Niche Keyword Opportunities in Canada when US Market Dominates

[evan89]

Hey,

I have an interesting question. I am the owner of a Canadian E-Commerce site, and I have been brainstorming ways to find opportunities and niches for Canadian online shoppers in an industry that is dominated by American E-commerce sites.

I looked around at another Canadian e-commerce site, and I wanted to get some advice on whether this strategy is sound. Here is an example.

Well.ca is a large e-commerce site in Canada. They take a competitive product like a "KONG Goodie Bone" (a dog toy) and include local and intent terms in their title. For example "Buy KONG Goodie Bone from Canada at Well.ca - Free Shipping".

If a Canadian shopper searches for "Kong Goodie Bone", they are going to find results for amazon.com, ebay.com, the Kong company website, Petco (which is not in Canada) etc. I would imagine that Canadian shoppers would start to add terms such as Canada, Buy, or online to try to find Canadian sellers. If that is the case, then Well.ca ranks.

I guess my question is, if the dominant search terms in my industry are polluted with irrelevant or American companies (even in Canada), is this form of localization a good idea? The terms don't seem to be searched much according to any keyword research tool I've used, but I know that I add "canada" to my search terms in order to find Canadian results?

I will also note that our website recently launched, we are using 100% original product page content, we are using videos, and we are really putting a lot of energy into quality content. I am just wondering if patience is the name of the game when you are dealing with sites with incredible domain authority, or if we are better off trying to find niche opportunities.

Thoughts?

[JaneCopland]

I like EGOL's idea of partnering with US websites that do not ship to Canada and arranging a referral scheme. This is one way to take advantage of US sites taking up real estate in Canadian results.

I agree that "canada" is likely a common modifier - if the product is niche enough or bought in small enough quantities, large-scale keyword research tools might not be of much use. Consider other modifiers, such as "ca" as well.

Don't go overboard on the keyword usage though: stuffing "Canada" into every title is unnecessary and will start to look unnatural. Make sure you've taken advantage of localisation tools and techniques such as geo-targeting and the rel="alternative" tag for language, i.e. specifying en-ca as English language, for Canada (or French as well, if that's part of your market!).

Unfortunately if your competition, albeit irrelevant US sites, are incredibly strong, you'll need to compete with them on standard metrics such as the rate of link acquisition and the quality of the links you both build. Don't worry yourself with building the same number of links Petco has outright, but you may need to look at figuring out their rate of link building and look at their social / content activity, and devise a plan to match that as best you can in the future. You don't need to build the same historical numbers as these huge sites have, but your competitiveness needs to rise to match or better the sites you want to keep up with / pass.

[EGOL]

Find USA companies who do not ship to Canada and ask them to refer visitors to you on their shipping policies page.

I will also note that our website recently launched, we are using 100% original product page content, we are using videos, and we are really putting a lot of energy into quality content. I am just wondering if patience is the name of the game when you are dealing with sites with incredible domain authority, or if we are better off trying to find niche opportunities.

Original content is highly commendable.  I am one who uses and recommends the content attack almost exclusively.  But, the real key is how fast you are able to shovel.  If you can shovel 100 tons per hour but your competitors are using these... then you are wasting your money.... but if the commodity that you are shoveling has a higher value per ton, then you might have a chance.