We Ran Our Playbook on Ourselves.
The hardest client we’ve ever had: us. No retainer, no extra budget, just the same strategy we sell, applied to digital6ix.ca. Six months later, Google ranks us #1 in Canada for the terms agencies fight over, and Perplexity, Gemini, and Google’s AI Mode name us when people ask who the best is. Here’s the whole dashboard, including the one number that doesn’t flatter us.
Every prospect quietly wonders the same thing about agencies: if you’re so good at this, why can’t I find you? Fair question. So instead of answering it with adjectives, we’re answering it with our own dashboards, the growth, the AI citations, the AI answers that name us, and the one score we could have easily left out. And one more thing: every chart on this page comes from Semrush, a third-party tool anyone can access, and every AI screenshot is a live query you can run yourself. Nothing here is self-reported. Pull up digital6ix.ca in Semrush, or ask any AI engine the same question we did, and you’ll see the same story.
The proof : organic search
A domain born in 2023, outranking agencies twice its age
Digital 6ix only opened its doors in 2023, so there’s no aged domain authority propping any of this up. In late 2025 we started treating ourselves like a client: same site rebuild, same content system, same schema discipline we bill for. Six months later the keyword profile had gone from a flat line to more than 700 ranking terms, with the whole curve still pointing up.
The proof : position one
#1 in Canada for the terms agencies fight over
Ranking an agency for agency keywords is the hardest version of this game, because every competitor does SEO for a living. Out of 541 tracked organic positions in Canada, these are some of the searches where we hold the top spot.
Positions and search volumes from Semrush Organic Research, Canadian database, July 2026. Rankings move; these were ours at time of writing, and you can check any of them with a search right now.
The proof : AI answer engines
Ask the AI engines yourself. They name us.
SEO used to end at Google. Now buyers ask an AI. So we asked the three that matter most, who are the best AI search optimization agencies in Toronto, and let them answer in their own words. Perplexity, Gemini, and Google’s AI Mode each named Digital 6ix, two of them at the top of the list. We didn’t feed them anything. This is what an unprompted answer looks like when your GEO foundation is done right.
Listed us first among Toronto GEO agencies, calling out entity optimization and structuring content so LLMs name and recommend the business.
Placed us at the top of its “Dedicated & Core GEO Specialists” group, describing our combined GEO plus social growth model and risk-free ROI guarantee.
Named us in its shortlist of the best AI search agencies in Toronto for 2026, highlighting our AI visibility audit and GEO across ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity.
The proof : AI citations
Behind those answers: 51 citations across 33 pages
Getting named by an AI isn’t luck. It happens when your pages are the ones AI tools quote from. The same pages ranking on Google are getting picked up across AI platforms: 51 citations across 33 of our pages, with mentions tracked in Canada, the US, and India. The audience reached through those AI answers is estimated at 94K people a month.
Semrush rates our AI visibility 15/100: Low. We’re showing it anyway.
That score compares us against every competitor in the category, including brands with decade-old authority and teams of fifty. Ours was effectively zero nine months ago. We’d rather show you an honest 15 that’s climbing than a polished screenshot with the hard part cropped out. When we publish a case study, this is the standard: the whole dashboard, not the highlight reel.
The method
The same five moves we sell
Fix the foundation first
We migrated the site to AWS Lightsail and tuned performance until PageSpeed stopped being an excuse. Slow sites don’t rank, and they don’t get cited. Ours had to be fast before anything else mattered.
Rebuild every page that earns money
Service pages, the case study hub, the portfolio, all rebuilt from scratch with clear answers near the top of every page, because that’s what both Google and AI tools lift from.
Structured data on everything
Every page carries schema markup: the business, the services, the case studies, the FAQs. Machines can’t cite what they can’t parse, so we made ourselves the easiest agency in Toronto to parse. That’s why the AI engines can name us with confidence.
Publish proof, not promises
The content engine here is case studies with real dashboard numbers, the exact pages you’re reading now. They rank, they earn citations, and they do the selling before the first call.
Win Toronto first
Local pages, the Google Business Profile, and reviews, treated with the same discipline we apply for local clients. Most of those 700+ keywords are the ones a Toronto business owner actually types.
Good to know
Frequently Asked Questions
Did you write the descriptions the AI engines give of you?
No. Perplexity, Gemini and Google’s AI Mode build those answers by synthesizing many public sources, and they decide on their own which agencies to name. Because our pages are clear and well structured, the engines find our framing and reuse it, which is exactly what Generative Engine Optimization is meant to do. The results also shift between runs, so we date each screenshot and tell you to try the query yourself rather than take our word for it.
Why publish a score labeled “Low”?
Because hiding it would make every other number on this page worth less. The score is relative to long-established competitors, and nine months ago ours was zero. We think the direction matters more than the label, and we think you should judge an agency by whether it shows you the whole dashboard.
Are these numbers estimates?
The charts on this page come from Semrush, which is third-party data and says so in the captions. That cuts both ways: Semrush figures are estimates, but they’re also publicly checkable, anyone with access to the tool can look up digital6ix.ca and see these exact stats. The AI screenshots are live queries you can run yourself. And unlike anyone else’s numbers, we also hold our own Google Search Console and analytics, and we’ll happily walk you through the real thing on a call.
How long did this take?
The serious push started in late 2025. The keyword growth you see happened over roughly six months, and the AI citations built over about nine. No shortcuts, no bought links, and no ad spend behind the organic numbers.
Isn’t it easier to rank your own site?
Harder, honestly. “Marketing agency” keywords in Toronto are some of the most competitive local terms there are, because every competitor is, by definition, a marketing agency. If the playbook works here, it works in your category.
Can you do this for my business?
That’s the point of publishing it. Same foundation, same structure, same content system, mapped to your market instead of ours. A strategy call is where we figure out what that looks like for you.
You’ve just seen our dashboard. Let’s look at yours.
Book a free 30 minute call. We’ll pull up your numbers together, compare them against what you’ve seen here, and tell you honestly what we’d change first.