local searches happen on phones. Google measures how fast your main content appears; under 2.5 seconds counts as “good”.2 Heavy images, slow hosting and piles of plugins are the usual culprits. You can check your own site with the free site check.

Structured data: labels for machines

Structured data is extra information in your page’s code that tells search engines exactly what’s what: your business type, hours, services, prices, FAQs and reviews. It doesn’t change how the page looks, but it can make your search result richer and easier for AI tools to understand.

French pages and Quebec

If you serve customers who search in French, French pages help them find you. If you do business in Quebec, the Charter of the French Language also has rules for commercial websites and contracts aimed at Quebec customers. Worth a conversation with your lawyer before you advertise there.

What’s worth paying for

  • Do yourself: your Business Profile, asking for reviews, posting updates.
  • Worth paying for: a fast, well-structured website with a page for each service and area, structured data, and someone checking what’s working each month.
  • Walk away from: anyone guaranteeing a number one ranking, selling “thousands of backlinks”, or refusing to tell you what they actually did.

Growth and Priority care plans include a monthly SEO and Search Console report in plain words. See the plans or book a free call.

Keep reading

Sources

  1. BrightLocal, Local Consumer Review Survey 2026, published 11 February 2026, 1,002 US adults.
  2. Google, Web Vitals: Largest Contentful Paint of 2.5 seconds or less is “good”. Opened 7 October 2026.

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