Vancouver's local SEO agency for service businesses.
The three businesses in the Google Maps pack get 70%+ of the clicks on "near me" searches. Getting there — and staying there — requires consistent NAP data across 40+ directories, a fully optimized Google Business Profile, and neighbourhood-level content for the Lower Mainland. We build and maintain all of it.
Get a free audit →Local SEO in Greater Vancouver is neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood work.
The Lower Mainland is one of the most geographically fragmented local search markets in Canada. "Furnace repair Burnaby" and "furnace repair Kitsilano" are different searches with different competitive landscapes — the same business can be top-3 in one and invisible in the other. City-level optimization is not enough.
Most established Greater Vancouver service businesses have accumulated NAP inconsistencies over years of business changes: old addresses, old phone numbers, outdated GBP categories, citations on directories they set up in 2015 and forgot about. Google reads all of it, and inconsistency signals unreliability. Our local SEO service cleans it all up systematically, builds citations where you're missing them, and builds neighbourhood-level content for every Lower Mainland community you serve.
What a Vancouver local SEO engagement covers
- Google Business Profile audit and optimization. Most Vancouver service business GBPs are claimed but incomplete. We fill every field — services list with descriptions, geotagged photos, business hours including holidays, Q&A seeded with the questions customers actually search. Wrong primary category alone can cap your map pack visibility.
- NAP audit across 40+ directories. Name, Address, Phone — pulled from every major directory (Yelp, BBB, HomeStars, YellowPages, Bing Places, Apple Maps, and 35+ more) and every industry-specific listing. We flag every variant — abbreviated street names, old suite numbers, legacy phone numbers — and submit corrections to each one.
- Citation building. Where you should be listed but aren't. We build the missing citations on the directories that actually pass authority to your local pack ranking, not just any directory we can find.
- Neighbourhood pages for the Lower Mainland. One page per service area — Burnaby, Surrey, North Vancouver, Coquitlam, Richmond, and the rest — written for that area specifically. These pages are how you compete for hyperlocal searches that your homepage can't win. See our content architecture service for how this layer works.
- Review velocity coordination. The local pack weights recent reviews heavily. We coordinate with whatever review system you're running to keep the velocity up year-round — because a burst of reviews in 2023 doesn't help your 2026 map pack position.
Why Greater Vancouver is a specific market, not just "Canada"
Vancouver service businesses compete in a dense, neighbourhood-segmented geography with high average household incomes and high search volumes for premium service providers. The Lower Mainland's 30+ distinct communities each have their own search behaviour, housing stock, and competitive dynamics. A local SEO strategy that doesn't account for Burnaby vs. Kitsilano vs. Surrey is leaving most of the opportunity on the table. Our Vancouver HVAC market analysis is an example of how we approach neighbourhood-level competitive research before building the content layer.
The timeline
Week one is GBP audit and optimization — immediate visibility improvements. Weeks two through four are NAP corrections submitted to all directories — impact rolls in over 60 days as directories process. From week four forward, neighbourhood page builds and ongoing citation maintenance. Most clients see local-pack movement in 30 to 60 days, compounding from month three onward.
Local SEO agency questions, answered.
How competitive is the Google Maps pack for Vancouver service businesses?
Very competitive in the broad categories — HVAC, plumbing, auto repair — and surprisingly open at the neighbourhood level. A search for "furnace repair Vancouver" has 3 entrenched map-pack positions. A search for "furnace repair Burnaby" or "furnace repair Kitsilano" is often wide open. Neighbourhood-level local SEO is where most Vancouver service businesses can win fastest, and it's the work most agencies skip because it doesn't demo well in a slide deck.
Do I need local SEO if I'm a service-area business with no storefront?
Yes. Google has a specific configuration for service-area businesses — you set a service area rather than a physical address, and that still qualifies for the map pack. Without a properly configured Google Business Profile and consistent NAP across directories, service-area businesses are invisible in local searches even when they have a strong website and years of Google reviews.
How long before local SEO changes show up in Google Maps?
GBP optimization changes are visible within days — category changes and photo updates are fast. NAP corrections across directories process over 30 to 60 days as each directory verifies and updates. Local pack ranking improvements typically appear in Google Business Profile insights within 60 to 90 days of a full cleanup. The NAP work is the slow layer; everything else moves faster.
Can you help if we recently changed our business name or address?
Yes — this is the most common reason we get called in. Old listings persist on directories you forgot existed. We handle the migration end-to-end: GBP update and verification, corrections across 40+ directory listings, and a 90-day monitoring cycle to catch reversions. If you had duplicate GBP listings from an old address, we handle the merge as part of the same engagement.
Find out where your local listings disagree.
The audit pulls every directory listing for your business and flags every NAP mismatch — plus the missing citations and GBP gaps that are suppressing your map pack position.
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