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old .on.ca vs .com

by JohnKennex
5 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hello warriors I'm looking to clear something up. My family business domain has been .on.ca for a long time and it was reg'd in 2000 - they never had a website, etc. I've made partner 2 or so years ago and I put something on line - done this and that. I'm only focusing on local SEO in my city about 45 minutes from Toronto.

I'm ranking on page 2 (better than nothing) but I'm noticing all the sites that are beating me are .coms and maybe a .ca here and there.

Would a .com easily out rank my .on.ca? Would I be better off using a keyword exact match .com domain and tailoring it to my keywords and use that to my small business?
Computer-support-toronto.com (or something like that) and link back to my main company website?

Thanks for any help in advance 
#onca
  • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
    Banned
    Domain-extensions ending in ".ca" are always likely to rank a little better in searches made from within Canada (google.ca searches) and a little less well otherwise. The difference may not be huge, but it's there.

    Hosting location is also relevant to this (partly in its own right, and partly because of download speeds affecting rankings).

    Matt Cutts, from Google, mentions both these issues briefly, here ...



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  • Profile picture of the author onSubie
    Hi

    .on.ca is a regional domain and not a TLD (Top Level Domain). .on.ca is for Ontario, Canada. The TLD .ca is for Canada.

    Since you registered the domain so long ago it would have fallen under Canada's old registration rules.

    In order to get a TLD of .ca, you had to be a "National" company. If you were a regional company then you could not get the TLD .ca and had to get the provincial domain .on.ca, or .sk.ca, for example.

    The rules have changed and now anyone who is a Canadian resident can get a TLD .ca domain.

    .ca would be favoured over .com for searches from Canada, just as .co.uk would be favoured over .com for searches from the UK.

    If you want to brand as Canadian, see if you can get the .ca domain. They are not restricted as before so you should be able to get it (if available) without the .on. part.


    Mahlon

    PS .com is also fine.
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  • Profile picture of the author JohnKennex
    so I'm just looking for SEO in the GTA (Toronto, Hamilton, etc, etc - only in Ontario) the .coms have no real advantage over my .on.ca - I was starting to think I was at a major disadvantage using it.
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    • Profile picture of the author onSubie
      Originally Posted by JohnKennex View Post

      so I'm just looking for SEO in the GTA (Toronto, Hamilton, etc, etc - only in Ontario) the .coms have no real advantage over my .on.ca - I was starting to think I was at a major disadvantage using it.
      No, the .com does not have any advantage over .on.ca simply because of the extension.

      I do not know if having .on.ca would give you stronger regional SEO because I don't know how Google evaluates regional domains under a country TLD.

      A .ca would (might?) help with Canadian searches, which would probably help for your purposes.
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  • Profile picture of the author anggun
    Banned
    [DELETED]
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    • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
      Banned
      Originally Posted by anggun View Post

      always dot com
      Not always, for me, thanks. It depends on the nature of the business.

      For example, I have one "UK-only niche", as an affiliate marketer, and even though I own the .com too, it pays me to use a .co.uk domain-name for that one, together with UK hosting, for exactly the reasons that Matt Cutts explains, in the video above.

      "Always" is a very big (and sometimes inappropriate) word, in internet marketing.


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