Tag: SEO
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How AI Overviews Are Disrupting Web Traffic
Awhile ago, Google began displaying AI-generated summaries at the very top of search results. From our experience, these appear in about half of all searches. According to recent discussions in the industry, these AI Overviews (also called AI/O) tend to show up less when users are searching for a company website or something to buy,…
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Enhancing SEO by Improving User Experience
For many years now, it’s been widely understood that Google prioritizes website content over superficial technical tweaks or external link-building. Many of you may already be aware of this. What Google values in a website’s content isn’t copied information from elsewhere or AI-generated filler; but original, high-quality content that provides real informational value. That’s what…
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User Engagement vs. Bounce Rate
Over a decade ago, one of the primary metrics for measuring a website’s effectiveness was page views (PV). That is, the number of times a page was viewed. Page views (roughly speaking) count how many times a page is opened. So in extreme cases, someone could simply open and close the same page repeatedly, and…
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The Hidden Dangers of Broken Links
As I’ve written many times on this blog, having URLs on your website that return errors is a significant negative both in terms of SEO and user experience. And yet, it’s surprisingly common to see them left unattended. Even on the websites of major companies, it’s not unusual to encounter an error after clicking a…
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Marketing Business Problems
In the early days of the Internet, many businesses offered performance-based SEO for Google and Yahoo, charging only based on results, like ranking in the top 10 or top 3. However, as Google and Yahoo evolved and their ranking criteria changed frequently, it became increasingly difficult to achieve those results, making performance-based models unsustainable. Looking…
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Direct Naming of Products
One of the coffee shops near our office has a morning-only menu called “Quick Serve Coffee” As the name suggests, they pour the coffee into a cup and serve it right away, making it perfect for those busy mornings when you’re short on time. The name is straightforward —it requires no explanation and is easy…
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Is it Advantageous to Use .jp?
Sometimes, overseas clients ask us whether it’s beneficial to use a .jp domain when creating a Japanese website. They also inquire if hosting the website on a server in Japan is necessary for a .jp domain. Firstly, using a .jp domain doesn’t provide any advantage or disadvantage in terms of search engine rankings in Japan.…
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Excluding Your Rival’s Brand Name
This gets a bit technical. When you search on Google, the links labeled “sponsored” at the top are paid ads that we pay Google to show. It works like this: you choose a keyword when placing an ad, and your ad appears when someone searches for that keyword. You get charged when someone clicks on…
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Should You Include The Date?
The same applies to new information, blogs, customer testimonials, and so on. Including dates is obviously better—it’s common sense. However… That’s true only for those who can update content frequently. If updates aren’t feasible, it’s preferable to omit dates altogether. If the latest post in the “latest information” section is from three years ago, it…
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The Necessity of Marketing
It’s quite common in Japan for many companies to have sales teams but no dedicated marketing teams. Even among large companies with 1,000 employees, it’s not unusual to find 100 sales staff but no marketing department. At most, there might be a “public relations” department responsible for press releases and advertisements. Interestingly, website production often…
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Content is King
In the US SEO industry, there’s a popular saying: “Content is King.” This phrase emphasizes that for a website’s SEO (Google optimization), nothing is more crucial than the quality of its content. This concept predates Google’s current emphasis on content. Tactics like keyword stuffing or aggressively building external links are seen as superficial in SEO…
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Mistaken Ways of Creating a Website
Who among these individuals can effectively create a website that attracts customers? 1. Founding CEO 2. Fashion designer 3. IT staff 4. Sales staff The answer is… none of them. To begin with, a founding CEO often tends to be too emotionally invested in the company’s narrative, focusing on its struggles, success stories, and history—topics…
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Creating Your Own Brand
A few years ago, Google started prioritizing the actual content itself as a key factor in determining search rankings. They also began considering the authority of the author as a measure of content quality. For instance, when it comes to articles about topics like dieting, content written by professionals such as doctors and nutritionists tends…
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What is “Black Hat SEO”?
In English, the term “black hat” typically connotes a villain or wrongdoer, a usage that traces its origins to old Western films where heroes wore white hats and villains donned black ones. In the contemporary landscape of IT and the internet, “black hat” is frequently associated with hackers who engage in unauthorized intrusion into computers…