For those doing business in Canada you will have at least once thought of .ca domain name registration. After all, the .ca domain extension represents your country of dwelling and business. At the same time you have probably looked at .com domains. Mainly because they are recognized internationally and pretty much by everyone.
Your choice of registering ca domain names or something else like the com alternative is how local or international your business is. Let’s look at the reasons for each.
Register ca domain names
You will want to select a Canada domain name if you exclusively go for local clients. So let’s say you are a local roofing company, who will only work in a specific location or area. Let’s say you only service the province of Ontario and the greater Toronto area. For you the .ca tld will help you rank for people searching within Canada, and provide the instant recognition that you do service that area because people will recognize .ca. When you want that recognition and advantage in the search engines like google, then domain name registration canada would be your choice. The only drawback will be people who automatically assume you also own the .com. In this case, it would probably be a good idea to register the .com as well and have it forward to your .ca site.
Registering a .com or other TLD
First let’s discuss everthing but the .com. So extensions like .net or .org. These ones will have the same problems of everyone assuming .com, so you may as well choose the .ca to represent your business origin. The .org is a better choice than even the Canada domain extension if you are actually running a non for profit organization, since that extension is meant for that.
Now .com is the all time favorite. Everyone assumes it or tries it first when looking for your site. You should probably always get this even if you think a different extension is better. So with a ca domain name, you should still get this tld and forward like mentioned above.
Ideally get as many tld’s as you can if you are branding your domain name. So a person in Canada may want to look at the .ca, as well as .com, .net and .org. Just as someone in the USA would probably register a .us extension.
If you are not worried about people taking the other extensions and you target canadians only, then CA domain name registration is probably a wise choice to use as your main site URL.