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.
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
-
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 -
301 redirection problem - Major lose of ranking in Google Search results
301 redirection problem - Major lose of ranking in Google Search results
International SEO | | AviramAdar
(site was almost completely removed from google search results) Hello,
I had a website ('DayUse' style) with the following url:
https://www.roomsindex.co.il/ Couple of days ago, I've made a 301 redirection to:
https://www.hour.co.il/ The redirection was made on 2 levels:
1. Server side- on htaccess file.
2. Google Search Console - Change of address page. Bare in mind the following things: The site's structure (url addresses) & the code hasn't changed (for sure). Both redirections are 100% valid (for sure). All the website pages were indexed (for sure). There isn't a penalty on any of the above domains (for sure). The website was almost completely removed from Google search results. For example: Before the redirection the website was ranked 10 in my main keyword "Rooms by hour" (translation from Hebrew), now the website removed. Also, the website removed from almost all the search terms it was ranked before. My question is, off course, WHY???
By the details on the following page, a proper 301 redirection shouldn't cause to such page ranking loss (As I mentioned- It almost completely disappeared)... https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6033049?utm_source=wnc_807001&utm_medium=gamma&utm_campaign=wnc_807001&utm_content=msg_914100&hl=en-IL search-console-change-of-address.png0 -
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 -
Inernational search
Does anyone have any examples of a .co.uk doing ok in the US google searches, we are based in the uk and cannot decide if to try targeting with the .co.uk but with CTR also being a big factor this would be well down with searchers seeing the .co.uk. Are alternative is to gain the .com of our sites and start the process of gaining .com links etc.
International SEO | | BobAnderson0 -
My indexed site URL removed from google search without get any message or Manual Actions??
On Agust 2 or 3.. I'm not sure about the exact date...
International SEO | | newwaves
The main URL of my website https://new-waves.net/ had been completely removed from Google search results! without getting any messages or Manual Actions on search console ?? but I'm still can find some of my site subpages in search results and on Google local maps results when I tried to check it on google
info:new-waves.net >> no results
site:new-waves.net >> only now I can see the main URL in results because I had submitted it again and again to google but it might be deleted again today or tomorrow as that happen before last few days
100% of all ranked keywords >> my site URL new-waves.net had been completely removed from all results! but I'm still can see it on maps on some results My site was ranked number 1 on google search results for "digital marketing qatar" and some other keywords, but the main URL had been removed from 100% of all search results. but you can still see it on the map only. I just tried to submit it again to Google and to index it through google search console tool but still not get any results, Can any one help to know what is the reason?? and how can I solve this issue without losing my previous ranked keywords? Can I submit a direct message to google support or customer service to know the reason or get help on this issue? Thanks & Regards0 -
GSC is not showing URLs in Regional Language Characters in Search Analytics
Hi, We have a regional language sub-domain, which has the URI in the regional language characters (Hindi). While looking at the Search Analytics data in GSC, we get all the URLs in ASCII format. To resolve this issue, we even encoded the characters in UTF-8, by adding the following in the of the page: However, we are still getting illegible URLs in search console. It would be really great if someone could help me out with this issue. Thanks!
International SEO | | Starcom_Search0 -
Is there a list of most important international web directories ?
Would like to submit the different language versions of our site to some non-english web directories worth submitting to. Does anybody know about a good list as a starting point? To get an idea what may be the 3-5 most important web directories in different countries/languages. Thanks
International SEO | | lcourse0 -
Non US site pages indexed in US Google search
Hi, We are having a global site wide issue with non US site pages being indexed by Google and served up in US search results. Conversley, we have US en pages showing in the Japan Google search results. We currently us IP detect to direct users to the correct regional site but it isn't effective if the users are entering through an incorrect regional page. At the top of each or our pages we have a drop down menu to allow users to manually select their preferred region. Is it possible that Google Bot is crawling these links and indexing these other regional pages as US and not detecting it due to our URL structure? Below are examples of two of our URLs for reference - one from Canada, the other from the US /ca/en/prod4130078/2500058/catalog50008/ /us/en/prod4130078/2500058/catalog20038/ If that is, in fact, what is happening, would setting the links within the drop down to 'no follow' address the problem? Thank you. Angie
International SEO | | Corel0