If that's true for you, new respected client, then you'll want to make sure to appear in the default Google search for Canadian users: Google Canada.

You know of the benefits of being recognized as a Canadian site by Google. And you know that you can achieve that by getting a .CA domain name and/or hosting your site on a Canadian IP.

Well, that was easy, wasn't it? You're now targeting the #12 Internet use country.

But it gets better. With the right steps you can gain access to a market seldom targeted by e-commerce and SEO: French speaking Canadians. People who, like you and I, feel most comfortable spending their money on sites they can understand with ease.

Three years ago the Quebec population was estimated to be around 6.5 million with at least 1.6 million Internet users.

To illustrate how that is not a small market consider that in 2003 those combined Quebec spend $345 million on e-commerce, $233 million of which stayed in Canada and $112 million going abroad.

Interesting, isn't it?

About the Author: Ruud Hein

I love helping to make web sites make it. From the ground up if needed. CSS challenges, server-side scripting, user and device friendly JavaScript tricks search engines have no problems with. Tracking how the sites perform and then figuring out how to make that performance and the tracking better. I'm passionate about information. No matter how often I trim my feeds in my feed readers (yes, I use more than one), I always have a couple of hundred in there covering topics ranging from design to usability, from SEO to SEM, from life hacks to productivity blogs, from.... Well, you get the idea, I guess. Knowledge and information management is close to my heart. Has to be with the amount of information I track. My "trusted system" is usually in flux but always at hand and fully searchable. My paid passion job at Search Engine People sees me applying my passions and knowledge to a wide array of problems, ones I usually experience as challenges. It's good to have you here: pleased to meet you!