SEO services

What SEO services include, and what they don't

Search engine optimization is three kinds of work done in parallel. The first is technical: Google must be able to crawl, render and index your pages quickly on a phone. The second is content: a separate, useful page for each service and each place you serve, written in the words your customers type. The third is reputation: your Google Business Profile, reviews, directory listings and links from other sites that vouch for you.

What SEO doesn't include is magic. If your offer is unclear, prices are hidden and the contact form is broken, more traffic won't fix it. That's why my SEO services start with an audit of the whole path, from the search result to the phone call. If the SEO audit shows the site itself is the bottleneck, I'll say so before you spend a dollar on rankings.

Local, national or e-commerce: three different jobs

A renovation company in Edmonton and an online store shipping across Canada need different things. The first lives or dies in the Map Pack, so most of the effort goes into local SEO and the Google Business Profile, plus Apple Business Connect, Bing Places and Canadian directories. The second needs clean category structure, product copy and fast templates; that's e-commerce SEO. A consulting firm selling across provinces sits in between: strong service pages, articles that answer real questions and a handful of good links.

In Quebec there's one more layer. French has to be at least as available as English. My SEO work is in English, so French pages come from your own team or translator, and I'll say on the first call whether that setup makes sense for you.

How I choose what to do first

I rank tasks by money, not by tool score. A broken phone link on mobile or a missing page for your best-paying service comes before tweaking image file names. Typical first-month priorities:

• fix errors that stop pages from being indexed or loading on phones;
• complete the Google Business Profile: categories, services, hours, photos, review replies;
• rewrite titles and descriptions so they match what people actually search;
• plan new pages for services and towns that have demand but no page.

After that the work becomes steady: new content, links from real partners and associations, and checking what competitors on page one do better.

Search is changing, and so is SEO

More searches now end with an AI Overview or a ChatGPT answer instead of a click. That doesn't make SEO pointless; it raises the bar. AI tools tend to quote pages that answer clearly, show who is behind the business and are consistent across listings. I cover this in visibility in AI search, and the same groundwork helps regular rankings.

Common mistakes I see on Canadian small business sites

The same handful of issues comes up in almost every audit, regardless of province or industry:

1. One page for everything. A single "Services" page listing ten jobs ranks for none of them. Each service with real demand deserves its own page.
2. City names stuffed into the footer. Listing forty suburbs at the bottom doesn't make you relevant there. A page about the work you do in a specific area, with real examples, does.
3. Inconsistent business details. A different phone number on Yelp, an old address on YellowPages.ca and a third version on the website confuse both people and search engines.
4. Reviews left unanswered. A short, human reply to every review, good or bad, shows you're active. Buying or gating reviews is a different story: the Competition Act treats fake reviews seriously, and Google removes them.
5. No tracking. Without call and form tracking, nobody can tell whether SEO pays for itself, so the budget is the first thing cut in a slow month.

None of these needs a big budget to fix. They need someone to notice and do the work in the right order.

What you need to provide

Access to the site, Search Console and the Google Business Profile; half an hour a month to answer questions about your services; and approval of new copy before it goes live. Photos of real jobs help more than any stock image. If you also want to know which keyword brings which customer, I'll connect it with web analytics so the report shows calls and forms, not just visits.

Not sure whether to start with SEO or ads? Read SEO or Google Ads: where to start, or check the rough budget in How much does SEO cost in Canada?.