A good service area is the set of communities where you make the most money per hour of your crew's time, not the largest area you're willing to drive to. In Markham, with its mix of older central neighbourhoods, newer subdivisions in the north and east, heritage villages and business parks, the right answer is almost always smaller and more deliberate than owners expect. This guide walks you through choosing it with your own records.
Step 1: Pull your last 100 jobs by postal code
Answer first: your history already tells you where your business works best. Export or write down your last 100 jobs, or as many as you have from the past year, with three details for each: the first three characters of the postal code (the forward sortation area), the invoice value and whether it was a new or repeat customer.
Group them by postal area and add up the revenue. Most owners find that a surprisingly small number of areas produce most of the money. That cluster is your real centre of gravity, and it's often not where you'd guess.
While you're at it, note which community names customers use. One customer might say Milliken Mills, another just Milliken, a third gives a street near Kennedy and Steeles. These are the words they'll type into Google, so they'll shape your pages later.
Step 2: Measure drive time, not distance
Answer first: in Markham, a short drive on the map can be a slow one at the wrong hour. Highway 7, the 404 and 407 corridors and the main north-south arterials all move very differently at 8 a.m., noon and 4 p.m.
For each postal area in your list, estimate the drive time from where your crew starts the day, at the time you usually travel. Then estimate the round trip. A job worth $400 that costs 90 minutes of round-trip driving is worth less to you than a $300 job ten minutes away.
A simple rule of thumb: divide the average job value in each area by the total hours it takes (travel plus work). That gives you revenue per crew-hour by area, which is a far better guide than distance.
Step 3: Score each community
Answer first: a simple score helps you compare areas without overthinking. Give each community you're considering a mark out of five on four questions:
| Question | What a 5 looks like |
|---|---|
| Job value | Your typical ticket here is higher than elsewhere |
| Volume | You already get regular jobs here |
| Travel | Under 20 minutes from base at your usual hours |
| Fit | The housing or building type matches your best work |
For fit, think about what the community is made of. Many of the planned communities in the City's secondary plans, such as Cornell, Box Grove and Wismer Commons, have younger houses and townhouses. Established areas such as Markville or the Risebrough plans have older homes more likely to need replacements. Langstaff Gateway and Markham Centre lean toward apartments and mixed-use buildings. Business-park areas such as Woodbine North or the South Don Mills plans are commercial customers entirely.
Add the scores up. Your core is the top four to eight communities, ideally next to each other.
A worked example
Imagine a two-van plumbing company based near Woodbine Avenue and 16th Avenue:
- Cathedraltown and Berczy: close, newer homes, steady small jobs. Scores 16 out of 20.
- Unionville and South Unionville: close, mix of older and newer homes, higher tickets. Scores 18.
- Cachet and Buttonville: close, good tickets, some commercial work nearby. Scores 17.
- Box Grove and Cornell: 25 to 35 minutes at peak, fewer past jobs. Scores 10.
- Milliken: reachable, but heavy competition from Scarborough firms. Scores 11.
The core is the first three groups. Box Grove, Cornell and Milliken stay in the "accept jobs, don't market yet" zone.
Step 4: Set your Google service area within the rules
Answer first: your Google profile should reflect where you genuinely serve, and stay within Google's rules. Google lets service-area businesses set the areas they serve by city or postal code. Its guidelines say that if customers don't visit your address, you should hide it and use a service area instead.
A few practical points:
- Setting a service area does not, by itself, make you rank everywhere in it. Distance still matters.
- Listing every city in the GTA looks unrealistic and won't help.
- Don't create extra profiles at addresses where you don't have a staffed location. That breaks the guidelines and can get profiles suspended.
Step 5: Build pages only for the core
Answer first: write a page for a community only when you can say something specific about your work there. For your core, that might be two to four pages, each covering one community or a natural cluster.
A useful community page includes the types of homes or buildings you work on there, a few short descriptions of real jobs (no customer names without permission), realistic arrival times and photos you took in the area. It doesn't repeat the same paragraph with a new place name. Our local search service is built around this approach.
Step 6: Expand in rings, not leaps
Answer first: once the core produces steady work, add neighbouring communities one or two at a time. Move from your core to the next-highest-scoring area that touches it, give it three months, and check whether job value and volume justify the drive.
Nearby cities follow the same rule. For many Markham firms, the closest additions are the parts of Scarborough and North York just south of Steeles, Richmond Hill to the west along Highway 7, and Whitchurch-Stouffville to the north-east. Thornhill is worth thinking about separately because it crosses into Vaughan.
Common mistakes
- Planning from where you live, not where you start the day. If the van leaves a yard in a business park, that's your base.
- Treating the rural east as next door. Hamlets such as Locust Hill or Cedar Grove can mean long round trips.
- Chasing the busiest-looking area. High search volume often means high competition. A quieter community you can own may pay better.
- Never revisiting the plan. Re-score every six months with fresh job data.
Where to go from here
You can do this exercise on a single sheet of paper in an afternoon. If you want help turning it into pages, a profile and campaigns, see our services, read about each part of the city on the areas page, or check how the plan affects cost on our pricing page. We're a marketing service, not a contractor; your trade work stays entirely with you.
Frequently asked questions
How many communities should a small trade target at first?
For a one- to three-van business, a core of four to eight neighbouring communities is usually plenty. You can still accept jobs outside it; you just don't spend marketing money there yet.
Can I list my home address on Google if I work from home?
You can verify a profile at a home address, but Google's guidelines say service-area businesses that don't serve customers at that address should hide it and set a service area instead.
Should I include Toronto in my Markham service area?
Only the parts just across Steeles that you can reach quickly and already get jobs from. Adding all of Toronto puts you up against far more competitors and usually drives up ad costs.