eCommerce is one of the rapidly-expanding industries in North America. However, if you are a Canadian entrepreneur, the chances are that you have not taken advantage of this phenomenon yet. As of 2006, the total annual online retail sales in the US have surpassed $170 billion. Yet, in Canada, the percentage of firms that are engaged in eCommerce has remained unchanged at 7% since 2001. Simply put, Canadian entrepreneurs have, for the most part, been ignoring the enormous revenues that could be generated from eCommerce sales. In fact, many Canadian websites avoid eCommerce entirely by asking potential customers to mail in a form, fax in order, or to call a customer service representative to process an order. Canadian online customers tend to buy from US online stores because Canadian online stores simply do not exist! Conversely, the small number of Canadian online stores in existence benefit immensely from the $170 billion US eCommerce market. The combination of existing free-trade agreements, combined with a borderless Internet, has allowed several high profile Canadian businesses to discover online direct-sales channels to US consumers.

It has been well documented that highly indexed webpages generate a significant amount of traffic because Internet surfers tend to assign a high degree of credibility to search engine rankings. Therefore, there is tremendous extrinsic value associated with appearing near the top of search engine rankings. However, most businesses do not really understand how to accomplish this feat.