Is your orillia business losing customers to barrie?
If you're an Orillia business owner, you've probably felt it — customers who should be calling you are going to companies in Barrie instead. Companies that are sometimes farther away, sometimes newer, sometimes no better at the actual work.
Why? It comes down to their web presence, like we’ve talked about before.
Barrie Has a Head Start Online
Barrie is a larger market, which means more businesses have invested in professional web presence earlier. More competition, more investment, better-ranking websites. When someone in the Orillia–Barrie corridor searches for a service without specifying a city, Google often returns Barrie results because those businesses have stronger SEO signals.
It’s not that your business is worse. It's that their website is working harder than yours.
no city in the search
A huge number of Google searches don't include a city at all. People just type "HVAC company" or "landscaping contractor" and trust Google to figure out the geography around them.
Google does figure it out. It uses a combination of your location, your Google Business Profile, and how strong each business's local SEO is to decide who shows up. A Barrie company with a properly optimized site can show up in results for people sitting in Orillia.
What Barrie Businesses Are Doing That You're Not
They have more Google reviews and they're getting them consistently
They have websites built around specific keywords — not just "we offer landscaping services" but "landscaping and excavation in Barrie and Simcoe County"
They have location pages targeting multiple cities
They're active on their Google Business Profile.
None of this is complicated. It's just been done deliberately.
what to do
Own your backyard first.
Your Orillia presence should be airtight before you worry about anything else. That means a proper dedicated Orillia page on your website, consistent citations, and a strong Google Business Profile with recent reviews.
Build location pages for every area you serve.
If you serve Orillia, Severn, Midland, and Collingwood — each of those should have its own page on your site targeting that city by name.
Compete on reviews.
If your main Barrie competitor has 80 reviews and you have 12, that's a winnable gap. Ask every single satisfied customer for a review. Make it easy. Send them the direct link.
Invest in a website that's built to rank.
A template site or an outdated website is not going to outcompete a properly built, SEO-optimized site.
The good news is Orillia is still a smaller, less competitive market than Barrie. That means the bar to rank well here is lower. Businesses that invest in their web presence now, before the market gets more competitive, are going to hold that position for years.
The window to get ahead is open. It won't stay that way forever. Learn more about what SEO looks like for a local business.
Ready to MAKE YOUR WEBSITE?
McGrawesome Design has been building websites for Orillia and Simcoe County businesses for over six years. We're not going to oversell you something you don't need — and we're not going to hand you a template and call it custom.
