Research · Technical SEO

What we found in
27,080 home pages.

Technical SEO advice is usually written for large sites with thousands of pages. Small business sites fail on simpler things, and the same few things over and over. We checked the home pages of the GTA's business websites to see which ones, and how often. Below is what we found, what Google's own documentation says about each, and how to check your site in two minutes.

Published 2026-11-09 · Formory Marketing Group

In August 2026 we surveyed 49,994 GTA business listings. 34,180 had a website address; we checked all 34,180, and 27,080 opened and could be read. For each, we loaded the home page once, read its HTML without running scripts, and checked it against the list below.

That method has limits, and they matter. It sees only the home page, not the service or contact pages behind it. It cannot see anything a script adds after the page loads, so a form or an analytics tag inserted by a builder's script would be counted as missing. Treat the form and analytics figures as the share of home pages where these were not in the page code, not as proof that the business has neither.

Of the 27,080 home pages that opened, most common first:

Another 197 home pages had no title at all. The full survey, by city and trade, is in our GTA small business website report.

Strictly, these two are not SEO. But they decide whether search traffic turns into work, and whether you can tell. A home page with no form leaves visitors one option, the phone. A site with no analytics tag cannot tell you how many people arrived or which pages they read. 6,121 home pages had neither.

The gap is wider in some trades. Of 942 medical clinic home pages that opened, 58% had no form. Of 4,882 trade home pages (plumbers, HVAC, renovation, roofing and similar), 40% had no form and 46% no analytics tag.

Check: open your home page, right-click and choose View Page Source, then search for “<form” and for “googletagmanager”. Fix: a short form (name, what you need, how to reply) on the home page and the contact page, and a Google Analytics property set up in your business's own account.

Titles. The page title is the first source Google lists for the blue link in search results. Google's documentation asks for a title on every page, distinct from your other pages, descriptive and concise, and warns against vague titles such as "Home". There is no length limit, but long titles are cut to fit the screen. If the title is missing or half-empty, Google may build the link from a heading or other prominent text instead. 43% of home pages we read named no GTA city or region in the title, so a searcher could not tell from the link where the business works. A title like "Emergency Plumber in Mississauga | Company Name" says both what and where.

Meta descriptions. Google builds the short text under the link mainly from the page itself, and sometimes uses the meta description when it describes the page better. It asks for a short, specific summary that is unique to each page. 27% of home pages had none, which leaves the snippet entirely to Google.

H1 headings. Google lists the main heading among the sources for the title link, and says the order of headings does not matter to it. The H1 is for the reader first: one clear line that says what you do. 20% of home pages had none.

Check: search Google for “site:yourdomain.ca” and read your own results as a stranger would. In the page source, search for “<title”, “name="description"” and “<h1”. Fix: rewrite each in plain words; most builders have a field for the title and description on every page. For service pages, see how to write a service page.

Structured data is a short block of code that states facts about the business in a form machines read without guessing. For a local business, Google documents LocalBusiness markup: it tells Google details such as hours and contact information, which can be used for business details in Search and Maps. The required properties are the name and address; recommended ones include telephone, the site address, opening hours, coordinates and price range. Google recommends JSON-LD and the most specific type that fits (its own examples include Restaurant and Store). Two cautions from the same documentation: markup does not guarantee any feature in results, and review ratings belong only on sites that review other businesses, not on your own.

35% of home pages had no structured data of any kind.

Check: paste your address into Google's Rich Results Test. Fix: add a LocalBusiness block to the home page with the same name, address and phone number as your listings, then run the test again and fix any errors.

Two faults that dominated a decade ago are now uncommon. Only 942 home pages (3.5%) still had no HTTPS, and 626 (2.3%) had no mobile layout. Google announced HTTPS as a lightweight ranking signal in 2014, and its page experience guidance still asks whether pages are served securely. What it costs you with visitors is covered in what "Not secure" costs a local business.

Mobile matters more than the small number suggests. Google indexes and ranks the mobile version of a site's content and recommends responsive design, with the same content on phones as on computers. A site that only works on a desktop is being judged on its weakest version; see why your website fails on a phone.

Check: type your address with “http://” and see whether it switches to “https://”; open the site on your phone and try to reach the phone number and the form with one thumb.

These are not ranking factors in Google's documentation. They are signs that nobody is looking after the site. 21% of home pages had a copyright line two or more years old. 1,654 were built on a platform that is no longer maintained, 1,491 still used markup from the 2000s such as font tags, and 1,186 loaded a years-old version of jQuery.

To a visitor, an old year can look like a business that has closed. An abandoned builder means the next problem may have no fix at all. Check: scroll to the footer, and ask whoever built the site what it runs on and who can still log in. Fix: the year is a five-minute edit. A dead platform is a rebuild; ours are $990 for up to six pages, paid after delivery.

Of 27,080 home pages, 3,033 (11%) failed none of the checks above. Most of the fixes above are small edits, not projects. Run your own address through our free website check for the same checks in a few seconds, or compare your trade and city in the full report.

• Google Search Central — Influencing your title links
• Google Search Central — Control your snippets (meta descriptions)
• Google Search Central — SEO Starter Guide (headings, titles, descriptions)
• Google Search Central — Local business (LocalBusiness) structured data
• Google Search Central Blog — HTTPS as a ranking signal (2014)
• Google Search Central — Understanding page experience
• Google Search Central — Mobile-first indexing best practices
• Formory GTA small business website report (our survey of 49,994 listings)

Or call (416) 989-3208. One of us answers; there is no sales team.

What "Not Secure" Costs a Local Business · Why 8% of GTA Business Websites Fail on a Phone · How to Write a Service Page That Actually Ranks · Website Copywriting: What to Write on Each Page · Why Is My Website So Slow? How to Check and Fix It

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