The client
Bélair Aménagement is a landscaping and paving company based in Gatineau, serving the greater Outaouais region. With 15+ years in business, they had a strong reputation built on word-of-mouth — but essentially zero digital footprint. No website, no Google Business Profile optimization, no structured way for new prospects to find them online.
In a market where homeowners increasingly start their contractor search on Google, being invisible online meant leaving entire market segments to competitors who had weaker work but better websites.
SEO & content strategy
The strategy centered on local search domination. I mapped every high-intent search query in the Outaouais landscaping market — "interlocking Gatineau," "landscaping Aylmer," "terracing Chelsea" — and built a content architecture designed to capture them systematically.
The approach is what I call a local SEO cluster: a hub-and-spoke model where main service pages link to city-specific landing pages, each with genuinely local content (not generic copy with the city name swapped in).
The content architecture
- 5 core service pages: paving, terracing, landscaping, retaining walls & stairs, maintenance
- City-specific landing pages for Gatineau, Aylmer, Chelsea, Cantley, and Val-des-Monts
- Portfolio gallery with before/after project photos organized by service type
- Per-service FAQ sections with Schema.org FAQPage markup
- Fully bilingual end-to-end — essential in the Outaouais market
The build
The site was built as a fully static HTML site — no CMS overhead, no plugin vulnerabilities, no database. For a local service business that updates content infrequently, this is the right call. It loads fast, ranks well, and costs nothing to maintain.
I built a custom Google Apps Script backend for the contact form that logs every inquiry to a Google Sheet with lead scoring, sends branded email notifications, and auto-replies to prospects with a confirmation — all serverless.
Technical SEO
- Full Schema.org markup: LocalBusiness, Service, FAQPage, BreadcrumbList per page
- WebP image conversion with lazy loading — PageSpeed score 90+
- XML sitemap with bilingual hreflang alternates
- Google Business Profile optimization with consistent NAP data
- Per-page optimized meta descriptions and title tags for CTR
Results
belairamenagement.com went from zero to indexed and ranking within weeks. The site now generates a steady stream of quote requests from homeowners across the Outaouais — leads that would have gone to competitors simply because Bélair didn't exist online before.
The local SEO cluster approach means that as Google's local algorithms continue to favour hyper-local content, Bélair's position strengthens over time rather than eroding. Each city page builds authority independently while contributing to the overall domain's topical relevance.
Running a local service business with no online presence — or a bad one? Let's fix that.