Yes, and most of our clients do. The work happens inside your store and your accounts, which are the same from Halifax as from Vancouver, and the reporting arrives by email either way.
We are based in Toronto, Ontario, and we work with online stores across the country. Time zones are the only practical difference and they are easily managed.
The reason to choose a specialist over a nearby generalist is straightforward. There are not many agencies in Canada that work only on online stores, so insisting on one in your own city usually means giving up the specialism.
What Is Different About Search for Canadian Stores?
Three things: you are usually competing against American stores as well as Canadian ones, your market is smaller so search volumes are lower, and buyers care about duty, shipping and returns in a way that changes what your pages must say.
The first is the one that catches people out. A Canadian buyer searching for a product will often be shown American stores, which are larger, older and better established. Competing means being clearly and visibly Canadian, because for many buyers that is the deciding factor once shipping and duty are considered.
The second changes strategy. Lower search volumes mean the broad terms are worth less than they appear, and the specific ones are worth more. A Canadian store chasing the biggest keyword in its category is usually making a mistake that an American store of the same size would not be.
The third changes the pages themselves. Shipping cost, delivery time, duty, currency and return terms are not administrative details for a Canadian buyer. They are the questions, and pages that answer them clearly convert far better than pages that hide them until checkout.
Should Canadian Stores Target the United States Too?
Often yes, and rarely at the same time as fixing the home market. The American market is roughly ten times larger and roughly ten times harder, and entering it badly costs more than waiting.
The sequence that works is to get the Canadian market right first. It is smaller, less competitive, and it is where your existing reviews, mentions and history already count for something.
Once that is producing reliably, the American market becomes a separate project with its own structure, its own content and its own budget. Treating it as a switch you can flip on an existing site is the most common and most expensive mistake here.
The exception is a store whose product only has a real market in the United States, in which case the sequence reverses and the Canadian side becomes secondary.
How Do Remote Engagements Actually Run?
A video call to start, access to your accounts, a shared work log you can open any time, a fortnightly written note, a monthly report and a quarterly review.
Nothing about this requires being in the same room. The main risk with remote work is not distance, it is drift, where weeks pass and neither side is quite sure what the other is doing.
The fortnightly note exists specifically to prevent that. It takes two minutes to read, it says what happened and what is next, and it means you are never more than fourteen days from knowing exactly where things stand.
For clients in Pacific and Atlantic time zones we set a standing call time that works on both ends rather than making you fit an Ontario schedule.
What Should a Canadian Store Report to Its Own Board or Owner?
Organic revenue, not traffic. Then the share of that revenue coming from searches that are not your own brand name, which is the number that shows whether search is actually growing the business.
Branded searches, meaning people typing your company name, will always convert well and will always look good in a report. They are also mostly a result of your other marketing rather than of search work, so counting them as a win is misleading.
The honest measure is revenue from non branded searches. Someone who did not know your name, searched for the thing you sell, found you and bought. That number growing means search is bringing you new customers. That number flat while total organic revenue rises means your other channels are working and search is taking credit.
We report both separately, with the split visible, because it is the fastest way to have an honest conversation about whether the money is doing anything.
Alongside it we report the AI answer visibility, index coverage and the rankings for the terms that already earn. Four numbers, each with a written explanation of what changed and why. That is enough for anyone to make a decision from.
What Does It Cost From Outside Ontario?
Exactly the same. Prices are published, they do not change by province, and there is no travel charge because there is usually no travel.
Work starts at 2,500 Canadian dollars a month, with three levels published openly on the pricing page. The level is set by the size of your catalogue and the competitiveness of your category, not by where you are.
If a project genuinely requires us to travel, we will agree the cost with you in advance. It happens rarely and it is never assumed.