Small business survival is harsh. Roughly 20% fail in the first year, 30% by year two, and about half don't make it past five years. Only around one-third survive to the ten-year mark. These numbers hold fairly consistent across Canada and the US, though specific industries see different curves—restaurants and retail struggle more than professional services or trades. The biggest killers in years one and two are cash flow problems and poor market fit. You launch thinking there's demand, burn through your savings on rent and inventory, and realize too late that your pricing doesn't cover costs or that customers aren't actually willing to pay. By years three to five, the failure mode shifts. Businesses that survive the cash crunch often die from stagnation—they never scale past the owner doing everything, or they can't adapt when a competitor or market shift arrives. Web design and digital presence directly impact these odds. A business with no online visibility in 2025 is essentially invisible to half its potential market. If someone can't find you on Google, verify you're legitimate, or understand what you offer in thirty seconds, they move on. We see this constantly in Ottawa's small business scene—solid operators with terrible websites that look like 2010, or worse, no site at all and just a stale Facebook page. The businesses that last build systems early. That means a website that actually converts visitors, local SEO so you show up for your service area, and enough content or reviews to establish credibility. It also means tracking what's working—if you don't know which lead sources produce paying customers, you're guessing. At Ottawa SEO, we push clients to think of their web presence as infrastructure, not decoration. It's not about a pretty site; it's about a tool that generates predictable leads while you're focused on operations. Businesses that treat digital marketing as optional rarely make it to year ten.