Any SEM consultants in Canada?

I would like to discuss approaches that are specific to Canada... Are there any forums that exist on this or any Canadian members around here?

Thanks!

Nick

Your questions are valid here. We are a global community and will be able to help.....Fire away.

Well, I'm based in Canada, but my work targets the US market & UK market.

As Hampstead says - the theory is universal.

If you have a domain which is a "domain.ca", then you'll automatically skew for results when folks use, specifically, Google.ca to search for things - country-specific domains tend to rank higher in country specific versions of the engines, as a generalization.

Basically, this means, if you optimize properly and see solid results, and you're running a .ca domain, you'll likely place well in the rankings when folks us G.ca to search.

Hope that helps.

Duane

If you don't have a ca domain, you will need to host on a server with a ca IP block.

Some of the biggest differences are the small variations of language. Language is the core driver of SEO.

"What colour skidoo?" Makes sense in Manitoba, but not in Colorado.

It would if you both owned Bombardiers...

AND, our snow is better - though I hear recently they had pink snow in parts of Eastern Russia...

There are factors that you might want to think of that rely outside SEM like:
Canada has a higher per capita DSL saturation than the US - this will have a direct effect on how your site / media can be delivered to Canadians.

Another thing to remember is that any cart functions that allow Canadians to pay in Canadian currency will have a direct correlation with conversion rates at the cart level.

Dont assume that Canadians love buying in the USD cart.

As for SEO terminology and copy... let’s be honest if the keyword phrase has colour or labour or any word that Canadians use... then try to implement it

Most of us Canadians have our spell check set to US English hence that shouldn’t be too much of a matter.

- There are around 6 million of those who speak Francais - that might be important to you or not (This can also lead to French conversions as they are the biggest online community in Europe)

Trying to do SEO for specific Canadian audience ... I would focus on major centers or provinces within the copy (Vancouver Boat Building, Burnaby Boat Building) rather than just (Boat Building)

Good Luck to you...

I didn't realize that Canadians use what I think of as "British" English (mostly extra 'u's in words and some interesting phrases). What percentage would use US vs UK?

Some PPC and search engines for Canada target the English speaking areas so others may target the French speaking. Be sure to check that out when targeting Canada.

...and all spell-checkers try to correct me when I type colour ...LOL

No biggie.

And optimisation!

i still interchange between z and s....at least you're not saying thing like connexion.

You'd think the spell-checker would have any acceptable spelling of a word. Perhaps they are U.S. slanted spell-checkers.

Many times there is more than one "correct" spelling of a word that you never know until you look in a really complete dictionary.

Anyone who has ever flown may have noticed a word that looks wrong to me but is actually in the dictionary: flotation - I would have sworn that really should be floatation.

I'm confused by the way flammable and inflammable mean the same thing!

But we digress.

Have you ever seen Gallagher do that bit where he flips cards with words on them at high speed asking why if one word is pronounced this way why this word spelled the same is pronounced that way and this word is spelled like this but this other word that sounds the same is spelled like that.

He, of course, uses real words and it is too funny. And too true. That's why children learn things like "i before e except after c" (and where does that leave the word weird)? Weird?

I was going to say that English might be the hardest language to learn until I remembered that German and Russian words are masculine, feminine, or neuter and require tons of different words for "the" plus endings that change depending upon the word involved.

And then there are the languages requiring pitch to properly speak. I just recently heard that a greater percentage of the speakers of those languages have a much higher vocal skill level.

I admire those who make the effort to learn more than one language and the many who speak three, four, or even more. Since learning languages is so much easier for young children it would be great for more to have that opportunity in the U.S.

I speak English, I butcher French, I play with Spanish and I'm picking up Google now...