Question about location keyword targeting and loading times.

Hello everyone. I figured this would be the place to ask. So I have hired a group of seo workers from upwork to do various jobs (aka written content, backlinking etc) and what I have noticed is I am getting massive traffic from the USA but not Canada.

Canada is our only shipping/sales target audience. I was told I would need to add the word “Canada” as a long tail but I don’t believe this is true. What should I be telling these guys to research to fix this? I am unfamiliar with the process itself.

Lastly my loading time is atrocious yet the size of the website is small, all pictures pixlr small, what could be causing long delay times and what can I do to audit and rectify this? Any help from the pros would be appreciated!