Where we work
Across North America, with seven 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 and the Fraser Valley, so those are the 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. In British Columbia, the deepest coverage is across Metro Vancouver and the Fraser Valley, with dedicated market pages for Surrey, Vancouver, Burnaby, Langley, Delta, Coquitlam and Abbotsford because those are the grids we know in the most detail. The method is identical everywhere; only the competitive map changes.
Metro Vancouver and Fraser Valley 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 →Delta
North Delta, Ladner and Tsawwassen, separated by real farmland, not just distance. Three markets, not one.
Read →Coquitlam
Split by elevation, from flat Maillardville to Burke Mountain, and tied into the Tri-Cities catchment.
Read →Abbotsford
The Fraser Valley's biggest city, mostly farmland, and its own search market outside Metro Vancouver.
Read →Choosing an agency rather than a market? See SEO agency in Vancouver and SEO agency in Canada for how we work and what it costs.
Also served across Metro Vancouver and the Fraser Valley
Richmond, White Rock, Port Coquitlam and Port Moody, New Westminster, North and West Vancouver, Maple Ridge, Mission 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 our BC markets differ from each other
The three ranking factors are constant. What changes between these 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 |
| Coquitlam | High in the City Centre, low on Burke Mountain | Split. The SkyTrain core is decided on reviews; the northeast still rewards proximity | One to two quarters, longer in the core |
| 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 |
| Delta | Low, split by farmland | Proximity, sharpened. Farmland between the three towns narrows the competitive set before anything else | Often within the first 12-week window per town |
| Abbotsford | Low outside the Clearbrook core | Proximity, and being a market regional campaigns skip. Thinner competition than the city's size suggests | Often within the first 12-week window outside the core |
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 seven because we can defend seven.
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 778-200-8644 · One client per industry, per area. No guaranteed rankings.