How important is .ca for Canadian searches?
-
We currently own a .com domain name, but the .ca is already taken. We're looking at setting up a Canadian ecommerce store, how important is it to have the store on a .ca domain as opposed to a .com? We can always set it up on the .com and attempt to optimize to Canada but in the long run are we shooting ourselves in the foot? Thanks!
-
Good question.
Let's say that if the .ca domain was free, and your intention was to target exclusively the Canadian market, then that domain would be better, because of its strong (and automatic) geo-targeting.
Said that, having a generic name domain - especially a .com - is not bad at all. At the end you can always set up the geo-targeting of the site in the setting panel of GWT, work on a great localization of the content in order to answer for real to the buying culture and specific "version" of the Canadian English, and earning links especially from Canadian sites.
Doing that, the .com domain name won't have any problem in ranking in Google.ca.
More over, on the long term, when hopefully the eCommerce will have success, you may also think about expanding your business to the USA market (or other countries). In that case, the .com domain name will be an advantage, because you will be able to set up country targeting subfolder (i.e.: /en-us/) and geo-target the subfolder in GWT, something you are not allow to do with subfolders of a country level domain name.
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
-
Incorrect homepage country variant appearing in search resutls
Hi, Background I have an international site with 32 country homepages within the same domain: eg www.domain.com/en-gb/
International SEO | | coma99
www.domain.com/fr-fr/
www.domain.com/de-de/
www.domain.com/es-es/ and so forth We use IP redirection on the root www.domain.com (which has no HTML page of its own) to divert the user to their relevant country homepage. Within each country homepage we include: (a canonical link to itself) ... (hreflang alternates to all instances of other homepages including itself ) Our Google Crawl bot is located in Germany and so when it crawls our root www.domain.com it takes the title and description from its destination url which in crawlbots case is www.domain.com/de-de/ because of the IP redirect. What is the problem I am trying to solve? Every variation of local Google results (eg UK/FR/IT/US) displays at the top the crawled root www.domain.com page with German title/description. How can I stop this happening? Surely adding appropriate hrefs and canonicals to every homepage instance is sufficient for Google to display to you your relevant country homepage variant instead!? Thanks0 -
International targeting search console, why did my rankings dropped?
hi reader, i changed the settings in console to USA, since then my rankings have dropped. my current data center or host is is Asia singapore, i am changing that USA this month question is, am i too late? or tageting should be done after changing ip address
International SEO | | maria-cooper90 -
Google Search Console International Targeting - Works for Hungary, but not Ireland - Why?
company.com (root)
International SEO | | scottclark
USA - lang="en" | GSC target: USA (shows US site in SERPs for "companyname" search)
company.com/hungary
Hungary - lang="hu" | GSC target: Hungary (shows Hungarian site in SERPs for "companyname" search)
AWESOMENESS company.com/ireland
Ireland - lang="en" | GSC target: Ireland (shows US site (doh!) in SERPs "companyname" search)
NOT RIGHT! It is our theory [please weigh in!] that because we don't have a company.com/usa folder, the TLD targeting (EN) is overriding other English language sites in some manner. In other words, the reason it's not overriding Hungary is because it's a different language. What must we do to get the Irish site ranked for "companyname" searches and to show by default in Ireland?0 -
International SEO Two Subdomains Showing Up in Google Search Results
Hi I have a client that is having two subdomains showing up SERP when you Google their name. Here are the details. They have two subdomains us.companyname.com and en.companyname.com us.companyname.com is for the US and has completely different products and content than en.companyname.com en.companyname.com is the site designed for Europe and it is in English. How can I make it so that only the us. version shows up in the search results? Thanks in advance!
International SEO | | JohnWeb120 -
HELP: Incorrect Meta Tag description showing for the wrong search results
Hi Guys I'm stuck here! I have update the hreftags, updated the sitemaps. I have 3 top level domains and my zenory.com site is showing for the home page the wrong meta tag description, as you can see in the attachement the meta tag is showing the new zealand site meta tag description which is for zenory.co.nz Anyone know what might be going on here? I have also fetched the home page through WMT as well and its still returning the same results any advice would be much appreciated! Thanks
International SEO | | edward-may0 -
Multi-National Website Demarcation in Organic Search
We launched our business in the UK many years ago using a .com domain and have built up good link equity back to our www site. Last year, we launched the same business in the US and host the US site on a "us." sub domain. We have used Google Webmaster Tools to demarcate the two websites so that the www site is set to target the UK and the "us." sub domain is set to target the US. Our organic search results from Google UK for the UK business are fine but when our US customers Google brand terms the www UK site takes precedence in organic search. To complicate this further, the sitelinks within the search results include a mixture of pages from the www UK site and the "us." US site. Google clearly has some difficulty understanding that the two sites are for two different geographic audiences. We have a good relationship with Google and they have indicated (with appropriate disclaimers) that we might consider aligning the URL structures for both sites to reduce the precedence that the www site currently receives. The www home page will become an International portal and the UK and US URL structures will be aligned. We have two options: Change both sites to subdomains so that we have "uk.xxxxx.com" and "us.xxxxx.com" linked to an International portal at the www subdomain Use sub folders so that we have "www.xxxxx.com/uk/" and "www.xxxxx.com/us/" again linked from the www subdomain We're comfortable with use of 301 redirects and canonicals to change the structure in a search engine friendly way but cannot agree internally whether sub domains or sub folders is the way to go. Unfortunately we're to far down the line to seperate by tld. Anyone have a strong opinion on the best approach? Thanks, Jeremy
International SEO | | www.webuyanycar.com0 -
Improving Search Rankings in other Countries for an existing site
Hello SEOmoz, I have a very well respected international client who ranks high in the US and for English language Google search results worldwide. However, the client's foreign language pages for specific countries do not show up on the first page of SERPs in those specific countries. The foreign nation/language pages are served on the same root domain as the main English language site it this fashion: www.client.com/france www.client.com/brazil Here are my questions: What can we do from an SEO standpoint to improve SERPs in Google.fr or other countries What is the best way to prevent duplicate content errors or prevent the wrong page from being indexed abroad. What are some best practices when using Google Webmaster tools in this regard? Thanks
International SEO | | BPIAnalytics0 -
.com or .ca for my Canadian website that is the question...
I have a US based company that is expanding to Canada, would it matter if I have a .com or .ca for my website?
International SEO | | BCA0