Hi, I would like to optimize my US .com site to get rankings in Canada. I noticed i cannot buy a .CA domain from a US registrar - i have to go to a canadian registrar as .ca extensions are not available on US sites , but when i sign up on a canadian registrar it says i need to live in canada due to new stricter laws. Strange. Well i have a friend that lives in canada so i guess he could buy it for me. Is that legal, hmm? Anyway, I know it's better for rankings to have your site hosted in the same country you want to get ranked for but if i just want my US site to attempt to get some rankings/business in canada can i 1) offer payment methods for canadian customers on my site 2) forward the .ca domain to the .com url 3) do optimization and link building for my site on canadian sites, and link my .ca url? Is that a doable strategy? I have noticed some US sites in the canada results so it's not impossible to get your site to show up in google.ca thanks for your input guys!
Why dont you just advertise your .us on some Canadian sites, directories and mention that you ship to Canada?
I want to do more than advertise, i want to rank in the google.ca search engine and i think having a .ca extention is in a way optimizing for the canadian goolgle site my service is is not goods (intangible) so shipping is not an issue which is even better.
buy some text links on some .ca websites & that should do the trick. also get some some links in local forums like www.torontoforums.ca
Yeah, I think it's better to get a .ca domain. And then work on the links from Canadian websites, and attract visitors from Canadian also. At least I think it's easy to rank #1 in google.ca than in google.com.
much much easier, i did some free linking for a canadian site and it got to the third page for pretty compeitive keywords. also, i think having a .ca domain makes people more comfortable about buying if they think it's located in the same country.