Great business idea? Check.
Memorable earworm of a name? Heck yes.
Domain name ending in .com? Wait—what? .com!?
Hang on, hang on—are you a Canadian business building a website for a Canadian audience? Then let us show you all the reasons why .CA is one of the most powerful pairs of letters you can put to the right of the dot in your website domain name.
The first reason why you should get .CA? Canadians love their Canadian websites—in a big way.
Call it patriotism, call it true north love, but our latest research shows that six in 10 customers prefer making their online purchases from Canadian retailers when given the chance.
And according to 2022 research conducted by the Strategic Council, 85% of Canadians prefer to be on a .CA domain than a .com when supporting local businesses. Another related benefit? A .CA tells your potential shoppers that your site is more likely to show prices in Canadian dollars and offer shipping within Canada.
.CA means exclusively Canadian
By choosing to go with a .CA domain, you’re entering an exclusive club of confirmed Canucks! What do we mean? Well, CIRA enforces a Canadian Presence Requirement, so not just anyone—no matter whether they’re in Cameroon, Croatia or Cambodia—can register a .CA. This provides peace-of-mind that when a site has a .CA domain, it’s actually owned by a Canadian individual or business.
.CA drives superior local search rankings
Search engines, like Google and Bing, prioritize local domains for users searching within that country. So, if you’re a Canadian searching for shoes within Canada, you will get served Canadian shoe retailers first and foremost.
How does it all work? That’s the magic of geotargeting, friends.
Google aims to provide the best answer to your search query—which can mean serving up localized search results. After all, it might not be the most useful to you, the searcher, to be presented with a shoe store that only ships within the U.S. and displays prices in U.S. dollars.
So, how does Google “know” where a business is located? We know that the search engine uses a website’s ccTLD, or country code top level domain (.e.g., ”.CA,” “.uk,” etc.) to determine geotargeting. So, if you operate with a .CA domain, Google will prioritize your websites in Canadian search results over websites that don’t display .CA.
Ah, but the search benefits of .CA domains don’t necessarily stop there. Because—as we established earlier—Canadians tend to prefer .CA websites, they’re that much more likely to click through on a .CA listing in a search result. Search engines see this and will actually rank pages that get more click throughs in search results pages.
The .CA truth is out there!
Sure—we’ve thrown a bunch of (hopefully persuasive) facts and figures at you. But what about real-life Canadian businesses that chose .CA? What was their reasoning?
Let’s look at three quick examples, shall we:
- Local Laundry (locallaundry.ca), a proudly Canadian-made clothing company saw their choice of .CA as a way to showcase their Canadian values and focus on all things local.
- The Copper Bell (thecopperbell.ca), a handmade scented soy candle business, saw .CA as the way to put their Canadianness front and center for their overwhelmingly Canadian customer base.
- Artist and creator Katrin Emery (studiopeachy.ca) launched her online accessory shop with .CA as a way to communicate that her business was local, and that she prioritized handmade items from home.
Curious if your business domain name is available as a .CA? Use our free domain name search tool today!
Visit: www.choose.ca
