We're Canadian & Google US hates us

[schmeetz]

Here's the low down:
1) We're Canadian
2) Website hosted in Houston
3) Have 3 locations (Montreal, NY, Dallas)
- all in Google local
4) Sites been up since Oct 07 and updated often + blog

Google knows we have locations in NY and Dallas but doesn't rank us in US SERP's.

We have solid backlinks, both keyword and non-keyword from websites, blogs, bookmarking etc. 1/4 coming from Canadian websites.

btw...we own the Canadian market when it comes to our industry.

When will Google USA SERP's start showing me some love?

any experiences with this?

[AVC]

It takes time, maybe your link campaign is not as great as you think it is.

[kgun]

Originally Posted by schmeetz

We're Canadian & Google US hates us

If you use that term here and elswhere, that can reduce your credibility.

What about his Canadian Medical Directories On-line, Detailed Listings of Canadian Doctors, Dentist, Pharmacists and health Facilities. directory?

[schmeetz]

Originally Posted by kgun

If you use that term here and elswhere, that can reduce your credibility.

What about his Canadian Medical Directories On-line, Detailed Listings of Canadian Doctors, Dentist, Pharmacists and health Facilities. directory?

Google dislikes us.....better Kgun? Either way....Google is not ranking our site and i think it's primarily because of our Canadian backlinks.

anyone have trouble breaking into the US SERPS?

[AVC]

If your site primarily caters to the Canadian reader then it is natural that you would show up in G Canada.

How many of your users are from out of the country ?

[schmeetz]

It's not for my signature link. It's a DotCom.

[kgun]

Originally Posted by schmeetz

Google dislikes us.....better Kgun?

Personally, I would prefer somthing like this:

• We have problems with ranking good on Google US. Can anybody help us?
• What is the best marketing (SEO) stragegy for a Canadian company that want to rank in the USA (or globally).
• Our company is not ranking well in the US. What are we doing wrong?

Note: I am not a SEO person. I write content and make internet sites.

[AVC]

Watch how you build links (don't buy followed contextual links), if you get caught you will be in trouble with G for sure.

[janeth]

The Canadian market would be a lot easer to rank in.

Google looks at the domain name extension, where the backlinks come from and the hosting.

It might just take more links and more time to show up in the US market. It's a lot tougher market.

[schmeetz]

put it this way. I've been seoing for 5 years and have tackled some pretty difficult industries. This one in particular should not be this difficult. I'm not ranking in the US and it's driving me mad.

Aside from getting some power backlinks from US based sites what could i be doing differently? Could Google be punishing my site for US only...does that happen? Is it an age thing?

[AVC]

Put up unique information, keep your pages updated, and have some patience if you want to rank long term.

[sgliggett]

Guilt by association. Canada + Medical = spam.
You're in the spam box. Who said the googleverse was fair?

[janeth]

Originally Posted by schmeetz

put it this way. I've been seoing for 5 years and have tackled some pretty difficult industries. This one in particular should not be this difficult. I'm not ranking in the US and it's driving me mad.

Aside from getting some power backlinks from US based sites what could i be doing differently? Could Google be punishing my site for US only...does that happen? Is it an age thing?

What's strange is that your dominating in Canada. It sounds like Google sees you as a Canadian company and not a US company.

Maybe your telephone number or contact information.

If you get it to start ranking in the US you could start loosing some of your ranking in Canada.

[crankydave]

Well, without seeing the site can't give you any kind of a real answer other than guessing.

Dave

[mawells]

First, I have to ask you, "How do you know you're not ranking well in the U.S.?" You realize that, if you're in Canada and you go to Google.com and check your rankings that the SERPs will be tainted by your physical location. What I mean is that the SERPs differ depending on where you're actually surfing the 'Net from. Google prefers to serve up the most local sites first if they are quality results.

Now, if your offices in Dallas have told you that you aren't ranking anywhere, then it's very possible that you're not and maybe you should consider getting a .com URL that points to the .ca URL. This will definitely let Google know that you do business in the U.S. as well as Canada.

(BTW Google doesn't LIKE or HATE anyone or anything - it's a business entity and has no emotions but, as a business it does have goals - the primary one being to serve up the most relevant results to the proper audience.)

[kevsta]

have you set preferences in webmaster tools to US?

should be possible, if a little harder i would have thought

[sofomor]

by Jeneth: If you get it to start ranking in the US you could start loosing some of your ranking in Canada.

Now where did got that from? does Google say that "to gain something you will loose something"

Simply put this guy is experiencing tougher competition than .ca

Keep working buddy...

[michstar01]

Funny I was just reading about this yesterday. Google these terms:

geotargeting google "webmaster tools"

and look at the seo roundtable result.

Looks like it is helping people like you.


HTH!

[crankydave]

Jason... I was bored so I did some digging. I'm guessing this is a client? It would have been quicker if you provided some more info about the site though.

If it's the site I believe it is it has a pretty heavy Canadian slant to it. The locations page looks ok but there's nothing to index because it's all maps. There's literally nothing on the site that's indexable indicating US locations and all sorts of references to Canada. Also not sure if it makes a difference but doing a search for the IP using the TLD indicates the UK and the actual IP resolves to the US. Your DNS servers perhaps?

Additionally, you're talking about a HUGE competetive difference between the US and Canada. Just as a quick search, I did an allinchor: for a 3 word phrase in the home page title. #1 in google.ca #21 in google.com and 40-50 times more returns for exact phrase matches and a general search.

Took a look at the links, briefly, and I'm seeing a whole lot of things that may not be helping a whole lot. Google is likely not recognizing a whole lot of them especially the sitewides. As I said I just looked briefly but there were quite a few that gave the appearance of being paid. Not suggesting they are just looked that way so they may not be helping you any.

I'm tired. Time for a nap.

Dave

[activeco]

Hosting address, 3xx redirects, backlinks, domain registrant's adress, 'about us' data (e-mail tld?)...

[srblogger]

Make sure your sites are on a dedicated IP, make sure the code is clean and that your blog is not full of duplicates (many blog software apps have duplicated code - if this is the case, your blog could be hurting your site, not helping).

Submit your sitemap.xml to Google webmaster tools so you can see if you have any warnings.

[blitzen]

My company is US based.
Host is in Canada (did that before the USD declined and love our host too much to change).

TEST
We launched a sister site with host in USA for comparison.
To avoid the duplicate content penalty, we had to make the sister site different. Here is how.

The structure of the websites are the same (same software).
The products are the same, but we copied fewer ones from the original site to the sister site.
The sister site has product lines not on original site.
The products have a slightly different product descriptions, different prices, different sized images although the image names are the same.
The URLs are slightly different - i.e. original site uses something like ".../this-myproduct" and sister site uses ".../t-myproduct".

Result? For specific keywords (narrow scope), the ranking is just about the same.
For generic keywords (broad), the USA-hosted site doesn't fare as well as the Canadian-hosted one.
The Canadian-hosted site gets customers from Canada as well as from the USA, the great majority from the USA.

Conclusion? ... Although this is only one test, I believe host doesn't matter between USA and Canada if you build your pages correctly.
It might be because our contact information on the website is in the USA.

Another Quick Test
Search Google.ca for a generic keyword.

Select "Search the Web": The Canada-hosted website is # 5.
Select "Search Pages from Canada": The Canada-hosted website is # 3.

[activeco]

edited: double posted

[activeco]

Originally Posted by blitzen

Host is in Canada

Conclusion?

... Although this is only one test, I believe host doesn't matter between USA and Canada if you build your pages correctly.

Wrong. Your majority of USA customers helps you indeed for USA ranking, but the host leans more towards Ca.
I would say the three most important things for determining the ranking 'market' are:

• Host location
• Majority of incoming links
• Majority of incoming traffic (yes, chicken-egg question but think analytics, adsense, adwords, etc.)

Other than that, language, character set, etc....

[blitzen]

Originally Posted by activeco

Wrong. Your majority of USA customers helps you indeed for USA ranking, but the host leans more towards Ca.

Why do you say this?

There aren't nearly as many competitor websites in Canada, thus I'd expect to be higher in the SE in Canada rankings.

Granted, to do a thorough analysis, I'd need to hire a statistician to weed out the variables, and would need to do more tests.
Notice the disclaimer "if you build your website right".

Neither site uses PPC, just organic listings including sitemaps.