Perhaps someone has some ideas or strategies on how to better rank in Google Canada (Google.ca) specifically The sites I have rank very well for their keyword terms in Google.com but much lower for those same terms in Google.ca The target audiences for these websites are in Canada A good portion of inexperienced computer users are served Google.ca automatically by Google ( most likely based on their ip i believe) These are thoughts and tactics I have employed at this point The domain names are com from US based domain name mass merchant sellers 1) hosted sites on a Canadian site 2) listed the ownership and specifics as Canadian 3) Information on websites lists Canadian addresses, phone numbers and locations Would it be a matter of more links from ca or other Canadian based sites mainly as that is all that is left , or are there other tactics and procedures that I am missing ? thank you
If somebody is looking for a host with servers in Canada, I can recommend Royalty hosting. As for the list above I have noticed by own observations that links actually do play a part, at least when I have been working with Swedish versus English web sites. I guess you should just get going with normal SEO. Hosting in Canada is I think the most important point. Good luck.
You can also specify the country specific google you wish to rank on within your webmasters tools (not fully sure how effective this actully is). In my experiance the location of your hosting and the location of your links do play a part.
Thanks for the quick replies Guess more links from Canadian websites would be the answer haleet Peon - what is to understand . I simply want my serps to appear higher in Google.ca results
I'm hosted with Hostpapa.ca. They have been great, would highly recommend it, if that's what you're looking for. As for linking in Google.ca... I don't believe I've gotten any extra traffic from Canadian users, just because I'm hosted on a Canadian host (and listed as a Canadian resident). My site is a .com and it's my Canadian content that brings in Canadian users. When I linked or blogged about the recent parliament prorogue, that brought in a bit of Canadian traffic - because it was Canadian news. When searching through Google.ca I would say that I do get more .ca addresses. If there are equivalent .com's and .ca's, the .ca's are usually served up first. So, if you're domain is available in a .ca format, you may be well served by scooping up that address and forwarding it to your main site. Anyway, I'm no expert, those are just my thoughts. Good luck.
I have several domains that are hosted on US based servers but are .ca domains. They get better ranking in the google.ca search engine than in the .com (usually 5 - 6 places higher). I see about 30% more traffic from Canadian sources than any other resource (as shown by Google Analytics).
Back up your claim, what specific experiments have you done to prove this. Or would I be right in guessing that you heard it from some other guy and decided to post it here. As for ranking in google.ca I actually think that getting a country specific TLD domain is probably the best thing you can do. At least, it has helped me a lot to get a .co.uk domain when targeting google.co.uk