How important is .ca for Canadian searches?

[absoauto]

We currently own a .com domain name, but the .ca is already taken. We're looking at setting up a Canadian ecommerce store, how important is it to have the store on a .ca domain as opposed to a .com? We can always set it up on the .com and attempt to optimize to Canada but in the long run are we shooting ourselves in the foot? Thanks!

[gfiorelli1]

Good question.

Let's say that if the .ca domain was free, and your intention was to target exclusively the Canadian market, then that domain would be better, because of its strong (and automatic) geo-targeting.

Said that, having a generic name domain - especially a .com - is not bad at all. At the end you can always set up the geo-targeting of the site in the setting panel of GWT, work on a great localization of the content in order to answer for real to the buying culture and specific "version" of the Canadian English, and earning links especially from Canadian sites.

Doing that, the .com domain name won't have any problem in ranking in Google.ca.

More over, on the long term, when hopefully the eCommerce will have success, you may also think about expanding your business to the USA market (or other countries). In that case, the .com domain name will be an advantage, because you will be able to set up country targeting subfolder (i.e.: /en-us/) and geo-target the subfolder in GWT, something you are not allow to do with subfolders of a country level domain name.