Canadian site ranking well in states

[matmox]

Hello, one of my clients has a site that ranks well in Google.com but is a Canadian company and therefore has a canadian address. They have not yet done any local optimization so if I was to add them to local directories, would that hurt their ranks in the states or anywhere else?

[gfiorelli1]

From what you say it seems you are talking of a canadian site that does not have .ca territorial extension.

In fact, that way, it would have been ranking for the Canadian Google and probably not so good for the .com/USA one.

And it seems that never the site, being probably, a generic domain (.com, .net...), has been geographically targeted toward Canada.

I say this because geotargeting seems an objective for your client.

If it is so, then optimizing the site with geotargeting signals (and saying to Google that your market is Canada), then there is a chance the rankings in google.com will start to be lost

[RikkiD22]

Have you checked in Google Webmaster Tools where this site is set to target?

[MarieHaynes]

Why would adding the site in local directories hurt the US ranking?  Doesn't make sense to me unless you spammed the heck out of a few hundred Canadian directories.

An additional thought...some people believe that getting backlinks from dot ca's will benefit you more on G.ca than G.com.  I don't know that anyone has tested it, but it makes sense to me.

[irvingw]

It's probably set in GWMT to the default geo targeting in USA.

FYI - I have have excellent success with .ca sites ranking in Canada. The competition is SO much less than in the USA. It takes very little work to get a .ca domain ranked in google.ca, but then again the traffic is just not there.

You say it is a Canadian company, but is it a local type business or is is global, do you ship to the US?

If you ship to the US you will find a lot more business there and ranking in Google.com in the US is much more beneficial. If you do ship to the US, then I would suggest not being obvious about the fact that you are a Canadian company or people will be more hesitant to purchase from you.  But in reality a Canadian company can easily ship to the US unlike some further countries where shipping cost is much higher and time takes much longer. It all depends on your type of business.