What is the best way to have two online stores, each focusing on a specific country?

[absoauto]

The dilemma here of course is that the stores will be very similar in content, with the domains only being different in that the store targeting the US will be a .com domain and the Canadian store is a .ca domain.

[KarlBantleman]

Hi Margaret,

I would advise to have them as sub domains on the same website so www.url.com/US and www.url.com/CA. You can then add canonical tags to one set of pages which will avoid any duplication. Also your link building efforts won't need to be duplicated because you will be pushing one website instead of 2.

[KarlBantleman]

I missed out something...in webmaster tools you can then make sure that each section of the website is targeted for that specific country as well.

[PowerToolWorld]

Hi Margaret,

Here is a link to Lisa's slides from search love 2012. I think you'll find just about everything you need there.

http://www.vervesearch.com/blog/presentations/international-seo-my-slides-from-search-love-london/

The correct markup really makes a difference.

I would certainly suggest keeping it on the same domain.

Rgds

Kyle