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 pleasure of being interviewed by Eric Friedman of Marketing.fm. I had fun talking about International search marketing including SEO, SEM & Social Media, and a little bit about my background.

Please visit the post “Interview with Motoko Hunt about Search Around the World & SES Chicago 2008“.

Search Engine Strategies will be held in Chicago from December 8 through 11 this year. I will speak about the search market in Japan, and a bit about Korea and India markets during the “Search Around The World” session on Monday, the 8th. This session covers other markets such as China, UK, Germany, France, Poland, Russia and Latin America. It would be a good session for people who are considering entering these markets to learn from the expert in the regions. Visit SES Chicago for the information.

Yesterday, I did Bruce Clay’s SEM Synergy interview, and talked about Search Market in Japan. It will be broadcasted on Webmaster Radio on Wednesday, November 5 at 12:00pm. MP3 file can be downloaded after the show. Continue Reading »

I’m back from SES Chicago. It was another great conference with some interesting sessions and keynote speakers. The best of all, for me at least, I got to speak about Japanese Internet Market during the “Search Around The World” session on day 1!

With Internet technology, the size of the company or the location of the office no longer limit your market to your local area or just in US. In fact, at SES Chicago, Continue Reading »