Where we work
Across North America, with four markets we know street by street.
The method is identical everywhere, because the Map Pack works the same way everywhere. Our deepest market knowledge is Metro Vancouver, so those are the only cities we have written real pages for.
Digital Handshake Media is headquartered in Surrey, British Columbia, and works with local service businesses across Canada and the United States, including Seattle, Los Angeles, San Diego, New York, Miami, Tampa, Orlando, Jacksonville, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Austin and San Antonio. Dedicated market pages exist for Surrey, Vancouver, Burnaby and Langley because those are the grids we know in the most detail.
Metro Vancouver market pages
Surrey
Six town centres across 316 square kilometres. The Centre-First Framework, and why nobody wins the whole city.
Read →Vancouver
Density erases proximity advantage, so the market is decided on review economics. Five zones compared.
Read →Burnaby
Central enough to reach everywhere, and to be reached from everywhere. Four centres, one trade-off.
Read →Langley
Two Langleys, one search result. Low density means proximity still wins, which makes it winnable.
Read →Also served across Metro Vancouver and the Fraser Valley
Richmond, Delta, White Rock, Coquitlam and the Tri-Cities, New Westminster, North and West Vancouver, Maple Ridge, Abbotsford and Chilliwack. There is no page for these yet for the same reason there is no page for every industry: a templated city page is worse than no page, and we would rather give you the same depth on a call.
United States
We work across US markets including Seattle, Los Angeles, San Diego, New York, Miami, Tampa, Orlando, Jacksonville, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Austin and San Antonio. Our published case study is a San Diego criminal defence practice. Time zones are a scheduling problem, not a strategic one: the profile, the grid and the ranking factors behave identically.
How Metro Vancouver's markets differ from each other
The three ranking factors are constant. What changes between these four cities is which one is doing the work, and that changes the entire shape of a campaign.
| Market | Density | What decides it | Realistic horizon |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vancouver | Highest | Review depth and recency. Proximity barely differentiates when competitors are on the same block | Two to three quarters in contested categories |
| Burnaby | High in Metrotown, moderate elsewhere | Mixed. Metrotown behaves like Vancouver; Edmonds behaves like the suburbs | One to two quarters |
| Surrey | Moderate, spread across six centres | Proximity, heavily. Which town centre you sit in decides most of it | One to two quarters per centre |
| Langley | Lowest | Proximity. A modest review profile can still take a grid | Often within the first 12-week window |
That table is also a budgeting document. A Langley trade and a downtown Vancouver practice need different amounts of the same work, which is exactly what the pricing page describes. If you want the mechanism rather than the conclusions, start with what the Map Pack is and the 2026 ranking factors.
Why municipal boundaries barely matter
The single most common misconception we correct on assessment calls is that a business competes against the other businesses in its city. Google does not know or care where Surrey ends and Langley begins. It calculates distance from the searcher, which means your real competitive set is whoever is physically nearby. Frequently including businesses in a municipality you have never thought about.
A Cloverdale roofer's genuine competition includes Langley City. A Metrotown clinic competes with East Vancouver and New Westminster simultaneously. This is why the first thing a grid scan produces is usually surprise: the businesses holding your service area are rarely the ones you had been benchmarking against, and the ones you worry about are often not reachable from where the searches are actually happening.
It also reframes the strategic question. Not “how do I beat the other firms in my city” but “which specific geography can I hold, and who currently holds it.” That is a smaller, more answerable question, and it is usually a cheaper one.
How far coverage realistically extends
There is no fixed radius, and any agency quoting one is guessing. Coverage falls away as a function of competitor density rather than kilometres: in a sparse area a business can hold grid points ten kilometres out, while in a dense commercial strip the fall-off can start within a few blocks. The same business, same profile, same effort, produces a completely different shaped map depending on what is around it.
This is measurable rather than debatable, which is the entire argument for scanning a baseline before spending anything. It converts a conversation about ambition into a picture, and the picture usually settles the budget question by itself. See what the Map Pack is for the mechanism, or request the free audit to see your own.
Why we don't publish thirty city pages
Duplicated location pages with the city name swapped are one of the oldest tactics in local SEO and one of the most reliably useless. They create thin-content problems, they do not convert, and they signal to anyone reading carefully that the agency does not know the market. We publish four because we can defend four.
Next step
Find out what your grid actually looks like
The assessment includes a read on your real coverage and who currently holds it, wherever you are.
Or call 778-200-8661 · One client per industry, per area · No guaranteed rankings