.com or .ca?
Both do the job. A .com is what people type by reflex when they have forgotten the extension. A .ca says right away that you are in Canada, which reassures a customer looking for someone nearby.
A .ca comes with one condition: you need a Canadian presence (a citizen, a permanent resident or a business registered in Canada, among other cases). CIRA, the organisation that runs .ca, sets those requirements. For a small business in Québec it is almost never an obstacle.
My advice: when the .com and the .ca are both free, take both and redirect one to the other. It keeps a competitor from settling right next to your name. When only one is free, look at who holds the other before you decide. If it is a business in the same trade in your region, pick another name.
Short, clear, easy to say
The best test happens on the phone. Say your address out loud to someone, once, and ask them to write it down. If they get it wrong, your customers will too.
- Two or three words, no more.
- Words everybody knows how to spell.
- No digits standing in for words, no home-made abbreviations.
- A name that fits on a truck, a business card and an email signature.
A slightly longer name that is crystal clear beats a short one nobody understands. "plumberlaval" sticks; a four-letter acronym does not.
Accents and hyphens
You can register a name with accents, in .ca as in .com. But most people type without accents, and some email software still handles accented addresses poorly. So take the unaccented version as your main address. If the accented version is free, you can add it and redirect it.
Same logic for the hyphen. On the phone you have to say it ("plumber, hyphen, laval") and many people forget it when typing. Keep it for the case where the joined version is taken and you really want the name, knowing that some of your visitors will land on the other one.
The city in the name, or not
Putting the city in the name helps people understand at once that you are close to them. It is a good choice when you serve one area and plan to stay there.
It is a weaker choice if you want to grow. "roofinglongueuil" sounds odd the day most of your contracts are in Brossard and Saint-Hubert. In that case take a name without a city, or with a region, and write your service areas in the pages of your site.
Either way, the name does not do the search work on its own. For local searches, your Google Business Profile, your reviews and the content of your site weigh more than the address.
French and Bill 96, in plain words
In Québec, the Charter of the French Language, amended by Bill 96, governs among other things the name of your business, your signage and your commercial publications. Your website is one of them: what you offer there has to be available in French, at least as well as in another language.
In practice, for a small business here: a business name in French, a site whose French version is complete, and an English version on top if your customers ask for it. Choosing an English address for a business that presents itself in French only makes life harder.
I am not a lawyer and this guide is not legal advice. For your own case, the Office québécois de la langue française answers questions from businesses, and a lawyer can settle the matter.
Before you buy: the REQ and trademarks
A free domain name does not mean the name is yours. Three free checks that take a few minutes:
- The Registraire des entreprises du Québec (REQ): search the name and its variants. If a business in the same trade already carries it, move on to the next one.
- The Canadian Trademarks Database, from the Canadian Intellectual Property Office: search the main word of your name. A trademark registered in your line of business can force you to change everything later.
- A Google search and a look at Facebook and Instagram with the exact name: you will see who already uses it without having registered it.
If you practise a trade governed by a professional order (lawyer, notary, accountant, dentist, engineer…), your order has its own rules on names and advertising. Call it before you buy.
A doubt about a trademark? That is a question for a lawyer or a trademark agent, not for a guide on the web.
The trap: one site per city
The idea comes up often: buy ten names (plumberlaval, plumberterrebonne, plumberrepentigny…) and put up ten small, nearly identical sites to show up everywhere. Google calls these doorway pages and lists them in its spam policies: they can be ranked lower or removed from the results.
It also costs more to maintain, and your reviews, your links and your reputation end up scattered over ten addresses instead of strengthening one.
What I recommend: one site, one name, and a page per area only when you have something true to say there (projects done in that city, a team on site, different lead times). The other names you buy protect yours: you redirect them to your main site.
Once the name is bought
- Buy it in an account in your own name, with your own email. Not in your nephew’s account or your agency’s: the day you part ways, the name has to stay yours.
- Turn on automatic renewal and keep a valid card on file. An expired name can be bought by someone else.
- Create an email address on your domain (info@yourname.ca). It looks more serious than a free address.
- Redirect the variants (the other extension, the accented version) to your main address.
- Write the same address everywhere: Google Business Profile, Facebook, invoices, truck. The same name, the same way.
- Put a real site on it, even a single page at first: who you are, what you do, where, and how to reach you.
Still looking for the name? The Domain ideas section lists .com and .ca names that are still available, by trade and by Québec city, checked again regularly.