SEO for Japan
-
Google and Yahoo are the two major search engines in Japan. You can search using Western characters, and you often see English language results with Japanese (Chinese) characters next to them.
As I don't speak Japanese, how do I approach SEO for my Japanese-language site? would appreciate any experiences and educational sources on the topic.
-
Hello Knut,
Below are a few articles and White Board Friday's to give you a quick primer regarding SEO. There's definitely more of these out there so don't hesitate to ask Google!
WBF - International SEO: Where to Host and How to Target
YOUmoz - International SEO Part 2
mozBlog - Geolocation & International SEO FAQI've had a little experience SEO-ing websites in Japanese and the landscape is completely different. For starters, Yahoo is actually the dominant search engine but they use the Google algorithm - so just focus on Google's main ranking factors.
Since you don't know any Japanese you'll need someone VERY fluent in the written language so that you can account for both Kanji AND Chinese. You'll need to make a business decision on whether you want to write it in one form or the other - keyword research would definitely help here.
Don't be surprised if most of your visitors are coming from mobile - that's just how the technological culture is in Japan. Most people surf the web using their cell phones (since they are light years ahead of us) and not so much from their computer.
Last but not least, create great content to attract links. Your easiest links will come from those your website/business already has a relationship with. It comes from the Chinese concept of "guanxi" which literally means "relationships" and is an extension of the culture.
I hope that helps you get started and good luck!
-
It is a bit tricky to deal with, and for high end SEO you will need a japanese speaker to optimize your landing pages and for local link building.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Need Some Quality Vs. Quantity SEO Advice
We have a gallery here with our main categories of patches. https://www.stadriemblems.com/gallery/ If you click on one, say Fire Patches, you'll be taken to a page of just fire patches. https://www.stadriemblems.com/fire-patches/ But here's the kicker: If you notice of the fire patch page, there are also sub-categories to that. So if you click on say, Fire Rescue, you get taken one level deeper. https://www.stadriemblems.com/fire-patches/fire-rescue-patches/ I'm redoing this entire site (a project over five years overdue), and I'm wondering if it's really worth it to keep these three-level deep sub pages. I originally created them with long tail SEO in mind, making us be the only ones who come up when people search for very specific patches. But it's a big undertaking to redo all of them, and are they really adding any value?
On-Page Optimization | | UnderRugSwept0 -
Changing commenting platforms...will deleting old comments hurt SEO?
Hi everyone, We've decided to move away from Disqus and use Facebook comments on one of our blogs. Our users prefer it, and we saw traffic increase when we did it on another site. My question is, will removing old comments (we have hundreds of them per post) hurt my seo? I've scoured the internet for an answer but can't find anything up to date. Old best practices said to keep old comments. What do you think? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | TMI.com0 -
Simple on-site SEO - bet practice for keywords in content
Hello, The Moz on-page grader will give a grade of A if the keyword appears exactly in the content at least one time. If there are 500 words and a lot of it is about the main keyword, what have you found to be important to look for beyond the on-page grader - beyond the one exact instance of the keyword? I'm specifically talking just about keywords in the content. My guess is that it needs to occur 3 or 4 times in different forms and at least once exactly, but the on-page grader doesn't require it. What have you found?
On-Page Optimization | | BobGW0 -
SEO NEWBIE!!!
I am trying to get my website (and business) to the top of the search engines..just like everybody else here. 🙂 I have no idea what I am doing and I have to do this myself, because I do not have the extra money to hire somebody to do it for me. So, my question is... Where can I go to figure out how to do this? I don't know some of the "lingo" used. Like it slow crawled my sites and it wants me to fix a few things and I don't know what it is talking about. HELP!!! Becky
On-Page Optimization | | BeLaRouge0 -
N/A For On-page SEO Report
I have 8 errors and 44 warnings last week. Over the week, I corrected broken links, duplicate titles, meta tags, and duplicate page content. Now after it was run again, I'm getting an N/A. Does N/A mean there are NO errors at all on the site? I didn't fix all of the errors and warnings but most I did. My website is also up and running. Please let me know if I'm missing something or if I did that good of a job for my client's on-page SEO stuff, which I doubt despite moving the needle forward. Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | JQC0 -
Problem with Plugin: Wordpress SEO by Yoast
Hi Hi, I'm using the Plugin "Wordpress SEO by Yoast". Unfortunatelly, this plugin generates a sourcecode looking like this: name='description' content='XXXXXX.'/> Seomoz can't read this and tells me, that my pages have no description. Google doesn't matter and reads it correct. Is there anything I can do about this? Many greetings André
On-Page Optimization | | waynestock0 -
Is an Overflow SEO friendly
Is an "overflow" (scrollbar) seo and Google friendly? I only ask because it hides part of the visible text.
On-Page Optimization | | BradBorst0 -
SEO Value of Within-Page Links vs. Separate Pages
Title says it all. Assuming that you're talking about similar content (let's say, widgets), which is better: using within-page links for variations or using separate pages? I.e., do we have a widget page and then do in-page links to describe green, blue, and red widgets, or separate pages for each type of widget? In-page pro: more content on a single page, thus more keywords, key phrases, and general appearance of real content. In-page con: Jakob Neilsen says they're confusing. Also, for SEO, you only get one page title, rather than a separate page title for each. My personal bias is for in-page, since I hate creating dozens of short pages for what could be on one page, but my suspicion is that separate pages are better for SEO.
On-Page Optimization | | maxkennerly0