SEO for JP site

worth optimising in English?

[Adam_C]

I've been working on a Japanese site with some translators and have optimised in Japanese characters.

I'm wondering whether it is worth optimising the site in English as well.

Can anyone tell me if Japanese people search in English at all?

If so, what sort of proportion of searches?

Thanks...

[Jingle]

In most of the cases, it won't worth.

Some exceptions are abbreviation or well recognized names especially computer or internet related. i.e. Windows (name of OS), Java (name of programing language), USB, DVD.

There is no Japanese version of wordtracker, but you can use Japanese overture's keyword tool.

[takagi]

Only a small group will search in English (and than usually if nothing/not enough can be found in Japanese). See also:

Need Advice on Japanese SE's [webmasterworld.com]

Best English-language SE to reach asia market? [webmasterworld.com]

---

OTOH, it could be difficult to get links from other Japanese sites to your pages:

It is simply a fact of life. Japanese language pages have a lower PR than a similar English language page would have.

How long does it take for DMOZ to impact on G?
[webmasterworld.com]

Japanese pages have lower Google PR? [webmasterworld.com]

So having some English content can help to get links (and some PageRank) from English pages.

[bill]

It really depends on your site's topic and focus as to whether you will see any residual Japan traffic from your English site. There certainly are ways you can make your English site more attractive to the Japanese SEs like getting a local domain and ultra simplifying your English (possibly target some common Japanese misspellings of English KWs). Also make sure any e-commerce systems have easy payment options that will work in Japan. Another angle would be to go after the expatriate market who are generally a little more well off and often greatly appreciate Japan targeted services offered in English.

Those are just some general ideas, but I think you get the idea. Like the others have said, your Japanese language traffic should be a lot higher. Do take a look through those threads that takagi noted as there is some good discussion in there.

[a2ztranslate]

hi ya

have done some very simple research using o/ture and adwords on frequency of searches in japan.

using keyword "new zealand" in english and japanese as an example

98% of searches in Japanese on O/ture japan
2% of searches in English on O/ture Japan

i would imagine that this would vary with the technicality of the search term: i.e. more technical the term (e.g. scientific or engineering jargon) the higher frequency of English due to the penetration of english tems in technical fields. also be aware that transliterations into japanese katakana can often have multiple spellings (try www.alc.co.jp for English - Japanese dictionary to chekc for spelling variations)

so while you may not get any results from japan on an english search, like other pples comments it cannot hurt to optimise for the english as well.

[johnafrid]

My wife is Japanese. She is fluent speaker of English with native level fluency and is way above average user of computers. In fact, she is an IT/retail consultant in an American company. When it comes to searching the web, she becomes a 100% Japanese and would rarely use any English site. She says its extrememly easy to search in Japanese. She doesnt have to think much while searching. The search is natural and fast and mostly to the point.
Hope this helps. As Bill said, if your target is the expat community here in Tokyo, then English is a must. They really appreciate any service in English. They are affluent and they are willing to pay a premium for anything that will make their life easier.

[bill]

have done some very simple research using o/ture and adwords on frequency of searches in japan.

using keyword "new zealand" in english and japanese as an example

98% of searches in Japanese on O/ture japan
2% of searches in English on O/ture Japan

Just a word of caution on Overture Japan's keyword tool...we had a thread [webmasterworld.com] here a little while back where we noticed that the Match Driver actually translates and converts some keywords so that's probably not the best way to gain statistics. You would probably get cleaner results from looking at your AdWords results. This is not to say that the percentage of English searches in Japan is any higher than you are suggesting, just keep in mind that quirk of the Overture keyword tool.

[a2ztranslate]

good point bill. it is a very rough and ready statistic, but then again, o/ture keyword interface is a bit more user friendly than adwords!

i wonder if there is any evidence of the reverse? o/ture translating in the other direction? if they can do it in one direction, they sure can do it the opposite way round.

[bill]

I haven't seen any examples of them translating the other direction via the keyword suggestion tool [inventory.jp.overture.com], but that's probably because the number of clicks on relative Japanese terms will most always beat out the English term, at least for the top 70 or so terms that they show for each search. I think you'd have to look at the actual SERPs to find examples of this.

[a2ztranslate]

again thansk everyone for your advice. last question, and i know this one has been done before, but using subdomains for the differentl languages rather than backslashes? i.e. www.language.domain rather than www.domain/language?

your thoughts?

[bill]

www.language.domain rather than www.domain/language?

Actually neither of those from my experience. If possible it is preferable to get a .jp domain name for the Japanese language site. I have seen better traffic from moving from a www.domain/language to domain.jp. I think you'll see this is generally the consensus with other languages as well (e.g., Europe Forum [webmasterworld.com]).

[a2ztranslate]

yeah, i always encourage clients to get the local domain, but down here in New Zealand the $NZ dollar doesnt go too far!

[bill]

Well, in that case I would suggest going the subdomain route rather than using sub folders. Like a local domain, that signifies a separate web site.