Canadian site ranking well in states
-
Hello, one of my clients has a site that ranks well in Google.com but is a Canadian company and therefore has a canadian address. They have not yet done any local optimization so if I was to add them to local directories, would that hurt their ranks in the states or anywhere else?
-
It's probably set in GWMT to the default geo targeting in USA.
FYI - I have have excellent success with .ca sites ranking in Canada. The competition is SO much less than in the USA. It takes very little work to get a .ca domain ranked in google.ca, but then again the traffic is just not there.
You say it is a Canadian company, but is it a local type business or is is global, do you ship to the US?
If you ship to the US you will find a lot more business there and ranking in Google.com in the US is much more beneficial. If you do ship to the US, then I would suggest not being obvious about the fact that you are a Canadian company or people will be more hesitant to purchase from you. But in reality a Canadian company can easily ship to the US unlike some further countries where shipping cost is much higher and time takes much longer. It all depends on your type of business.
-
Why would adding the site in local directories hurt the US ranking? Doesn't make sense to me unless you spammed the heck out of a few hundred Canadian directories.
An additional thought...some people believe that getting backlinks from dot ca's will benefit you more on G.ca than G.com. I don't know that anyone has tested it, but it makes sense to me.
-
Have you checked in Google Webmaster Tools where this site is set to target?
-
From what you say it seems you are talking of a canadian site that does not have .ca territorial extension.
In fact, that way, it would have been ranking for the Canadian Google and probably not so good for the .com/USA one.
And it seems that never the site, being probably, a generic domain (.com, .net...), has been geographically targeted toward Canada.
I say this because geotargeting seems an objective for your client.
If it is so, then optimizing the site with geotargeting signals (and saying to Google that your market is Canada), then there is a chance the rankings in google.com will start to be lost
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Is having a Video important for SEO or is it the time-on-site that's important?
Assuming it's a relevant video, is having a video on your landing page considered a good SEO tactic in and of itself? Meaning, when google crawls the page, will they say "good job, there's a video here." Or is having a video on your landing page something that helps you improve on other ranking factors like increased time on site? So, it would not be the video itself google "likes" but rather the increased User Experience factors that went up. (Crossing my fingers I explained this well enough) Thanks for any input, Ruben
Image & Video Optimization | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
Switching from ranked PDF to normal page ...
Hi folks, I have a project which is ranking well for specific product-keywords. The problem is, that the ranking pages are PDF files of those products (datasheets). But i do have a normal (html) pages for each product as well. Each of these pages has grade a for the specific keyword and is well crawled, etc. How can I urge Google to "switch" from these PDF files to the specific html pages. I was trying this by testing it robots.txt to disallow to index the PDF file (I tested it with one for first). I would add rel=nofollow to the link to the PDF on the specifi product html page (?) ... Any ideas? Seb
Image & Video Optimization | | TheHecksler0 -
Should I delete youtube videos when moving to Wistia (or other on-site platform)?
One of my new clients recently built a site that has a great potential for ranking product pages with video rich snippets. Each product page has a single video, but they are currently hosted on youtube and embedded using Youtube iframes. Overall the videos aren't a great fit for Youtube, and we have decided to move the product videos to Wistia. (Much thanks to Phil Nottingham for his answers in this post, and his overall insights on video SEO in general). So what is the best way to make sure we get original credit for the video? I'm planning to take down all the product videos from the Youtube account as soon as we switch the embeds on the site. Is that enough?
Image & Video Optimization | | Sirmontegu1 -
Is it possible for a web site to get 'Pigeon Holed' geographically?
I have a site that sells widgets. It's called widgets.com. I want to sell widgets locally in 10 different geographic areas so my url structure/kw goal is as follows: URL KW I Hope to Rank For
Image & Video Optimization | | BrianJGomez
widgets.com 'Widgets'
widgets.com/houston/ 'Houston Widgets'
widgets.com/dallas/ 'Dallas Widgets' So I've optimized my site accordingly where my home page has no Geo optimization and my 'city pages' are all geo optimized, complete with hcard brick and mortar addresses that are all legit offices that sell our widgets. My problem, is that despite all that, my home page (which again, is not geo-optimized) is now ranking for 'Dallas Widgets'. This is messing up my strategy and very frustrating because the home page does not have any information Dallas residents will find helpful about widgets. So my question is, am I better off just owning this 'Dallas' label is forcing on my site and just optimize the home page for dallas and keep the rest of the 9 cities in their directories? Does anyone have any experience with getting pigeonholed geographically speaking?0 -
Any special way to rank a youtube vid in google page 1 for a kw?
I've failed to rank a youtube video before , I don't know why.. but do you guys have something that can help me to rank a youtube video to google page one? backlinks? If yes, then what type of backlinks? Just like backlinking articles and websites? thx for the input guys
Image & Video Optimization | | martino8880 -
Google maps places - 3rd party review site's link not showing up
An example: https://plus.google.com/103109773317419974914/about?gl=us&hl=en This doctors place shows up with reviews from yahoo.com, citysearch.com and local.com. Our business has reviews from yelp, citysearch.com and couple of other places. What am I missing and how I can make sure those links show up? Thanks RYWwZZk
Image & Video Optimization | | nashk0 -
Is it Possible to submit multiple sites on google places with single phone number? If you then please tell me how?
Is it Possible to submit multiple sites on Google places with single phone number? If you then please tell me how? Because i have multiple site but i have one phone number and i want to add all of my sites in google places. But i don't know how it is possible. Please help me to sort it out this problem. Thanks
Image & Video Optimization | | KLLC0 -
Multiple use of a YouTube video on site
Hi I want to add the same video (that is hosted on YouTube) onto a website on more than one page. Is it ok to use the same same video link in each instance? Are there any benefits in doing this? Are there any detrimental effects from an SEO perspective? Thank you
Image & Video Optimization | | PH2920