I summarized some comparisons of L'Anse aux Meadows, the only certainly identified Norse settlement in the New World (Newfoundland, Canada), with medieval Greenlandic settlements, the original home of the former's settlers, for a while before in: Why didn’t the Vikings further colonize Vinland and why did they leave?, so I hope some of the points there are still valid to answer OP's curiosity.

The following is a further crude summary of my previous posts as well as historiographical consensus among researchers:

• L'Anse aux Meadows had only been occupied at most within the generation (ca. 1000-1030), and then the Norse people seemed not to settle at that place further permanently. Scholars tend to assume this settlement as a kind of the base camp for further exploration, and its location could be a kind of strategic rather than just the surrounding land's condition.
• The location of this base camp was probably also determined by the voyage route of the initial settlers from Greenland at least we believe later Old Norse saga traditions. They didn't directly cross the ocean from Europe.

I'm also willing to answer any additional questions from OP, though the extant available evidence is rather few.