What search engine optimization actually includes
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the work of making your website the clearest, most useful and most trusted answer for the searches your customers make. It is not one trick. It is a set of disciplines that only work well together, which is why we treat SEO as a long-term building project rather than a list of quick fixes.
Technical SEO
Can search engines crawl, render and index your pages without friction? We check site architecture, internal linking, redirects, canonical tags, structured data, sitemaps, page speed and how your site behaves on a phone. Technical SEO rarely wins rankings on its own, but technical problems quietly cap everything else.
Content and keyword coverage
Every service you sell and every serious question your buyers ask deserves a page that answers it properly. We map keywords to pages, find the gaps your competitors already cover, and write or brief content that a decision-maker would actually want to read.
Local and international visibility
For many Canadian businesses, the money is in the map results. That means a well-run Google Business Profile, consistent business details and pages that reflect where you really work. Our local SEO services cover this in depth, including multi-city and bilingual setups.
Authority and link building
Links from relevant, respected websites still matter. We earn them through things worth citing: useful resources, partnerships, industry associations and genuine local coverage. We do not buy links in bulk.
AI visibility
People now ask ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI features for recommendations. Strong SEO is the base for being cited there, and our AI SEO services add the work that is specific to those engines.
Our 10-point website score
Every SEO engagement starts with the same scoring framework. It gives you an honest picture of where your site stands, shows which problems are worth fixing first, and lets you see progress over time instead of trusting a vague monthly report. The score is a working tool, not a sales gimmick: some points matter more for one business than another, and we say so.
| Point | What we look at | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Technical foundation & indexing | Crawlability, indexing, redirects, canonicals, sitemaps, structured data | Pages that cannot be indexed cannot rank |
| 2. Speed & Core Web Vitals | Loading, responsiveness and visual stability on real devices | Slow pages lose visitors before they read a word |
| 3. Mobile experience | Layout, tap targets, forms and navigation on a phone | Most local and service searches happen on mobile |
| 4. Keyword & content coverage | Which searches you answer, which you miss, and content quality | No page for a search means no ranking for it |
| 5. Local & international visibility | Google Business Profile, business details, city and language setup | Decides whether you appear in maps and in the right market |
| 6. Authority & backlinks | Quality and relevance of sites linking to you, and risky links | Signals that others vouch for you |
| 7. Trust & E-E-A-T | Who is behind the site, credentials, reviews, sources, policies | Buyers and search engines both look for proof |
| 8. Conversion & user flow | Calls to action, forms, phone clicks, the path to an enquiry | Traffic that does not convert is a cost, not a result |
| 9. Brand & positioning | How clearly you say who you serve and why you are different | A clear brand earns clicks and branded searches |
| 10. AI visibility | Whether AI assistants mention and cite you for key questions | A growing share of research starts in AI tools |
How our SEO process works
- Strategy session. A paid 50-minute introductory conversation with the founder about your ambition, your market and whether we are the right fit.
- Proposal. If there is a good fit, you get a proposal with a fixed scope and a fixed price. No open-ended retainers that nobody can explain.
- SEO audit. A full audit against the 10-point score, with every issue ranked by impact and effort.
- Foundation first. We fix what holds the site back: indexing, structure, speed, internal links and tracking.
- Content and pages. We build or rework the pages that match real demand, starting where the gap between search volume and your current coverage is largest.
- Authority. We earn relevant mentions and links, and clean up risky ones where needed.
- Measure and adjust. We report on rankings, qualified traffic, enquiries and AI mentions, then adjust the plan.
The full sequence, including who does what and how we communicate, is described on how we work. Expect SEO to take months, not weeks. How many months depends on your starting point, your market and how hard your competitors are investing.
SEO company, SEO agency or SEO consultant: what do you need?
The labels overlap, but the choice behind them is real.
An SEO consultant
Best when you have an in-house team or developer who can execute, and you need someone experienced to set direction, review work and catch mistakes. You pay for judgement, not production.
An SEO agency or SEO company
Best when you want the work done for you: audits, fixes, content and link building. The risk with larger agencies is that you are sold by a senior person and served by a junior one.
A founder-led studio
That is what we are. The person who diagnoses your site is the person responsible for the work. We keep the number of clients limited so that holds true. The trade-off is honest: we cannot take everyone, and we are not the cheapest quote.
Whichever model you choose, ask who will actually work on your account, how many other clients they handle, and who owns the content, accounts and data when the engagement ends. The right answer to the last question is always you.
How to choose an SEO company in Canada
Lists of the "best SEO company in Canada" or "top SEO companies Canada" are usually ranked by who paid or who wrote the list. A better approach is to test the provider directly.
Red flags
- Ranking guarantees. Nobody controls Google's results. Google itself warns that no one can guarantee a number one ranking. A promise of "page one in 30 days" tells you how the provider sells, not how it works.
- Cheap links in bulk. Packages priced per link, private blog networks and "100 high-DA backlinks" break Google's spam policies and can cost you visibility for a long time.
- Secret methods. Good SEO can be explained. If a provider will not tell you what they are doing to your site, assume you would not like the answer.
- Reports full of vanity metrics. Impressions and keyword counts without enquiries, calls or sales tell you little.
- They keep your accounts. Your Google Business Profile, Search Console, analytics and content should be in your name.
- City pages with swapped names. Dozens of near-identical "SEO Toronto", "SEO Calgary", "SEO Edmonton" pages are doorway pages, not local strategy.
Good signs
- They ask about your margins, capacity and best customers before talking about keywords.
- They show you their reasoning and accept being checked.
- They talk about timelines honestly and in ranges.
- They follow Google's own SEO starter guide principles instead of fighting them.
SEO pricing and packages in Canada: what drives the cost
We do not sell fixed SEO packages, because a ten-page contractor site and a multi-location clinic group need different work. What drives the cost of SEO in Canada is mostly the same everywhere:
- Competition. Ranking for a service in a large metro takes more than ranking in a smaller city or a niche.
- Size and state of the site. Technical debt, migrations and missing pages add work.
- Content volume. How many services, locations and questions need a proper page.
- Languages. English and French versions are two sets of pages to plan, write and maintain.
- Authority gap. How far you are behind competitors in relevant links and mentions.
We start with a paid strategy session at CA$375 (excluding applicable taxes). After that you receive a fixed price for a fixed scope. Read more on our pricing page.
We are based in the Netherlands. Does that matter for your SEO?
We are honest about this: we do not have a Canadian office. We work remotely with Canadian companies from the Netherlands. For most of SEO, location does not matter at all. Google does not rank your website based on where your SEO provider sits, and technical work, content, structure and analytics are done the same way anywhere.
Where it does matter is local knowledge. A roofing company in Halifax, a dental clinic in Mississauga and a law firm in Calgary compete in very different search results. So we research each market before we write a line: who ranks in the map results, which neighbourhoods and suburbs people search, how buyers phrase things, and whether French matters for your customers. Searches like "seo Toronto", "seo company Vancouver" or "seo Edmonton" show that buyers think locally; your strategy should too.
Practically, Toronto is six hours behind us for most of the year and Vancouver nine, so we schedule calls in your morning. Written updates mean nothing depends on being in the same time zone.
SEO for specific industries
The principles are the same, but each industry has its own search patterns, trust signals and rules. We have written separate guides for the sectors where we see the most demand:
- Dental SEO for clinics that want more patients for specific treatments, within their regulator's advertising rules.
- Law firm SEO for practices that compete on trust, practice areas and local search.
- SEO for contractors and trades who need calls from the right service areas.
We also build and run our own brands and websites, so we test every method on our own sites first before recommending it to clients.
Is SEO dead? The future of SEO with AI search
No. What has changed is where the answer appears. Some searches now end in an AI summary rather than a click, and some research starts in ChatGPT instead of Google. But those systems still need sources, and they lean heavily on well-structured, trustworthy websites that already do well in search.
The future of SEO looks less like chasing keywords and more like being the clearest, most credible source on your topic, in a format both people and machines can use. That has always been good SEO. The businesses that cut corners feel the change most.