SEO in Japan– category –

Japan’s business year starts in April and stops three times a year. When to publish Japanese content so the work you paid for is visible when the budget opens.

Japanese sites run on themes, SEO plugins and hosts the English-speaking ecosystem never meets. What you inherit, what silently fails, and what to check before taking one over.

Search a Japanese B2B software category and count the vendors in the top ten. Usually one or two. In our experience, planning to outrank the comparison sites tends to waste the first two quarters.

A Western About page persuades. A Japanese company profile verifies. In B2B it is frequently the page that decides whether you get contacted at all.

In much of the Japanese enterprise market the company that will use your product is not the one choosing it. A systems integrator is, and that changes who your content is for.

Many Japanese engineers read English documentation fine. Most still search in Japanese, and what ranks is usually an article written by another engineer about your product.

For consumer products in Japan your own site is often the fourth place a buyer looks. Three marketplaces, two different models, and why the points economy changes the price comparison.

Use a subdirectory unless you have a specific reason not to. Two Japan-specific facts change the calculation: .co.jp cannot simply be bought, and the trust signal is not the ranking signal.

In Japanese YMYL categories, named professional supervision works more like an entry condition than a nice-to-have. What it covers, what it costs, and the five ways foreign companies get it wrong.

Japanese search demand for consumer brands sits in the occasion, in sourcing questions, and in a B2B line most head offices treat as minor. Rarely on the product page.