Getting your business into the Google map pack, where the calls actually come from.
We are based in Port Coquitlam, which means we know exactly how far your address will let you rank, and we will tell you before you spend anything.
Why the Map Pack Matters More Than Page One
When someone searches for a service near them, Google shows three businesses on a map before it shows a single normal search result. Those 3 take the overwhelming majority of the clicks and calls. Position four onward, and the first page of ordinary results below the map, get what is left over.
That is the whole game in local search, and it is a different game from ranking a page. It is won with your Google Business Profile, your reviews, your citations and your proximity, not with blog posts. If you also need organic rankings for service pages, that is covered on our SEO services page, and most businesses eventually want both. This page is about the map.
How Far Your Address Lets You Rank
Here is the thing almost no agency will tell you before taking your money. Google weighs physical distance heavily in local results. A business in Port Coquitlam will not rank in a map search made from downtown Vancouver, no matter how good its SEO is. Not with more citations, not with more reviews, not with a bigger retainer.
What you can control is everything within a realistic radius of where you actually are, plus the areas you genuinely serve. So the first thing we do is look at your address, your competitors’ addresses, and draw an honest line around what is winnable. Sometimes that conversation ends with us saying the budget is better spent elsewhere. We would rather have that conversation in week one than month eight.
If someone has promised you the top of the map pack in a city you are not near, ask them to explain proximity. The answer will tell you a lot.
What Actually Moves Map Pack Rankings
3 things carry most of the weight, and they are not the things most proposals talk about.
- Your Google Business Profile. Completeness, correct primary category, services listed individually, real photos, and activity. A half-filled profile is the most common reason a good business is invisible.
- Reviews. Quantity, recency, and whether you respond. Not a number you hit once, a rate you maintain.
- Consistent business information across the web. Your name, address and phone matching everywhere. If three directories list an old suite number, Google is less certain you are where you say you are.
Everything else, including your website, supports these. Which is why we will not sell you a monthly retainer if your profile is half built and you have four reviews. That gets fixed first.
The Profile Problems We Fix Most Often
- Wrong primary category. The single fastest fix available, and it is wrong more often than you would expect.
- Services not listed individually. Each service you offer can be its own entry. Most profiles have none.
- Service area set to the whole province. Claiming everywhere tells Google nothing about anywhere. See our guide on optimising service area pages.
- Stock photos, or none. Real photos of your work, your vehicle, your space, your team.
- Nobody responding to reviews. Including the good ones.
- A duplicate listing nobody knew existed. Two profiles split your signals and one of them usually has the old phone number.
- A suspended profile left unfixed. It is recoverable more often than owners assume. Here is what to do when your profile is suspended.
Ranking Outside Downtown Vancouver
Every SEO agency in this market brands itself as a Vancouver agency. Meanwhile Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, New Westminster and Burnaby each have their own search behaviour, their own competitors, and far less competition than the downtown core.
We are in Port Coquitlam, so this is the market we work in rather than the market we drive through. For a business in the Tri-Cities, a well-built local presence here will produce calls long before a downtown campaign would, and for a fraction of the spend. If you serve several municipalities, each one needs its own page on your site, written for that area rather than duplicated with the name swapped. Our guide on location pages that rank covers how that is done properly.
When Your Customers Search in Another Language
Metro Vancouver is one of the most multilingual markets in Canada, and a real share of local searching happens in Chinese, Punjabi, Korean, Farsi and Tagalog. Almost nobody in this market builds for it, which leaves search terms with genuine volume and almost no competition.
If your customer base comes from a specific community, a profile and a set of pages written for that audience can put you in the map pack for searches your competitors do not even track. We build and rank sites in English and Farsi, and this page is in Farsi. Mention it when we talk. It is often the cheapest win in the whole campaign.
What This Costs and What You Get
Across British Columbia, monthly local SEO for a small business generally runs $750 to $2,500, and most Metro Vancouver businesses land between $1,500 and $4,000 once competition rises. Initial setup, when charged separately, usually runs $500 to $1,500 one time. At the $30 end of the market you are buying automated directory submissions that Google ignores.
Local SEO Launch, $850 one time
No monthly commitment. Your Google Business Profile claimed, fully built and optimised. Duplicate listings found and merged. Business information audited and corrected across the core Canadian directories. A review request system set up that you can run yourself. Local signals added to your website. You own all of it and you owe us nothing after.
This exists because plenty of businesses need the foundation fixed once, not a retainer forever. If you decide to continue monthly within 60 days, the fee comes off your first invoice.
Local SEO Monthly, from $750
Everything above plus ongoing work: weekly profile posts, review generation and responses, citation monitoring, local link outreach, and one page per month added or improved on your site.
Tracked across your whole service area, not one pin.
Multi-City, from $1,300
For businesses covering several municipalities or competing in contested categories like legal, dental, real estate and home services. Adds a location page programme and separate map pack tracking for each area.
Three months minimum, then month to month with thirty days notice. Full breakdown on our SEO pricing page.
How Long Before the Phone Rings
Profile and review work usually shows movement first, often within 6 to 10 weeks, because those signals update faster than anything else in search. Ranking movement across a service area typically takes about three months. Lead volume you can actually attribute takes six to twelve.
Nobody controls Google’s results and anyone guaranteeing a map pack position is guessing or selling. What we will commit to is that you will know inside ninety days whether it is working, because the leading indicators move well before the calls do, and you see those every month.
How Many Reviews You Actually Need
There is no magic number. What matters is where you stand against the businesses currently ranking above you in your specific area. If the top three in Coquitlam have 40, 60 and 110 reviews, that is your benchmark, not a national average.
So we show you exactly where you sit against them and set a realistic monthly target, usually somewhere between four and ten. Recency counts as much as volume. Two hundred reviews with nothing in the last year reads as a business that has stopped. Our guide on getting more Google reviews covers the process, including how to ask without breaking Google’s rules.
Why This Is Not the Same as Regular SEO
Traditional SEO chases a national or regional audience with content and links, and success looks like website traffic. Local SEO chases people within driving distance who are ready to act now, and success looks like phone calls, direction requests and booked jobs.
The tools are different too. Regular SEO lives on your website. Local SEO lives mostly on Google’s property, in your profile and your reviews, with your website supporting it. That is why a business can have a beautiful, fast, well-optimised website and still be invisible on the map, and why the fix is often not on the website at all.
When You Should Not Hire Anyone Yet
Sometimes local SEO is the wrong spend right now, and we would rather say so than take a retainer.
If your Google Business Profile is unverified, start there and it is free. If nobody in your area searches for what you sell, local SEO will not create demand that does not exist.
If you cannot answer the phone during business hours, more calls will not help you. And if your website is so slow or so broken that the traffic would bounce, fixing that comes first, which is a redesign conversation rather than an SEO one.
What You Get in the Monthly Report
One page. What was done that month, how your map pack position moved in each area you serve, how many calls and direction requests your profile generated, review count and rating, and what is planned next.
No 12 pages of charts. If something is not working we say so in the report rather than waiting for you to notice.
Guides We Wrote on Local Search
We publish how we work rather than keeping it behind a sales call. If you would rather do this yourself, everything you need is here.
- How to rank in the Google local 3-pack
- How to rank on Google Maps in Vancouver
- The complete Google Business Profile guide
- How to optimise your Google Business Profile
- Adding products and services to your profile
- How to build local citations
- Local SEO for service businesses
- A local SEO audit checklist
- Local SEO ranking factors
Questions Local Business Owners Ask
Who is actually doing the work?
Arash Khalaj, who has been building and ranking websites for over 17 years and runs Maple Web Design out of Port Coquitlam. No account manager layer, no offshoring, no junior learning on your account.
I do not have a storefront. Can I still rank?
Yes. Google has a separate profile type for businesses that travel to customers, where your address stays private and only your service areas show publicly. Most trades, contractors and home-based professionals should be set up this way, and many are not.
Can you fix a suspended profile?
Usually. It depends what triggered it, and guessing at reinstatement requests makes things worse. We diagnose the cause first, then submit once, cleanly.
What if I already tried local SEO and nothing happened?
Common starting point. Usually it was directory submissions with no profile work behind them, or a campaign aimed at a city the business was never going to reach. We look at what you already paid for first, because some of it is often salvageable.
Do I need a new website for this?
Not necessarily. Local SEO lives mostly on your Google profile. Your website matters, but if it works and loads reasonably fast, we work with what you have. If it does not, we will tell you plainly rather than quietly billing around the problem.
How do I know it is working?
Calls and direction requests from your profile, tracked monthly. Not ranking screenshots, and not domain authority scores. If a report cannot connect to something that happened in your business, it is not a report.
Book a Local Visibility Check
30 minutes, no pitch. We will look at your Google Business Profile, where you currently show up across the areas you serve, and the businesses ranking above you.
Then you get a straight answer on what is realistic from your address and whether it is worth paying anyone.
