Japanese SEO, English speaking SEO services in Japan

SEO Specific to Japanese Market

Although most of the SEO techniques are globally common and 80% of them in Japan are the same as international ones, there are some points specific to the Japanese market.

1. Yahoo in Japan

The biggest difference between Japanese market and other market is the share of the major search engines.

Data: June 2018 Mahana Corporation

(1) Yahoo is still strong.

Unlike many other countries, Yahoo is still strong in Japan. (Until 3-4 years ago, Yahoo was stronger than Google.) Although it depends on the type of user segment, many people, especially beginner users still use Yahoo, while advanced users tend to use Google.  Other major international search engines, such as Bing and Ask, are extremely small in Japan.

(2) Yahoo Japan is independent of global Yahoo.

The company Yahoo Japan is independent of Yahoo in U.S.  Yahoo Japan uses a different logo, and it has its own unique home page.

(3) Yahoo Japan is using Google engine.

In 2010, Yahoo Japan changed its engine and now it mainly uses Google Search Engine.

(4) Yahoo Japan adds its own algorithm to Google's algorithm.

Since 2010, the search result of Yahoo Japan has become similar to that of Google, although there are some differences.

For example, those results often come up on the top page of the search result on Yahoo in Japan.
- Related news from Yahoo News.
- Related items from Yahoo Auction.
- Related Q&A topics from Yahoo Q&A.

Those Yahoo services are unique to Yahoo Japan.

2. Google in Japan

- Google is more popular than Yahoo among heavy internet users, business users and engineers, etc.
- Google Japan is part of Google of US. It uses the same algorithm.

3. Mobile Users

Just like other developed countries, the number of smart phone users is drastically increasing in Japan.

Although the statistics is very different from industry to industry, it is estimated that 40% - 70% of access to websites are now from a mobile phone.  

4. SEO on Japanese Language

(1) Characters
Unlike English, there are 4 types of characters in Japanese; hiragana, katakana, kanji and alphabet. Also, some English words are often used.

Examples:

Thanks to the latest technology of Google, these are usually considered as the same on search engines, although the results are often different. For SEO, it is important to choose the right keyword in most commonly used characters. For example, to search “website”, either 1 or 2 is commonly used, while to search “America”, only 1 or 3 are used. To mix several characters in the text contents of the website is strongly suggested to realize the best result.

 

 

(2) Keywords in major tags, alt tags, anchor text, etc

Just like SEO in English, those are highly advised in Japanese as well. The title tag and h1 are considered most important, where meta keyword is not that important these days.

(3) Keyword density in content text

Many keywords (but not too many) should be included in the text. In Japanese, it is sometimes advisable to include the same keyword in different characters, as mentioned above.

(4) Keyword in URL

Japanese characters should NOT be included in URL. Only alphabet can be used.

(5) Keyword in image file name

Japanese characters should NOT be included in an image name. Only alphabet can be used.

Example: