60 pieces · no gated PDFs
Everything here is written for the person who owns the business, not for other agencies. Where a claim can be checked against numbers, the numbers come from our own survey of 49,994 business listings across the Greater Toronto Area.
We checked 49,994 business listings across the Greater Toronto Area. 27% of logistics companies have no website at all; only 2% of therapists are in the same position. The full ranking by industry.
Your designer registered your domain and now will not answer. How to find out who legally holds it, how the .ca and .com transfer rules work, and what to do when the transfer code never arrives.
We opened 34,180 small business websites across the Greater Toronto Area. 2,788 give a visitor on a phone nothing usable: 2,162 do not load at all and 626 load with no mobile layout. What each failure looks like and what fixing it involves.
34% of the 34,180 GTA business websites we opened run WordPress. Here is what each platform is genuinely good at, what it costs over three years, and which one your business should be on.
942 small business websites in the GTA are still served without HTTPS. Chrome labels every one of them "Not secure" in the address bar. Here is what that actually costs, and how long fixing it takes.
Most sites brought to us for a rebuild do not need one. Four signs a redesign is genuinely the answer, three signs the money should go somewhere else, and how to tell them apart.
Six things a local service business home page has to do, in order, and the four things that take up the most space while doing the least. Written from opening several thousand of them.
Eight questions that separate an agency worth hiring from one that is about to sell you a template, plus the contract terms that matter more than the price.
Pages for each city you serve can work well or get a site penalised. The difference is whether each page has something real to say. Here is the line, and how to stay on the right side of it.
An hour spent on the three sites ranking above you produces a better list of priorities than most paid audits. What to look at, in order, and what to ignore.
Three DNS records decide whether your quotes and invoices reach the inbox. What each one does, the order to set them up in, and why the problem usually appears after a website move.
Most website projects stall for one reason: the text never arrives. A one-page brief a busy owner can write in an hour, and the four questions that prevent the expensive misunderstandings.
Six checks a business owner can run without technical knowledge to find out whether an SEO retainer is producing work, plus the three report metrics that are designed to look like progress.
A service page has one job: answer the question the searcher typed, in the first screen, then earn the enquiry. Here is the structure that works for local businesses, and the four habits that sink most attempts.
How HomeStars, Houzz Pro, Angi, Yelp and Nextdoor actually charge contractors, from their own pages, and how to tell whether a paid lead site is paying off.
Work photographs sell trade services better than any paragraph, and almost nobody takes them. What to shoot, how to shoot it on a phone, and why stock images actively cost you enquiries.
For most local businesses, a blog is wasted effort — and for a few it is the cheapest lead source they have. The honest test for which one you are, and what to publish if the answer is yes.
CDAP and Digital Main Street are closed. What is actually open for Ontario small businesses in September 2026: Starter Company Plus, Futurpreneur, BDC loans.
Small business sites are not targeted individually — they are swept up by automated scans. The five things that prevent almost all of it, and the security theatre that is sold instead.
A site built as a favour years ago is the most common situation we meet. How to find out what you actually control, what to salvage, and how to move on without an argument.
Most of the traffic lost in a rebuild is lost to one mistake: old addresses that stop working. A migration checklist for small business sites, in the order the steps actually have to happen.
A site can pass a mobile test and still be unusable. The difference between a responsive layout and a site that works on a phone, checked the way a customer would check it.
A drop in traffic has about six plausible causes and they are distinguishable in under an hour. The order to check them in, and the two panic responses that make things worse.
For some local businesses the Google listing genuinely is enough. For others it quietly costs them work. Here is how to tell which one you are, using data from 49,994 GTA listings.
The median GTA business in some trades has under 20 Google reviews; in others it is over 200. Comparing across trades is meaningless. Here is the median for 41 fields and what to do with it.
A working checklist for local search in the Greater Toronto Area, in the order that actually moves things: listing first, then pages, then links. With the 49,994-listing survey behind each item.
The three results above the map are where most local searches end. What actually decides who appears there — proximity, prominence and relevance — and which of the three you can move.
Setting up a Google Business Profile properly, field by field, including the service-area configuration most trades need and the mistakes that get listings suspended.
AI Overviews, ChatGPT and Perplexity answer local questions by citing pages. What makes a page citable, why structured data and clear answers matter more than keywords, and what does not work.
Business email on your own domain in Canada: Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 prices in CAD as of September 2026, plus MX, SPF, DKIM and DMARC setup.
Yes, you can ask. What Google bans (incentives, review gating, pressure), what the Competition Bureau says about fake reviews, and a way to ask that holds up.
The primary category is the heaviest single lever on a Google listing, and most owners set it once at registration and never look again. How to choose it, how many secondaries to add, and how to check what competitors use.
The 10% holdback, the annual holdback release, 28-day prompt payment, notices of non-payment and lien deadlines, in plain language for Ontario contractors.
14,536 of the 49,994 GTA businesses we surveyed have no Google reviews at all. The first ten matter more than the next hundred, and getting them is a process rather than a favour.
Why Google suspends Business Profiles, the rules service-area businesses trip over, and how to appeal with evidence that matches, as of September 2026.
Which trades can use Google Local Services Ads in Canada, the new Google Verified badge, what verification involves, and how pay-per-lead billing works.
What Google, OpenAI and Bing actually document about showing up in AI answers: crawler names, robots.txt, listings, and how to measure it. No guesswork.
What to write when a bad Google review lands, which reviews Google will actually remove, how to report and appeal, and why health professionals should say less.
Who in Ontario must make their website meet WCAG 2.0 AA under the AODA, who is exempt, what the December 31, 2026 compliance report involves, and what the penalties actually are — read from the regulation, not from vendors selling overlays.
What an Ontario lawyer's website can and cannot say under the Law Society's Rules of Professional Conduct 4.2 and 4.3: testimonials, past results, awards, "specialist", and how advertised fees must be stated.
What an Ontario dental practice website can say under the RCDSO advertising rules: no testimonials, no superlatives, how to describe services if you are not a specialist, how fees must be shown, and patient photos.
What PIPEDA actually requires of an Ontario small business website with a contact form or analytics, what CASL means for the email addresses that form collects, and what a short, honest privacy page should say.
What an Ontario CPA firm website may say under Rule 217 of the CPA Code: "our team" claims, "from $X" fees, specialist claims, and who may offer audits.
What an Ontario chiropractor website may say under CCO Standard S-016: testimonials, "may help" not "will help", specialist titles and new-patient offers.
What an Ontario insurance brokerage website may say under RIBO rules: registered name, "broker" not "agent", gift cards and draws, and 2026 review guidance.
What an Ontario RMT clinic website may say under CMTO rules as of September 2026: no testimonials, who may use "RMT", no specialists, and insurance receipts.
What an Ontario physio clinic website may say under the 2025 College standard: testimonials, "best" claims, titles, specialists, packages and free assessments.
What an Ontario real estate agent or team website must show under TRESA and RECO rules: brokerage name, permitted titles, sold and price consent, awards.
The $30,000 small supplier test, when registration starts, voluntary registration, and how Ontario trades show HST on quotes, invoices and website prices.
Ontario electrical contractors must show the ECRA/ESA licence number in ads, contracts, on trucks and websites. What the rule says and how to check a licence.
Ontario renovation contract rules: written agreements over $50, the 10-day cooling-off period, the 10% estimate rule, deposits and what quotes must show.
Who needs TSSA contractor registration in Ontario, what G.1, G.2 and G.3 certificates cover, what customers can check, and what to show on trucks and online.
Who in Ontario construction must have WSIB coverage, the home renovation exemption, what a clearance certificate is, how long it lasts and why GCs ask for one.
What local SEO actually costs a small business in Toronto and the GTA, what published industry surveys show, what a monthly fee should buy, and how to tell work from reports.
What a small business website actually costs in Toronto and the GTA in 2026 — from $590 for a solo operator to $3,900 for a professional practice — and how to tell which band you are in.
Taking payments as a small business in Canada: Interac e-Transfer, Square, Stripe and Moneris rates as of September 2026, and credit card surcharge rules.
Registering a business name in Ontario: who must do it, the $60 fee, the five-year renewal, incorporation costs, and why to check the domain name first.
How a service business can publish prices and ranges honestly: Canada's drip pricing rule since June 2022, Ontario's 10% estimate rule, and page structures.
Choosing online booking for an Ontario clinic or service business: what PHIPA requires, whether data must stay in Canada, and questions to ask any vendor.
The build is the smaller number. A line-by-line breakdown of what a local business website actually costs annually — domain, hosting, certificate, edits, listing and search work — and which lines are optional.
Every number quoted in these guides comes from one survey: 49,994 business listings across the GTA, 34,180 websites opened and checked by hand in August 2026. The full report is public and free to cite.
Questions
Yes, with attribution to Formory Group and a link to the report they come from.
They are written to be read. The reason they rank is that the numbers in them do not exist anywhere else.
Two minutes
Everything above came from opening real websites. Yours takes ten seconds: we load it the way a customer would and say what we find, including when the honest answer is that nothing needs doing.
No pitch deck and no discovery call. Tell us the trade and the city, and we will say what we would do and what it costs.