Get Found in Near-Me Searches
When customers search for a service near them, the businesses in the map pack get the calls. We optimize your local presence so you are the one they find first.
When someone in Metro Vancouver searches for a plumber near me or a dentist in New Westminster, Google shows a map with three businesses before anything else. Those three positions capture most of the calls, and getting into them is a different discipline from ordinary SEO. Local SEO is the work of proving to Google that your business is real, relevant, and trusted in the specific places you serve: your Google Business Profile, your reviews, your citations, and your location pages all feeding one picture. Vanguard Media runs local SEO for businesses across Vancouver, Burnaby, Surrey, and the rest of Metro Vancouver, from our own base in New Westminster.
How the Map Pack Actually Ranks Businesses
Google decides who appears in the map pack using three factors, and understanding them explains almost every local ranking you have wondered about. Proximity is how close your business is to the searcher. You cannot change your address, but service area settings and location pages stop you losing searches in cities you genuinely serve. Relevance is how well your profile and website match what was searched. A profile with the right categories, complete services, and a website that describes the same offerings in depth tells Google exactly which searches you belong in. Prominence is how well known and trusted your business appears: review quantity and quality, mentions across directories and local sites, and the overall authority of your website. Most businesses stuck outside the map pack are weak on one specific factor, not all three. That is why our local SEO engagements start with a diagnosis rather than a package. A business losing on relevance needs profile and content work, while a business losing on prominence needs reviews, citations, and authority.
Your Business
Google Business Profile Is an Operating Discipline, Not a Set-and-Forget
Most businesses treat their Google Business Profile like a phone book entry: fill it in once, forget it exists. Google rewards the opposite. The profiles that hold map pack positions are maintained like a storefront, and that is how we run them. Categories get audited against what actually drives rankings in your industry, because the primary category is one of the strongest relevance signals you control. Services and descriptions get written out completely, in the language customers search with. Photos go up regularly, showing real work and real people, because profiles with fresh photos earn more clicks and calls. Posts go out on a consistent cadence with offers, completed projects, and updates. Questions get answered before a competitor or a stranger answers them for you. Hours stay accurate through holidays, because nothing earns a one star review faster than a wasted trip. None of this is complicated, but all of it requires someone actually doing it every week. That is the difference between optimization as a one time deliverable and Google Business Profile management as an ongoing discipline.
Resilience Roofing, documented case study
Reviews: A Ranking Signal and a Conversion Engine
Reviews do two jobs at once, and both directly affect revenue. For rankings, Google weighs how many reviews you have, how strong the rating is, how recently they arrive, and whether they keep arriving steadily. A profile that collected forty reviews two years ago and stalled reads as declining. A profile earning a few genuine reviews every month reads as a business people currently choose. For conversion, reviews are usually the deciding factor between the three businesses in the map pack: customers read the recent ones, and they read how you respond. We set up the timing, so requests go out when a customer is happiest, usually right after the job wraps up. We make leaving a review effortless with a direct link. We draft responses to every review, positive and negative, because responses signal an attentive business to both Google and future customers. And we never buy, fake, or gate reviews, filtering out unhappy customers before they can post. Purchased reviews are increasingly easy to detect, and a profile that gets caught loses everything it built.
Citations and NAP Consistency: The Unglamorous Work That Still Matters
A citation is any place your business name, address, and phone number appear online: directories, maps services, industry listings, and local sites. NAP consistency simply means those details match everywhere. It matters because Google cross references these listings to verify your business is real and located where you claim. When your listings disagree, an old address on one directory, a tracking number on another, a former business name on a third, that verification gets murky and your prominence suffers. Cleanup is usually the bigger job than building. Businesses that have moved, rebranded, or changed numbers over the years accumulate contradictions they do not know exist, and we regularly find suspended or duplicate profiles that have been quietly splitting a business's review count for years. Our process is straightforward: audit everywhere your business is listed, correct or remove what is wrong, then build listings on the directories that matter for your industry and for Metro Vancouver specifically. Anyone selling you hundreds of new citations every month is selling volume, not value.
Location Pages Done Right
If you serve multiple cities across Metro Vancouver, your website needs a page for each one, because your Google Business Profile can only anchor rankings near your physical address. Location pages are how a New Westminster business ranks for searches in Burnaby, Coquitlam, or Richmond. The catch is that most location pages are built wrong: the same paragraph copied ten times with the city name swapped out. Google treats those as doorway pages and ignores them. Done right, a location page earns its ranking with substance that is genuinely specific: the services you actually deliver in that city, the neighbourhoods you cover, the review a customer from that area left, and answers to questions that come up in that market. Local business schema ties each page to the area it describes. We build these pages for clients regularly, including for oldtonew.ca, a Surrey general contractor, and we practice the approach on our own website, where every city we serve has its own page. When a location page is written like you actually work there, it ranks like it too.
Do you serve Burnaby? I need a quote.
We do. I can have the team follow up today. What is the best number to reach you?
604-555-0142, I'm Sarah
Lead captured and emailed to you with a conversation summary
How we work
How We Run a Local SEO Engagement
Local audit and diagnosis
We audit your Google Business Profile, your reviews, your citations, your website, and your visibility across the cities you serve, then benchmark it all against the competitors currently holding the map pack. The output is a diagnosis of which factor is costing you, and a concrete plan to fix it.
Google Business Profile overhaul
We rebuild your profile properly: primary and secondary categories, complete services with descriptions, accurate attributes and hours, real photos of real work, and a business description written for customers rather than keyword stuffing. If duplicate or suspended profiles are lurking, we find and resolve them first, because everything else builds on a clean profile.
Citation cleanup and building
We correct your name, address, and phone number everywhere it appears, remove duplicate listings, and build accurate new listings on the directories that matter for your industry and region. One round of thorough cleanup beats years of drip fed directory submissions, so we do the job once and do it completely.
Review engine
We set up a simple, repeatable system for earning reviews: requests timed for the moment a customer is happiest, a direct link that removes friction, and drafted responses to every review that comes in. The goal is steady, genuine velocity month after month, the pattern that Google and customers both reward.
Location pages and local content
We build a properly structured page for each city you serve, with genuinely local substance and local business schema, plus content that answers the questions your market actually asks. This is what extends your organic reach into Burnaby, Richmond, Coquitlam, and every other city beyond the neighbourhood around your own address.
Track calls, directions, and rankings
Local SEO is measured in actions, not impressions. We track calls, direction requests, and website clicks from your profile, plus your map pack position across a grid of points in your service area, since rankings shift from one neighbourhood to the next. You see the numbers every month alongside the work that moved them.
Why Vanguard Media
Why Local Businesses Work With Us
We practice this on our own site
Every location page tactic we recommend is running on our own website, from per page local schema to a dedicated page for each Metro Vancouver city we serve, including our home base of New Westminster. We have shipped the same approach for clients like oldtonew.ca in Surrey and megasiding.ca, so you can inspect the work before you buy the advice.
215 percent more organic leads, documented
Our case study with Resilience Roofing, a local trades business, shows what the compounding effect of this work looks like: 500 percent organic traffic growth, 215 percent more organic leads, and a 59 percent higher conversion rate in under a year. We published the full case study, step by step, because verifiable results are rarer than they should be in this industry.
You see everything we do
Local SEO has a reputation problem built on vague monthly reports. Ours show the actual work: what changed on your profile, which citations were fixed, which reviews came in, and how your map pack position moved across your service area. Calls and direction requests are always the headline numbers in our reports, because those are the ones that actually pay your bills.
What is included
Local SEO that delivers
Google Business Profile optimization
Local citation building and cleanup
Review generation strategy
Location and service-area pages
Local schema markup
Map pack ranking tracking
Near-me keyword targeting
Local link building
FAQ
Local SEO questions, answered
What is the map pack and why does it matter so much?
The map pack is the block of three business listings with a map that appears at the top of local search results. It captures most of the clicks and calls for near me and service plus city searches.
How long does local SEO take to show results?
Profile fixes and citation cleanup can move visibility within weeks, and most businesses see meaningful movement within 3 to 4 months. Competitive categories in dense areas take longer, and the work compounds as it builds.
Can you get me into the map pack in cities far from my address?
Honestly, no. Proximity limits how far a single profile can rank, and anyone promising region wide map pack coverage from one address is overpromising. What we can do is win the map pack near you and capture the other cities you serve with location pages.
Should I buy reviews or filter out unhappy customers?
No to both. Purchased and incentivized reviews violate Google's policies and are increasingly detected, and review gating is prohibited as well. We build systems that earn reviews the durable way: a consistent trickle of genuine reviews beats a burst of forty followed by silence.
I work from home and travel to customers. Can local SEO still work?
Yes. Google supports service area businesses, and you can hide your address while listing the cities you cover. The playbook leans more on reviews, service area settings, and location pages, but home based businesses win map pack positions all the time.
Do I need location pages if I only have one office?
If you only serve customers who come to you, usually not. If you travel to customers in multiple cities, location pages are how you rank beyond the area around your address. Each one needs genuinely unique, useful content.
How do you measure local SEO results?
By actions rather than vanity numbers: calls, direction requests, website clicks, form fills, and your map pack position tracked across a grid of points in your service area, all reported in plain monthly numbers.
Plans and pricing
Local SEO pricing
Win the map pack and near-me searches in the communities you serve.
Local Starter
Best for: Businesses that want to improve visibility in their local area
$450CAD per month
- Google Business Profile optimization
- Local keyword targeting for your core services
- Citation cleanup and NAP consistency
- Service and location page recommendations
- Review response guidance
- Monthly local visibility report
Local Growth
Best for: Businesses that want stronger map rankings and more local leads
$750CAD per month
- Everything in Local Starter
- Ongoing Google Business Profile management and posts
- Review generation strategy that runs on autopilot
- Local content optimization
- Citation building in the directories that matter
- Competitor map pack tracking
Multi-Location SEO
Best for: Multiple locations or highly competitive local markets
Let's talkcustom scope
- Location-based SEO strategy per branch
- Multi-location landing page architecture
- Advanced Google Business Profile optimization at scale
- Local content planning per market
- Per-location performance reporting
- Rollout roadmap for new locations
All prices CAD. Custom bundles available. See full pricing or book a free strategy session.
Explore our other services
SEO
Data-driven SEO that brings qualified organic traffic to your business month after month.
PPC / Google Ads
High-intent paid campaigns that put you in front of ready-to-buy customers today.
Web Design
Fast, conversion-focused websites that look sharp and turn visitors into customers.
AI Integration
Practical AI for your business: chat assistants, automation, and AI search readiness, implemented safely.
Social Media
Strategic social campaigns that build brand awareness and drive real business results.