Japanese SEO,

A client asked me how they can increase traffic to their website, besides doing SEO (on-site SEO and basic link-building campaign) and running PPC campaigns.  How to increase traffic to your website - that is an ultimate question in the center of internet marketing.  What else can you do?  There is a lot of good articles on the net, and after reading many of them, here are the 5 ideas that I picked for my client for their Japanese website

1.  YouTube
I know, everyone is doing it but neither my client or I have.
Here is a good article.
http://www.articlesbase.com/internet-articles/how-to-use-youtube-to-increase-traffic-to-your-website-874385.html

2.  Hold a contest on the site
A classic link bait.  It creates a reason for potential customers - who may not purchase immediately - to visit your site.  Entering must to be easy and fun.  Prizes need to be attractive but not necessarily expensive.  Promotional goods such as logo T-shirt are good ones.  Local finds are possibilities.  Cross-promotion with a partner might work.

3.  Make lists
Make lists around your keywords.  For example, top 10 tips in buying (your product).  Top 5, 10, or any number will do.  When compiled, a list becomes a good resource on the subject.  Added on your blog, lists tend to rank well with search engines.

4.  Participate in forums
Most popular forum sites in Japan include: Yahoo Chiebukuro, Hatena and Oshiete Goo.  There may be other forum sites specific to your subject.  Be helpful and place no blatant advertisement.

5.  Comment on other blogs
To blog search, use Yahoo! Japan (Technorati Japan dissolved).

The last two are best handled by in-house staff.  It’s a labor intensive but sure way to add links on relevant content to your website.

SEO for a Japanese website is not the same as SEO an English website because Yahoo! Japan is the most dominant search engine in Japan.  In the U.S. or any other country where the majority use Google, SEO means structuring your website so that Google will give it a high ranking.  In contrast, SEO is not successful in Japan if your website does not rank high on Yahoo! Japan.

One can argue that the basic principles for all search engines should be the same - to show the most informative and relevant websites for each search query, and therefore SEO in various countries or languages should be more similar than different.

Let’s take a look at how similar or different the search results are between Yahoo! Japan and Google’s Japanese version.  I searched for “Hawaii golf” (in Japanese) and compared the lists of the top 10 websites provided by the two Japanese search engines.  Only 3 out of 10 websites appear on both lists.  A search for “Kilauea volcano” resulted in 4 out of 10 being on both lists.  A search for “Bare Minerals”, 4 out of 10.  I think that such a substantial difference calls for Japanese SEO providers to give specific attention to Yahoo! Japan’s algorithm.