Taylor-Smith Design - Get Seen Online

09/19/2026

"Don't wait. The time will never be just right."
— Napoleon Hill

If you've been in business for any length of time, you've probably caught yourself saying one of these:

"I'll update my website when things slow down."
"I'll start asking for reviews after this busy season."
"I'll work on my Google Business Profile once I finish this project."
"I'll start posting on social media when I have more time."

The problem is that business owners are rarely sitting around with extra time on their hands.

There's always another project, another customer, another deadline, another thing competing for your attention.

If we wait until everything is perfect, we often end up waiting forever.

I see this all the time with websites. A business owner knows their site needs work, but they want every photo, every page, and every word to be perfect before they make any changes.

Meanwhile, months go by.
Potential customers continue to visit an outdated website.
Opportunities are missed.

The reality is that progress beats waiting.
A website can be improved over time.
A Google Business Profile can be updated one section at a time.
Reviews can be collected one customer at a time.

Visibility isn't built in a single day. It's built through small actions that compound over weeks, months, and years.

So if there's something you've been putting off because the timing isn't ideal, consider this your reminder:

The perfect time isn't coming.
But today is available.
And that's usually more than enough to get started.

09/17/2026

We’ve all been there.

You receive a quote for a new website and one company wants several thousand dollars while another promises they can have one online this weekend for a few hundred bucks.

If you’re a small business owner trying to watch every dollar, the cheaper option can be incredibly tempting.

Here are some things to think about before committing...

Thinking about choosing the cheapest website option? It might cost you more than you expect. Here’s what often gets left out—and why investing in the right foundation matters for your business.

09/15/2026

Google has introduced something I find rather interesting.

In case you missed it - you can now tell Google which websites you prefer getting information from.

And website owners can add a button that makes it easy for readers to choose them as a Preferred Source. (want to see one? Its at the bottom of GetSeenOnline.ca)

So, say you regularly read advice from a particular website because you trust the person behind it.

You can tell Google that.

When that site has relevant information, Google can give it extra prominence for your searches in places such as Top Stories.

Preferred Sources can also be labelled inside AI Overviews and AI Mode.

Google says people are twice as likely to click a source they've chosen themselves.

I like the idea because it puts a little more weight behind something we've been talking about for years:

Build an audience that remembers who you are.

Search is becoming increasingly personalized, and the businesses that consistently publish useful information give people a reason to recognize their name when it appears again.

Also, apparently we're collecting favourite websites now.

Please choose wisely. Some of us have been writing these things for years. 😂

09/15/2026

🤖 Why would I pay someone to build my website? AI can build one for me.”

Yep. It can.

AI can generate a website surprisingly quickly. Give it information about your business, tell it what you do, choose a look, and you can have something resembling a finished website in very little time.

So why hire us?

Because building the website is only part of the job.

AI can work with the information it has. The quality of the website still depends heavily on the information, direction and decisions that go into it.

It may not discover that the service you barely mentioned is one of your most profitable.

It doesn’t hear the questions your customers ask you over and over again unless someone thinks to include them.

It won’t automatically research how people in Niagara search for your services, decide which locations are worth targeting, or analyze who you’re competing against unless that work is specifically part of the process.

And AI can produce perfectly polished copy that sounds good while saying very little about what makes your business different.

AI is a useful tool. And we do use it for some parts of our work.

There’s also a person behind that tool asking questions, checking information, thinking about SEO, planning your pages, considering how potential customers will use the site and figuring out what your website needs to accomplish for your business.

Because having a website is easy.

Having the **right** website takes some thought.

If you want AI to help build your website, great.

If you want someone to help you figure out what should go into it, how it should be structured, how people will find it and how it can support your business, that’s where we come in.

We’re taking on new website projects starting **September 1**.

🌐 getseenonline.ca

09/14/2026

Want Canadians to Support Canadian? Make It Easy to Find You Online

“Support Canadian” has become more than a slogan printed beside a maple leaf. People are paying closer attention to where businesses are located,

Canadians are looking for Canadian businesses. Here’s how to make your location, ownership and local presence easier to find and verify online.

09/14/2026

Google’s AI answers are getting a little bigger.

For some searches, Google is now automatically opening the full AI Overview instead of waiting for you to click “Show more.”

That can take up quite a bit of space before you reach the regular website results.

For business owners, there’s a useful content lesson here.

When someone lands on one of your helpful pages, get to the useful bit reasonably quickly.

If the page answers “How much does X cost?” somewhere around paragraph eleven after the complete history of X, we have some editing to do. 😂

You can still explain things properly. You can still sound human. You can still show your experience.

Just remember why the person came.

Google says its regular SEO guidance still applies to getting found in its AI search features. There isn’t a magical piece of “AI schema” we’re all supposed to install.

Helpful information, clear pages and content based on something you know remain useful.

Which is reassuring.

I already have enough plugins.

09/14/2026

Please don’t make 47 copies of the same website page and change the city name. 😂

Google’s John Mueller talked about this recently when discussing programmatic SEO, which is a fancy way of saying you can use templates and automation to create lots of pages very quickly.

For local businesses, that often turns into:

“Plumber in St. Catharines.”

Copy.

“Plumber in Niagara Falls.”

Copy.

“Plumber in Welland.”

Copy.

And onward we march through the Golden Horseshoe.

Google already has policies around mass-producing low-value pages, and Mueller added an interesting warning: enough poor-quality pages can affect Google’s confidence in the website as a whole.

Location pages can be useful when there’s something useful to SAY about that location.

Maybe you’ve done projects there. You have local photos, customer reviews, examples, service details or information that someone in that community would find helpful.

Give the page a reason to exist.

AI has made it ridiculously easy to create 100 pages.

Unfortunately, “easy to create” still isn’t an SEO strategy.

09/12/2026

When people look at a successful business, they often see the results.

They see the steady stream of customers, the strong reputation, the great reviews, and the business that seems to be everywhere online.

What they don't always see are the small things happening behind the scenes.

The owner who consistently asks for reviews.
The business that updates its website when information changes.
The company that responds to customer questions promptly.
The regular social media posts.
The ongoing effort to keep business information accurate across the web.

None of those tasks are particularly exciting on their own.

In fact, most of them are pretty ordinary.

But that's the secret.

Business growth is often less about dramatic breakthroughs and more about small, consistent actions repeated over time.

Think about brushing your teeth.
Skipping one day probably won't cause a problem.
Skipping six months will.

Online visibility works much the same way.
One missed social media post isn't a big deal.
Ignoring your website, reviews, and online presence for a year can be.

If you're feeling overwhelmed by marketing, stop looking for the magic solution.
Instead, ask yourself:

What's one small thing I can do consistently?

Because consistency tends to outperform intensity in the long run. And those simple disciplines have a way of turning into impressive results.

09/11/2026

Having had my own run-ins with cancer twice, I’m especially grateful for the research, treatments and advances that exist because people chose to donate and support cancer research.

Those donations matter. They fund the work that gives people more options, more answers and more time with the people they love.

So thank you to everyone who has donated, supported a fundraiser, shared a link or helped in whatever way they could. ❤️

If you’re able to make a donation to this fundraiser, I would be very grateful. Help Marianne and everyone at Dr. Hopkins & Associates Optometry honour someone very dear to them that they lost last November. Every contribution helps.

🎗️ Donate here: https://ofnhs.akaraisin.com/ui/bmcr2026/

And thank you. ❤️

Support My Journey I am participating in the Big Move Cancer Ride to raise money for the Walker Family Cancer Centre. My team is riding in honour of our late co

09/11/2026

I have some mildly inconvenient news for anyone who likes asking:

“What position am I on Google?”

Even Google says that question is getting harder to answer.

Google’s John Mueller explained this week that the old idea of positions 1 through 10 is becoming difficult to map in a useful way.

Look at a Google results page now.

You might see an AI answer, a map, videos, People Also Ask questions, images and regular website results.

So when an SEO report says your average position is 6.2, there’s a lot more happening around that number than there used to be.

I still watch rankings.

I also want to know whether you’re getting seen more often, which searches you’re appearing for, whether people are finding you in Maps and whether all of that visibility is bringing useful people to your business.

Because being able to proudly announce that you’re NUMBER FOUR ON GOOGLE sounds lovely.

I’d rather know whether number four is paying the bills. 😂