Owning deck searches across York Region
A Newmarket deck builder that needed to cover a wide service area from a single location.
Why decking is its own problem
Decking is seasonal and service-area driven. A builder in Newmarket is not competing with Toronto, they are competing with the other three builders inside a twenty minute drive. Coverage across the whole region matters far more than a single city ranking, and the season means the work has to land before spring.
Where they started
XP Decking ranked well close to home and dropped off quickly outside Newmarket. The map pack across East Gwillimbury, Aurora and Bradford belonged to other builders.
The work was local SEO services and Google Business Profile management, and you can compare it with real client results. See SEO for decking businesses and SEO in Newmarket for the wider picture.
What we actually did
- Service area and profile rebuild targeted at the whole of York Region
- Separate pages for deck building, deck repair and composite installation
- Geo-grid tracking on four core keywords, scanned monthly
- Review programme that doubled the review count
- Local link building through suppliers and trade associations
How it ran, month by month
What changed, measured the same way both times
Same keywords, same grid, same accounts. Nothing here is a different measurement method dressed up as progress.
| Measure | Result | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| top-three points on "deck builder newmarket" | 49 | up from 15 |
| points below position 10 | 0 | down from 3 |
| reviews | 32 | up from 16 |
| top-three points on "deck installation" | 42 | up from 23 |
Other measures from the same account
Same client, same period, measured different ways.
Contractors, Toronto: 4 to 48 top-three points
A geo-grid scan checks your ranking from dozens of points spread across your service area and plots every one. Green is a top three position, amber is four to ten, red is eleven or worse. It is the only honest way to see how far your local visibility actually reaches, and it is usually the first thing that shocks an owner who thought they ranked fine.
What you are looking at: Geo-grid comparison for contractors for home renovation in Toronto, top three rankings rising from 4 points to 48.
1,116 profile interactions, up 27.7%
Calls, direction requests and profile views, taken straight from the client’s own Business Profile with Google’s own year over year comparison beside them. For most local businesses these numbers move before anything on the website does, which is why we fix the profile first.
What you are looking at: Google Business Profile showing 1,116 interactions for a windows and doors company, up 27.7 percent.
2,300 organic keywords and zero paid spend
Clicks and impressions from the client’s own Search Console. Impressions climbing first and clicks following a few weeks later is the normal shape of a campaign that is working. We show the flat months too, because a line that only ever goes up is not a report.
What you are looking at: SEO overview showing authority score 28, organic traffic 2,500 and 2,300 organic keywords with no paid traffic.
Waterproofing terms at number one in two cities
Where specific search terms sit today against where they started. We track the ones that book work rather than the ones with the biggest search volume, which is why you will see plenty of low volume terms on these lists.
What you are looking at: Top ranked keywords showing basement waterproofing terms at position one across Mississauga and Toronto.
Visits arriving from Google, Bing, Yahoo and ChatGPT
Which terms now pull an AI Overview, and whether the client is named inside it. Being cited in the answer is worth more than the position underneath it, and this is how we check it rather than guessing.
What you are looking at: Traffic sources report showing visits arriving from Google, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo and ChatGPT.
Users up 25.7%, conversions up 110%
Form submissions, call clicks and conversions in Analytics. This is the number the whole campaign is judged on, and the reason we insist on call tracking before any work starts.
What you are looking at: Google Analytics dashboard showing users up 25.7 percent and conversions up 110 percent over 28 days.
The part worth stealing
Doing the work in the off season is the whole trick in a seasonal trade. Rankings take months to settle, so the only way to own the spring is to start in the winter.
By the time the season started we were already the first result people saw.
Google first, and everywhere else too
The same foundations that win the map pack also feed Bing, Apple Maps and the AI assistants, because they all read the same signals.
Google Search
The bulk of Canadian search still runs through Google, and it is where most of your organic leads will come from.
Google Maps and the map pack
The top three local listings. For most service businesses this sends more calls than the website does.
Bing and Microsoft Copilot
Close to one in ten Canadian searches happens on Bing, which is higher than most owners assume. It also feeds Copilot answers.
Apple Maps
Every iPhone that asks for directions starts here. Apple Business Connect is free and almost nobody claims it properly.
Yelp and directories
Still ranks for plenty of service searches, and the details on it feed what other platforms believe about you.
ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity
AI assistants answer questions by reading and citing the open web. Being consistent, crawlable and quotable is what gets you named.
Where XP Decking needed to show up
Customers search by neighbourhood, not by city. This is the map we worked across for this campaign.
Places shown on this map:
Newmarket, ON. See what search looks like in Newmarket.
Builds we have shipped for Canadian businesses
Rankings send the traffic. These are what turn it into a booked job.
More results from Canadian clients
313 calls from the Business Profile in four months
Plumbing in Toronto.
Read the Anta Plumbing and Drain case studyFrom 8 to 47 top-three grid points in nine months
HVAC in Mississauga.
Read the HVAC-Group case studyFrom almost no map presence to city-wide coverage
Renovation in Toronto.
Read the RM Renovation case studyWant numbers like these?
Every campaign starts the same way, with a free audit that shows you where you stand and what we would fix first.