If you are a small business owner in Vancouver, you might already have a website. But when you search for your own services on Google, it does not show up. You are not alone. Many Vancouver business websites look fine but fail to rank, leaving real leads on the table every day. Here are the most common reasons why and what to fix.
Updated February 2026.
Google wants to give users the most relevant results. If your website does not explicitly state what you do and what areas you serve, Google has no basis to show it to local searchers.
If you own a pizza restaurant in Gastown, your website should say 'Authentic Pizza Restaurant in Gastown, Vancouver.' If you are a plumber in Burnaby, that needs to be on the page. Generic service descriptions with no location context are nearly invisible in local search.
Slow websites rank lower and convert worse. If a visitor clicks your link and the page takes more than a couple of seconds to open, most of them leave before it finishes loading. Google tracks that behaviour and treats it as a signal that your page is not worth showing.
Mobile load speed matters most. The majority of local searches in Vancouver happen on phones, often on cellular connections. A site that loads in under 1.5 seconds on mobile is the target.
A single page listing all your services, or a few generic pages, gives Google very little to work with. Individual pages dedicated to each service you offer perform dramatically better in search.
If you are a home renovation company in East Vancouver, separate pages for kitchen renovations, bathroom renovations, and basement renovations each have a chance to rank for their own specific searches. One combined services page competes for none of them specifically.
More than half of all searches in Vancouver happen on smartphones. If your website does not render properly on mobile, Google will not show it to mobile users, which is most of your potential customers.
Mobile friendly means more than just scaling down. It means text is readable without zooming, buttons are large enough to tap, and the layout does not break on smaller screens.
Google favours websites that are useful, updated, and trustworthy. A site that has not been touched in months with no helpful information gives Google no reason to prioritize it.
Adding relevant content consistently, whether that is blog posts, project case studies, or service guides, signals to Google that your business is active and worth surfacing. Even one substantive post per month compounds significantly over 12 months.
Customers trust businesses with visible reviews. So does Google. A website with no social proof appears less authoritative than a competitor who prominently features theirs.
Reviews do not have to come from Google only. Testimonials on your own site, project photos with client quotes, and case studies all serve the same trust-building function and help your pages perform better in local search.
The good news is that none of these are complicated problems. They are execution problems. Add location-specific language to every service page. Fix your page speed. Build out individual service pages. Make sure the site works on mobile. Publish something useful once a month. Collect and display reviews.
Do all of those consistently for six months and your visibility will improve measurably. Most of your competitors are not doing all of them. That gap is the opportunity.
Want us to look at your site?
Send us the URL and we will tell you what is holding it back, free.
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