For a good long time after the Internet got its start the only type of domain extension that was available for websites was a .com extension. It’s still the most ubiquitous and popular among them, but nowadays there are all sorts of domain extensions and the most notable ones are all the ones that are country specific. While the .org and .biz types have 3 letters to them just like the .com extension, all of the country ones will just be two letters after the dot.
A .ca extension is advisable for businesses in Canada, and we encourage you to discover the benefits of a .ca domain today. This is part of the broader topic we’re going to look at with this week’s blog entry here, and it will be more about Canadian business marketing tips online. No one is going to need to be made aware of how essential it is to have a strong online presence for a business nowadays, and here at 4GoodHosting that’s the reason we have many of the Canadian web hosting clients that we do.
You need to have quality website for your business, and it needs to have reliable web hosting behind it so that it is available to prospective customers 24 hours a day. This is because what would be considered local businesses are only local in the physical sense of the term – they’re often taking orders or however else it is they do business from all across the country and possibly even outside of it. Local business growth strategies are going to be built on the idea that not much is explicitly local anymore when it comes to all of this.
One of the things that the nature of our business provides for us is a lot of insight into what works well and what doesn’t with local SEO strategies in Canada. We say that fully aware of the fact that what defines ‘good’ SEO is changing all the time, and in fairness that’s the way it should be. If you’re looking for a provider you want the ones you see on page 1 of SERPS to be legitimately good businesses, not necessarily the ones who know how to manipulate their site so that it has better SEO. The search engines feel the same way, and they tailor and reorient their algorithms all the time to make that more likely. We think that’s a good thing as it relates to SEO for Canadian businesses.
The best approaches to online marketing is an extremely broad topic, so we’re going to keep it a little more centered here. But without going on any further with being introductory let’s get right into these Canadian marketing business tips, and say again that having that .ca domain extension really is best if it is advantageous for your customers to know that you are a Canadian business.
Visibly Canadian
Anyone who runs a business in Canada will benefit if they position themselves as a Canadian business. Doing so is key to attracting loyal customers and to keep them coming back. Businesses that operate online may not need to be persuaded of this in the same way, but for those brick and mortar business it’s equally advisable to create a blend of online and in person sales to maximize potential revenue streams for the coming year and beyond.
Go back 7 to 10 years or so and it was normal for a good number of business owners to not see the need for taking their business online. It wasn’t something many of them considered until recently even, and this was evidenced by how Shopify saw massive gross in its gross merchandise volume for Q1 of 2020. That was to the tune of 46%, and of course Shopify continues to be one of the platforms of-choice when it comes to an E-commerce setup in Canada.
What was most notable from the numbers seen at that time 4 years ago was there was research along with it that indicated the number of consumers who bought something from a merchant they had never shopped with before went up to 45%. Further, Shopify also indicated that brick-and-mortar stores had stepped in to replace 94% of in-store sales online during the pandemic. The preference for shopping online has continued to gain steam since then, and Canadians are just as enthusiastic about it as Americans.
Those numbers were correlated with store closures, and that is also a part of why the online retail trend has continued to accelerate. Many local businesses are considering how to position themselves online to take advantage, and the way it is in Canada now – and anywhere in the world for that matter – is that if you’re not meeting your customers where they are at then you’re going to be losing out on business. And where they are at is on the Internet, likely looking for whatever it is they’re after right now.
Aim High with SEO
Are they going to see your business on that first page of Google search results? Local SEO strategies for Canada are what’s going to determine whether that happens or not, and if you’re not capable of optimizing your site on your own then we have SEO experts ready to help you out here at 4GoodHosting. This paid SEO service that we make available to both our Canadian web hosting clients or others who need to have an SEO optimized website.
Getting back to starting with e-commerce for business, setting up an online store using a service like Shopify is a relatively low-cost way to test out going online. If you’d like more autonomy and a more affordable option then you can build a WordPress business website yourself and use the extremely popular and proven-effective WooCommerce plugin to set yourself up equally well.
Name, then Extension
Any business owner who’s making the decisions about taking it online should be giving plenty of thought to the best domain name for a website. Making a choice about your domain is one of the first steps and most important decisions along the way, and is definitely tied into SEO for Canadian businesses. Those with a brick and mortar business you will want their domain name to be a match with the name of their business.
Most people can come up with a practical and suitable domain name on their own, but one option you have is to use a free tool like a domain name generator. With these tools you can search available names and name ideas that could work for you, and the generator will prompt you to supply information about you and the nature of your business, your location, etc. before providing you with the suggestions you’ll receive.
After choosing the name comes the extension, and as we stressed at the beginning it may better to go with a .ca extension, even if the .com one for your domain name is available. You can always register a .ca domain name here at 4GoodHosting and you can also quickly determine if the one you have in mind is not already in use. You will always have the lowest price for domain name registration here, and we’ve been seeing to that for many years now.
There are so many advantages to using a .CA domain name for Canadian businesses and you’ll find that many of the local business growth strategies you choose to follow will be better suited for you when you do have a .ca domain name for your business. Register your domain here, then transfer your it to connect it to Shopify or any other e-commerce platform you choose. If you choose to go the WordPress website for business route you will be best served with Managed WordPress web hosting here.
Let’s look further into why a .ca domain is so advantageous. Research conducted five years ago indicated that 65% of Canadian internet users agree that Canadian businesses and organizations should use a .CA domain. And specifically because it’s a signal of security and trust. In addition to this, Canadians want to give back to their local community and.ca domains are doubly appealing for this reason.
The Right Focuses
Getting your business discovered to the extent you need it be discovered is going to require you to be strategic about how you position your business in search engines like Google. SEO is how you do this, and it’s always going to be front and center in Canadian business marketing tips these days. At least in as far as all of them related to promoting your business online is concerned.
Even without expert SEO assistance you can probably think of many of the most primary keywords that are going to correspond to the ones prospective customers will be using search terms when looking for a business like yours. Try drafting a list of keywords relevant to your industry, the products you carry, or the services you provide. Give some thought to keywords related to where your business is physically located to ensure you can be found easily.
Websites that don’t have the right keywords incorporated at the right density are going to suffer with SEO, and many of them don’t contain enough text or information to be picked up meaningfully by search engines. The first place to focus is the store or company’s about page. What information best sums up what your business does, and what keywords or key phrases are contained within that information?
You will also want to have ones related to when it was established, and why it continues to be successful to this day. Start here and then helpful contextual information that will increase the chance of your website being best positioned for visibility with customers. More than just keywords, it’s a chance to tell stories about your business and this helps to add a human touch.
Revisiting your product or service descriptions is next with improving SEO and getting the most out of your E-commerce setup in Canada. Include as much relevant information as you can, including where things were sourced, features and benefits and a call to action. It is important to explain the ‘what’ of your product or service in relation to the potential it has for your customers. It is best to write in short, compelling sentences here.
Partnerships & Collaborations
The focus here is not just on existing or long-standing businesses. Some may be starting a new business or looking to expand, and if so they should consider teaming up with another local independent business. Marketing collaboration is nearly always beneficial and especially if the businesses are in different industries but there is a natural crossover between the interests would-be customers will have for each.
This is very much in line with local business growth strategies too, and among the different ideas are to have a co-produced online event, a co-branded piece of merchandise, or one of many other creative options. Teaming up with a local business gives you benefit from their customer network and loyalty and with some partnerships there can be the benefit of sharing costs on goods and services that help you double down on your own business in the future.
There is really a lot of potential value in partnerships and collaborations for new businesses, and especially when both of them are just getting off the ground. However, it may be that you aren’t ready to collaborate with another independent business and if so consider collaborating with an influential individual in your sector to do some influencer marketing.
These types of partnerships also let merchants position their relationships with their collaborators in a positive way, and this tends to foster good sentiment to both brands. Now that you’re armed with these tips, it’s time to test out your newly acquired business promotion ideas and see how much more visibility online you’re able to get from them. Don’t delay in investing in your online presence, and getting a good paid SEO service if you are not capable enough with it on your own.
The sooner you can generate revenue from e-commerce sales you will be growing your business in the way we imagine you have envisioned for yourself. It’s not something that happens on its own, and especially if you’re a type of business where they is plenty of competition. That is the scenario for most of them, so you really do need to work hard at standing out and being more visible than your competitors.
Your website is going to be absolutely pivotal in doing that, and along with that whether or not your website comes up on the first page of SERPS for the most searched keywords related to your business. That is one aspect of this that is never going to change, and you need to do what it takes to SEO optimize a website.
