Ranking a .ca for an American Local Search Term

[Island]

I have a client that wants to expand to an American city, and want to rank for their service in that city.

Local listings might be tricky, but we could probably find a way to get a local address. I'm just wondering how difficult it would be to rank in the organic and maps search results with a .ca domain.

The .ca domain already has a pretty sold amount of authority and the competition isn't too bad for the local search term. I'm only concerned that the .ca would do very badly in the SERPs for an American local search term.

So should I register a .com for that city, or just stick to the existing domain which is easily 10+ years old, and has a good amount of authority, including links from one very big player in their larger industry.

 

[Mugen]

If they're going to expand, I would just have them register a new domain or setup a new sub-domain or even section on their current website.

Without an address, you can still rank in Google's Local Map pack, but it will require a little more efforet...it's all about how you structure the on-page and the backlink sources you use that will make the difference.