I'm thinking of building a niche site with some unique content.. however I'm wondering how much of an effect having a TLD that is not .com, .net, .org, etc... would make a difference in how I have to work the SEO. Say I have a domain.com and a domain.co, and I added the same content to each and did the same amount of SEO work on each -- would they likely end up in the same spot or would .com still reign in the end? Thank you!!
Your .ca domain would likely rank higher on the Canadian Google (google.ca) and lower on the United States Google (google.com). TLD can make a difference. If you are trying to rank for google.com, then I would stay away from other countries tld's. My rule of thumb, if you can't buy it in .com, .net, or .org go with a different domain.