Serving Montreal remotely
SEO and digital marketing for Montreal businesses
SEO and digital marketing for Montreal businesses that must win customers in French and English, planned for both languages at once.
The market
Bilingual, lower cost and full of students
Montreal is the second-biggest metro market in Canada and the only big one where French is the everyday language of business. A business that only convinces in one language looks half there.
Office space, salaries and media cost less than in Toronto or Vancouver, which draws studios, labs and startups. Budgets are often smaller, while people expect a higher standard of craft.
Four large universities keep rentals, moving, phones, food, fitness and entertainment busy with young customers who move often. The yearly arrival of students is a cycle you can plan around.
Big communities with roots in North Africa, Haiti, Lebanon, Italy, Portugal and Latin America mean a third language is often the language of a neighbourhood market.
One customer, two languages
The same customer searches in French and in English
A bilingual resident may look for a restaurant in French and a software term in English. So the page's category decides its language.
Searched in French
- Restaurants, clinics, trades and shops
- Neighbourhoods: Plateau, Mile End, Verdun, NDG
- French-speaking creators and their followers
Searched in English
- Software, technical and business research
- The export market the company sells to
- Buyers a mostly French .ca site can miss
Local businesses
Aerospace, AI, games and great restaurants
Aerospace is the anchor industry. Airframe, engine, simulator and parts makers make Montreal one of the world's big aerospace centres, surrounded by specialist B2B suppliers whose buyers are engineers and procurement teams.
AI research grew into an industry: academic labs, corporate research groups and many applied AI startups. Their market is international from day one, and the local presence is mostly about hiring.
Video games, visual effects and animation employ a big creative workforce, backed by long-standing provincial tax credits. Studios market to publishers, players and future staff at once, and the last group often needs the most attention.
The consumer side has a deep independent restaurant scene, boutique shops and festivals. Hospitality swings hard between a packed summer and a quiet winter.
Health, professional and financial services work under Quebec regulators and language rules, and compete in French first.
How people search
Neighbourhoods, festivals and language by task
How do people in Montreal look for a business like yours? The answer changes what we fix first.
- The task decides the language. Local searches for restaurants, clinics, trades and shops lean heavily French, while software and B2B research is often done in English by the same people.
- Neighbourhood names do the job suburb names do elsewhere. Plateau, Mile End, Griffintown, Rosemont, Verdun, NDG and Old Montreal come up in local searches all the time and are far more precise than the city name.
- Montreal firms that sell abroad can look less relevant to English-speaking export buyers with a .ca domain and a mostly French site. The fix is a site-structure decision, made before the content is written.
- Festivals move search volume a lot. Hospitality, retail, transport and entertainment searches pile into the summer, so an evenly spread yearly budget has the wrong shape.
- Social and video matter more for discovery here than the Canadian average, especially for creative and food businesses. French-speaking creators form their own scene, separate from English Canada's.
Good fit
Industries with the most to gain
Industries we help
- SaaS & Software Products marketingMore qualified trials and demos from people ready to buy, measured all the way to paid conversion.
- Restaurants marketingWin the quick local choice every time. Then move more bookings and orders onto your own channels, where you keep the margin.
- Ecommerce & DTC marketingFind the number holding your store back and fix it. Judge every channel on profit per order, not a revenue chart.
Where to start
Where we’d start
Content & digital PR
A content marketing agency that writes from what only your business knows, so people mention and link to you. We earn coverage with good stories and never buy links.
SEO services
Phone not ringing while competitors show up above you? Our SEO services fix your site, write the pages buyers search for and show you every call and form it brings in.
Reputation & reviews
Online review management that gets you more real reviews without breaking platform rules. We build the asking into your routine and reply properly to criticism.
Web design & development
Our web design agency builds fast, accessible websites you own, planned for Google and for enquiries before design starts.
The rules
Marketing rules to know here
- Quebec's language law applies in full in Montreal, and questions about it come up most here because so many businesses work in both languages. The tighter rules on signs and non-French trademarks affect shopfronts and websites.
- Law 25 privacy rules apply to any organisation handling the personal information of people in Quebec, which is nearly every Montreal business. Build consent, profiling disclosure and breach reporting into your marketing tools from the start.
- Studios and agencies claiming provincial tax credits have eligibility and reporting rules that can affect how work is described in public. That's for your accountant and lawyer. We publish nothing about it without their sign-off.
Sources
Read the rules yourself
These are the laws and regulators behind the rules above. Check the source before you act. This page isn’t legal advice.
- The Office québécois de la langue française, which administers the Charter
- OQLF
- Source: Office québécois de la langue française
- Quebec's private-sector privacy act (CQLR c P-39.1), as modernised by Law 25
- Law 25
- Source: LégisQuébec
Working with us
How we work with you
Native French speakers write the French copy. We hire them for each project and name them in the quote; our own team writes the English. Neither language is a machine translation of the other. If the budget only covers one language done well, we'll help you pick.
We work over video in Eastern Time, in French or English depending on who joins the call.
Need photos or filming in the city? We book a local supplier and quote it separately.
Questions
Common questions from Montreal businesses
Should our site lead in French or English?
If your customers are in Quebec, lead in French. That's what the law and your customers expect. An English site with a French button reads as an outsider.
If you sell abroad and hire locally, you usually need two separate language versions linked with hreflang, so the English site can compete for export buyers without holding the French one back.
We sell software worldwide. Does being in Montreal help or hurt?
It helps with hiring and is neutral for sales, if the site is set up for it. The risk is a Quebec-focused domain and mostly French content that make you look regional to buyers in the US or Europe.
Give each audience its own path. International English content lives in one section, and a local French presence handles credibility and hiring.
How do you handle French content if you are not based here?
We hire native French writers and show that cost in the quote. Nothing goes out as machine translation with a light edit.
Our own team writes in English. When a project is mostly French, the French writer is at the centre of the team from day one.
Does the summer festival season matter to our marketing?
For hospitality, retail, transport and anything visitors use, it's the biggest planning factor of the year. Demand piles into a few months and then drops away.
Spend earlier in the year, get content and profiles ready before the season starts, and build something that keeps winter from being a complete gap.
Do you have an office or team in Montreal?
No. We have no office, address or staff in Montreal.
We work over video calls and hire native French writers for the projects that need them. You'll see who's writing your French copy before work starts.
Want to know what to fix first?
Start with the free checkup. It shows what to fix first on your website, with no sign-up. Want to know who wins the searches that matter in Montreal? Book a call with our specialists.
Prefer to talk it over? Book a free call
Your BOOSTD score improves within 90 days, or your next month is free. After 6 months, more traffic or leads, or we keep working free (up to 6 free months in any 12 months). Read our guarantee
References
Sources for montreal SEO
The official documents and research this page is based on. Platform rules change, so check the source before you act on a detail.
Related
More on marketing in Montreal
Last updated · Published by Zubair Afzal, responsible editor