For the small-business owner in the Garden City who is good at the work but keeps watching other businesses turn up first on Google. This free evening in St. Catharines covers the handful of things that genuinely help you get found, in plain language, with nothing technical assumed and nothing to buy.
If you run a business in St. Catharines and you want more local people to find you when they search, this evening is built for you. Get found online in St. Catharines on Wednesday, September 23, 2026 from 6:30 to 8:30 PM is a free, in-person seminar on local search engine optimization (SEO), which is simply the work of helping search engines show your business to the people nearby who are already looking for what you do.
St. Catharines is the Garden City and the largest in Niagara, which is a double-edged thing for a small business. There are plenty of customers, and there is plenty of competition for their attention. Showing up well in local search is how a smaller shop holds its own against a bigger one. I have taught business owners across Ontario how to do exactly that, and the ones who win at it are not the most technical people in the room. They are the ones who give it one honest evening.
I want to be straight with you up front. Getting found locally is not a dark art, and it is not a monthly fee you owe a stranger forever. It is a short list of learnable tasks. I have been building and teaching on the web since 1996, I am completing an MA at Royal Roads University, and the most useful thing I do in a room is strip away the mystery so the work becomes yours to keep.
How the evening runs
It is two hours, beginner-friendly, and hands-on wherever I can make it so. Bring your phone or a laptop if you have one handy. We start with what “showing up in search” really means, including the little map with three businesses at the top that almost everyone sees and rarely questions. Then we work through Google Business Profile, which is the one change that does the most for the most businesses, and I will show you how to claim yours and fill it in the right way.
From there we cover the quiet problems that cost you without announcing themselves: your business name, address, and phone number not matching across the web, how reviews work and how to ask for them without the awkwardness, and the plain-English basics of what your own pages should say so a search engine and a real human both understand who you are. We finish with a simple monthly routine to keep it all healthy.
What you will leave with
You will leave with a one-page local-SEO checklist you can act on the next morning. The evening is free. If you would like a seat, send me a note through the contact form and I will hold one for you. The venue is to be announced, and your registration is how I let you know exactly where to come.
By the end of the evening, you will be able to
- Read a local search result and understand why some businesses appear and others do not
- Claim and fill in your Google Business Profile so you turn up when neighbours search
- Check that your name, address, and phone number match everywhere they appear online
- Ask happy customers for reviews in a way that feels natural rather than pushy
- Follow a short monthly routine that keeps you findable without taking over your week
Come for the evening, leave with a plan, and start being easier to find the very next day.