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Japanese Automakers’ English websites SEO Compatibility Report

Maqsood Ahmed — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 02:28:16 +0000

This is the post I have been wanting to write for so many weeks and months. Auto industry is the industry I have been involved for such a long period of time, both at an academic level in my university days and as a web design and Internet Marketing/conversion optimization professional in the later years.

The post seems to take lots of time to write. So, please bear with me as I plan to add the content to this from time to time to complete it.

The Japanese automakers and their English language websites we are going to discuss about are as follows.

Makers & their English websites

Summary of the Findings

Website Elements Studied

Search Engine Compatibility and ranking statistics

Geo-targeted SEO and the Japanese Market

Maqsood Ahmed — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 06:44:07 +0000

Recently, there has been a lot of discussion on the Internet about geo-location. In this post, we will share some observations, tips and tricks on performing SEO for the Japanese market. There is no doubt that Japan, being the second-largest economy in the world employs some of the best brains in IT, the SEO story stills lags behind the West.

Language
Undoubtedly, Japanese language is one of the most important ranking factors for ranking your website in the Japanese market. However, apart from the ‘mainstream’ Japanese language websites, there is a much smaller market for English language websites as well. Being one of the most lucrative market in the world, lots of foreign companies (mostly small to medium sized) come to Japan to grab their share of the pie. In many of these cases, these foreign businesses either do not pay attention to performing SEO or even designing their websites for the Japanese audience or take too long to respond to the need to establish online presence for their Japanese potential or real customers.

As a consequence, many of the websites owned by foreigners living in Japan, are solely targeted for the English speaking market in Japan. So, there is a still a chance for you to survive and thrive even if you do not make your website in Japanese from the start.

Local Search in Japan

Maqsood Ahmed — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 20:09:27 +0000

Recently, there has been a lot of debate about local search and its related topics among the SEO community. Everybody seems to want to talk about it. The truth of the matter is that local search is indeed, the centerpiece of all the search we, the consumers perform on the Internet day in and day out.

The purpose of this blog is to provide timely and relevant informtion about Japanese search industry to the SEO community and small businesses in Japan and around the world. So, please stay tuned as we are going to roll out lot of interesting stuff about local search in Japan in the coming weeks and months.

Managing your website for a great ROI

Maqsood Ahmed — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 02:06:07 +0000

Few things needed to think hard before you really design your website are as follows.

Determine Goals & Expectations

What do want your website to do for you? The reasons could be many as.:

Get leads for your business
Generate revenue for the company
Enhance the branding image of your company
Provide information to the interested audience

Determine Your Target Audience

You do not create website for yourself. Rather, you always have some target audience behind creating it. You create it so that others can view and take the actions you want them to take. For you to be able to fulfill the varying demands of your target users of the website, you have to understand exactly what objectives they want to accomplish by visiting and using your site, what kind of people they are and how they make decisions you want them regarding the website.

Which is the first to take- Conversion or SEO?

Maqsood Ahmed — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 02:05:05 +0000

For several years now, businesses have been focusing on SEO and PPC campaigns to improve traffic on their websites and achieve top rankings. The sole purpose of SEO and PPC budgets has been to get as many clicks as possible. This is not a bad goal in its own right. However, recently, marketers have shifted their attention and their budgets towards improving the conversion aspects of their websites apart from focusing on the traditional SEO and PPC campaigns.

What happens once a visitor has clicked on your website? What if she leaves your website immediately because she could not find what she was looking for on your website or, the navigation was too bad, or the design was too boring or the there was no call to action button. The list could go on and on.

Optimizing your website for improved conversion rates is a worthy goal aiming to understand what your customers want and, actaully help them get what they want. The best course of action for marketers to spend their ever shrinking budgets wisely is to clean up the house before they invite guests. So, you understand now what you need to do first after you get your next marketing budget aopproved by your boss.

There are two phases of website ROI. Pre-click and post-click. Both SEO and PPC involve improving the visibility of website while conversion optimization entails the overall customer experience- the way customers actually interact with different aspects of your website. Marketers need to prioritize which effort needs to be taken first.