Working with country specific domain names vs. staying with .com

[modernmusings]

I've recently inherited a client that has a country specific domain for Canada (.ca) but there is also a US branch for the company at the .com address. They have a direct competitor that operates also in the U.S. and Canada that has decided to operate entirely under the .com address and re-direct all .ca traffic to their .com address.

When I compare the link analysis data for both the .ca, .com, and competitors site, I'm finding there is a huge difference between the .ca site and the competitors site, but not a huge difference between the .com site and the competitors site. For example, the domain authorities are as follows:

• myclient.ca  (Canadian branch) - 22
• myclient.com (US branch) - 46
• competitor.com - 53

When I do a brand search for my client in Canada, the Canadian branch website shows up first, but the American one is second.

At this point, would it be better for my client to consolidate the two branches into the .com address and focus on increasing external followed links to the .com website? Or, is there merit in continuing to create a separate inbound link strategy for the .ca site?

Thanks.

[Everett]

Hello James,

Having a ccTLD definitely provides some ranking benefit in the target country. If the .ca domain is doing well for them I don't think I would consolidate it. Contrary to the other response, it is perfectly fine to have a separate ccTLD/domain for other countries.

However you might want to look into geotargeting each domain in Webmaster Tools (setting the .com version to US geotargeting may take care of the 2nd place brand search issue).

Of course this is just my opinion based on my own experiences. I will leave the question open for awhile so you can get more input from others.

[modernmusings]

Thanks for your response!

In the US, Google doesn't show the .ca domain until the 3rd page of results (.com is 1st result), so that's not too concerning to me. But in Canada it shows .ca first and .com second, which is a bit confusing.

I think my client may not be able to get everything organized under the .com URL because of the way the company is structured, but I want to be clear that that is the best recommended course of action for SEO success before offering them a link building campaign for the .ca site.

[AndieF]

I think you've correctly identified a couple of things here. Firstly that you shouldn't be running multiple domains for the same website, and secondly that US customers are unlikely to click on a .ca domain for a local branch.

I think the .com domain would be best for you here. You might want somebody to back me up on this, but I believe if you 301 redirect .ca to the new .com address appropriately the good SEO juices from the .ca domain will be transferred to .com. I don't think this is an overnight thing, but I imagine that as soon as Google realised ".ca now lives at .com" they'll work out the rest quite quickly.

If the US and Candidan websites aren't the same then consider having the different regions as subfolders on your .com domain - for example yourclient.com/us/ and yourclient.com/ca/