Motoko’s weblog

I’ve been providing Japanese Search Marketing services to US and European companies since 1998. Because Japan has been one of the most advanced market online where people actually drop money (Japan is the second largest e-commerce market in the world) since the early years of Internet, regardless of the size of the business, Japan has been one of the attractive online market for foreign businesses. What’s interesting and troubling at the same time is that the type of inquiries I receive haven’t changed much for the past 10 years. There are 4 groups of inquiries:

1. We have a website in English (or one of the European languages), and want Japanese website created and optimized. Don’t know much about how to go about it, and open to suggestions. Oh, and interested in doing PPC campaign, too.
2. We just create a Japanese website, and need someone to optimize it. Will send you the English keyword list for SEO and PPC campaign.
3. We have a Japanese website and our in-house team is managing it. Experiencing some problems and can really use outside help to guide them to the next level.
4. We want to target Japanese market, but our English site should do just fine.  Continue Reading »

I had a fun doing the interview about SEO in Japan with Philip of Blogoscoped. (Thanks to Byron and SES for setting this up.) I hope it gives some insights of Internet market in Japan and some of the challenges dealing with Japanese languages and the culture to people who are doing or plan to do business with Japan.

Having the search box in ads with suggested keyword phrase has become very popular in Japan in 2007. Many of them using their company name, brand name, or product name as the search phrase, but some come up with creative phrases such as this “DoCoMo” ad below. In this ad for their mobile home control system, you see a search box above company logo with a search phrase “Ano bucho (that director)”. Continue Reading »