.CA or .COM?
-
If a real estate client of mine only wants to rank in the Google.ca, Yahoo.ca, and Bing.ca listings (doesn't care about the U.S. search engines), would it be advantageous of me to have her domain name by .ca and forget the .com?
She lives here in Phoenix, is originally Canadian, and goes back and forth. Interestingly, when searching in Google.ca, most domain names or .com. Is this because these people are trying to target both search engines?
Thank you!
Chris Gray
-
Well, even the Moz staff/associates don't seem to be agreeing on this one - it's definitely an unusual situation. There were some calls to try a .ca domain, but since you see so many .com's ranking, we're not sure that's going to have much of an impact.
Part of the problem is that real estate is a really competitive market for SEO, and many of the agents targeting Phoenix-related properties will also be local. My guts says that, if your client can only take on Canadian customers, then push the Canadian "local" signals hard, and don't worry about the Phoenix signals as much (except for content and keyword targeting).
-
No, you're not crazy
It's basically two local SEO problems in one, and I'm honestly not sure where the sweet spot is. If you overoptimize for Phoenix, you may hurt your standing on Google.ca.I suspect you have to keyword optimize for Phoenix/Arizona, but geo-target for Canada. Since Canada pulls a lot of .com results, though, you can afford to have some Phoenix-based geo-cues. I'm not sure anyone can tell you the perfect balance. I'm going to see if the broader Moz team has experience with this issue.
-
-
Peter,
True, it is a task. But there quite a few competitors in this area if you search for 'phoenix real estate,' 'arizona real estate,' etc. in google.ca.
It seems like I need to show the search engines that my goal is to rank in the Canadian search engines, but that I'm local in Phoenix. Therefore, I need to do heavy-duty local optimization for Phoenix.
Does this sound like it would work or am I making things up?
-
I would probably recommend doing both the .com (since it's more universally accepted, esp. here in the USA) as well as the .ca (since you could probably script it with French, English and so forth for local people who know your realtor).
Additonally, having reciprocal backlinks will ease the transition for those who are local or snowbirds who like the sunniness of AZ.
Best of luck Chris!
-
So, just to clarify, she's basically looking for Canadians who want to buy property in Arizona? Wow, that's quite a niche, and not an easy SEO problem. You're crossing 2 geo-targeting streams, in a sense.
-
I am trying to have her rank for: Arizona Real Estate, Arizona Homes for Sale, and Phoenix Real Estate (all in Google.ca, Yahoo.ca, and Bing.ca)
-
What keywords is she trying to rank for? This will help us answer the question
-
Her business is located officially in Scottsdale, AZ. She does have an office in her home in Calgary, Canada, but doesn't want people to know about it (because it's in her home). Thoughts with this new info?
Also, can you elude a bit to these other factors to target Canada? This way I can do further research. Thank you so much!
-
Is her business located in Canada (e.g. she has a physical Canadian office address that will be on the site)?
I would recommend that, along with the .ca, plus dozens of other factors to specifically target Canada.
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
-
Geo-Targeting separate TLD's where both are .com domains
Hi I have a client who owns two separate TLDs for the same brand (for the sake of this post, we'll call the two sites www.site-a.com and www.site-b.com). For site www.site-a.com the website has been around for a while and is their primary site for their US operations which is their heartland, is well established in the SERPS and is where they make most of their money. As they looked to expand to the UK, they then created www.site-b.com and added the UK as a subfolder (so www.site-b.com/uk) and geo-targeted it towards the UK in Webmaster tools . The site has recently launched but they now find that, when a customer searches for their brand in the UK, they find www.site-a.com in position 1 (which, given it's tailored for a primary US audience, has a significantly lower conversion rate for UK traffic) and www.site-b.com in position 2. However, the client doesn't want to specifically geo target www.site-a.com to the USA as they feel it might affect where they appear for other international markets aside from the UK. So the question is, how can they, with the existing infrastructure, help remove www.site-a.com from the UK SERPs without adversely affecting their rank elsewhere? Hope this makes sense and thanks in advance for your help. James
International SEO | | jimmygs19820 -
When searching for example.com, only example.co.uk is showing up. Why?
Hi there, I have a quick question, when looking for our client's domain name in Google (Google.it, Google.co.uk and Google.com), we search for example.com, but the first (and only) search result showing is example.co.uk (which redirects then to example.com) Why is the co.uk domain showing instead of the com domain where we are redirecting to? I don't assume that this is any form of penalisation? Thanks!
International SEO | | Gabriele_Layoutweb0 -
.cn domain vs. .com/cn/ folder structure
Hey Moz Community, I'd love to hear your response based on some real world data around leveraging a .cn domain vs. porting the site over to a sub-folder structure (ie. com/cn/ structure). Currently, the site lives on a .cn and is fully translated/localized in simplified chinese - which is the ideal state. As part of a website redesign + cost analysis there is a discussion around moving all global content under a sub-folder structure using href lang, GWT combination to define country content. My question is around China specifically - does a .cn have a signficant impact on ranking? I've read conflicing reports. Secondly, how do Chinese users react to a non-.cn domain? I would imaging the click-through rate performance from SERPs is much lower. Thoughts? Comments?
International SEO | | JonClark150 -
For a website in portuguese what would you use? pt.domain.com, br.domain.com or domain.com.br
Hello We are a company with a website in several languages, one of them is portuguese. Our market is 2 times bigger in Brazil than in Portugal, but obviously Brazil has more potential in the future. In domain.com we have our main site in English. What would you use? pt.domain.com, br.domain.com or domain.com.br? In the first case, it means just portuguese, in the second Brazil but it is not geolocalized, and in the third, you are almost ignoring Portugal users... Duplicating content, doesn't seem to make sense... The content is basically international, so it is just the language that matters. Any help will be very much appreciated.
International SEO | | forex-websites0 -
Ranking UK company in Google.com
Hi all, I have a UK client with a .com domain, hosted on a US server, but the physical business premises is based in the UK. Their product is a really great product and available for export to the US. I want to rank them higher in the US, more specifically Google.com. I've helped them rank very well organically in the UK (google.co.uk) for some great terms, however they rank almost nowhere in google.com (gl=us) for the same terms, for example: In Google.co.uk they rank #3 for the key-phrase.
International SEO | | seowoody
In Google.com they rank #90 for the same key-phrase. I've got them some great US focused links with PR coverage including MSN Cars, nydailynews.com etc. I just wondered if there was any one "golden ticket" for boosting US rankings? I've read that a physical business premises located in the US helps a lot. Can anyone confirm this and if so, would a rented PO box in the US help? The site has great social signals too, growing twitter following and many FB likes/shares etc. Any other tips/advice? Thanks in advance,
Cheers,
Woody 🙂0 -
Multi country targeting for listing site, ccTLD, sub domain or .com/folder?
Hi I know this has been covered in a few questions but seen nothing recent that may take into account changes google may have applied. We would like to target multiple english speaking counties with a new project and I'm a little unsure as to whether ccTLD, subdomain or subfolders are the best way to publish country specific information. Can anyone shed some light on this?
International SEO | | Mulith0 -
Good or Bad? - buying a .com domain name that is already branded under a different county code like .nl but a different business model completely
For example - www.example.com (I purchase) and www.example.nl (is in use and well optimized but a different business model) Seeing that this business (example.com) will be based here in the USA and theirs (example.nl) is in the Netherlands and they are both completely different models, is this ok? They are well optimized for the name and it will be a little bit of a challenge to outdo them here in the US as far as the name goes, but the name is really good and the client wants it!
International SEO | | Cyclone1 -
SEO for Subdomains for different languages .com/fr, .com/es
Hi All, I was wondering how best to to approach optimisation of a site that exists on a single .com domain, but has different subfolders for different languages. The site is a .com and it has subfolders for French, Spanish, Russian and English. The business is situated in France and the vast majority of clients are French and English speakers. I've read that it's possible to geo target these subfolders using webmaster tools however I believe this is an inferior method of optimisation than having tld's. Just wondered if anyone had experience of htis and could provide any advice ? As they won't be rebuilding the site for another year or so I wondered if there were any quick wins? My second question is to do with how best to set these campaigns up within SEO Moz. would it be better to track at a subdomain or subfolder leverl (for different languages)? If someone could advise I would greatly appreciate it! Thanks, vantresca
International SEO | | vanvallejo0