Looks like you're in . Want the local site?
Most stores selling in Japan are visible on Rakuten Ichiba, Amazon Japan, or Yahoo Japan Shopping — but the own-domain organic channel is untouched. Japanese consumers search on Google Japan and Yahoo Japan before buying. Stores without a bilingual own-domain SEO strategy are sending that traffic to the marketplace, permanently. The own-domain channel is where margin lives.
English-only product pages in a Japanese search market
Marketplace dependency eroding own-domain margin
Category pages with no Japanese content
Product schema missing or in the wrong language
Yahoo Japan Shopping and its distinct SEO requirements
Crawl budget consumed by variant and spec filter URLs
Japanese consumers search in Japanese. Google Japan and Yahoo Japan index Japanese-language content first. An English-only product catalogue may appear in English-language searches but is essentially invisible for the core Japanese-language commercial keyword set. Bilingual product pages — with proper hreflang tag implementation — are required for own-domain organic visibility.
Rakuten Ichiba, Amazon Japan, and Yahoo Japan Shopping take 8–15% commissions per transaction. Stores that rank on marketplaces but not on their own domain are paying commission on customers who would have found them organically. Own-domain SEO returns that margin permanently — each organic customer acquired is a customer not paying a marketplace fee.
Japanese consumers expect detailed product descriptions, quality specifications, and trust signals — far more content depth than typical English-language category pages include. Thin category pages in either language underperform in Japanese search. Google Japan applies the same quality signals as Google globally, but Japanese consumer expectations set the bar higher for content depth.
Product schema with Japanese-language content in the name, description, and review fields is required for rich results on Google Japan. Schema with English-only content on a Japanese-language product page creates a mismatch that disqualifies pages from rich results. Most stores either have no schema or have schema with English content on Japanese pages.
Yahoo Japan Shopping (now part of PayPay Mall) has its own search algorithm, separate from Google Japan and from standard web SEO. Stores listed on Yahoo Japan Shopping need category and product title optimisation for Yahoo's ranking factors, which differ from Google's. Treating Yahoo Japan Shopping as a passive listing rather than an active SEO channel leaves significant organic traffic unrealised.
Japanese product pages often have detailed specification variants — size charts in Japanese measurements, material quality grades, colour names in Japanese. These generate large numbers of variant URLs. Without crawl budget management, Google indexes specification variants instead of the canonical product and category pages. The pages that should rank commercially are the last ones Google crawls.
What: Audit and rewrite category page titles, H1s, meta descriptions, and on-page copy to target commercial buying-intent keywords in Japanese. Why: Category pages generate more organic revenue than product pages — but most stores selling in Japan leave them in English only or with minimal Japanese content. How: We map the commercial keyword set in Japanese, rewrite copy around it, and fix internal linking so Google treats category pages as the primary revenue assets.
What: Implement Product, Offer, and AggregateRating JSON-LD schema on every eligible product page — with Japanese-language content in the structured data fields. Why: Schema markup enables price, rating, and availability rich results in Google Japan — driving significantly higher CTR. English-only schema on Japanese pages disqualifies pages from rich results. How: We audit existing schema, fix language mismatches, and deploy complete structured data across the catalogue.
What: Identify and resolve crawl budget waste from faceted navigation, specification filter URLs, variant pages, and canonicalisation errors. Why: Japanese product catalogues with detailed specification variants can generate large numbers of near-duplicate URLs that consume crawl budget. How: We audit robots.txt, sitemap, canonical tags, and crawl data to eliminate waste and prioritise revenue pages.
What: Build a buying-intent keyword map in Japanese across every category, subcategory, and product type. Why: Japanese keyword research requires understanding hiragana, katakana, and kanji variations for the same product terms — the search volume distribution across character sets is not obvious without native-market research. How: We research, cluster, and map Japanese commercial keywords to correct pages, then track progress weekly.
What: Write or commission bilingual on-page content for top-priority category and collection pages. Why: Thin category content is the most common reason category pages fail to rank on Google Japan. Japanese consumer expectations for content depth — specifications, quality signals, and trust indicators — are higher than English-language markets. How: We write or brief Japanese-language content that targets the keyword cluster while meeting Japanese consumer expectations.
What: Set up or audit GA4 ecommerce event tracking (view_item, add_to_cart, purchase) for the Japanese market and connect it to Search Console. Why: Without accurate tracking, own-domain organic revenue can't be separated from marketplace referral revenue. How: We deploy GA4 ecommerce events via GTM, configure multi-currency tracking where needed, and build an organic revenue dashboard that separates own-domain organic from Rakuten, Amazon Japan, and Yahoo Japan Shopping referrals.
Most stores selling in Japan see measurable own-domain organic revenue movement within 90 to 120 days for mid-competition Japanese-language category keywords. Google Japan responds to technical and content improvements at roughly the same pace as global Google. Yahoo Japan Shopping search can show movement faster for listed products. The diagnostic identifies which pages have the best short-term own-domain opportunity and we prioritise those first.
Yes. Shopify has strong market presence in Japan and we work with Shopify stores regularly. Japan-specific Shopify considerations include locale settings for Japanese language storefronts, hreflang tag implementation for bilingual stores, yen currency formatting in GA4 ecommerce tracking, and Japanese-language schema in structured data. We handle all of these as part of a standard Japan engagement.
Yes. WooCommerce with WPML or TranslatePress is a common setup for bilingual Japanese and English stores. We handle hreflang implementation in the WooCommerce multilingual setup, Japanese-language schema deployment, crawl budget management for translated variant URLs, and GA4 ecommerce tracking with correct language and currency attribution. WooCommerce gives more direct technical control than Shopify for Japan-specific configurations.
Japanese keyword research covers hiragana, katakana, and kanji variants for each product term. The same product can be searched in all three character sets, with volume distribution varying by category and buyer demographics. For example, food products are predominantly searched in hiragana and kanji; electronics often in katakana (especially for foreign brand names) or a mix; fashion in both katakana and kanji. We conduct keyword research natively in Japanese rather than translating English keyword lists, and we validate search volumes using Japanese market data from Google Keyword Planner and Yahoo Japan's keyword tools.
Japanese product catalogues typically have more specification detail than equivalent English-language catalogues — size charts in Japanese measurements, material quality grades, and colour names in Japanese. These generate large numbers of variant URLs. We manage crawl budget through robots.txt parameter exclusions, canonical tags on variant pages, and sitemap configuration. The goal is to ensure Google's crawl budget reaches the canonical category and product pages, not the specification variant combinations.
We start with a paid search diagnostic at a fixed fee — this gives you a full picture of the store's own-domain organic opportunity before committing to a monthly engagement. Monthly eCommerce SEO engagements for Japan start at ¥150,000 per month for smaller stores and typically run from ¥250,000 to ¥400,000 per month for stores requiring bilingual content creation, full technical scope, and marketplace channel strategy. Pricing depends on catalogue size, platform, bilingual requirements, and current technical state. The diagnostic determines the right scope.
We work with both. The most effective approach is to optimise own-domain organic SEO and marketplace listings in parallel rather than treating them as competing channels. For Rakuten Ichiba, this means Rakuten ichiba SEO — item title optimisation, shop page content, and internal Rakuten search ranking factors — alongside own-domain Google Japan SEO. For Amazon Japan, product title and backend keyword optimisation for A9 runs alongside own-domain SEO. The goal is to grow own-domain organic revenue without disrupting existing marketplace performance — and over time, to increase the percentage of revenue coming from the own domain where margins are higher.
Yes. Bilingual SEO for Japanese and English requires correct hreflang tag implementation, separate keyword research for each language market, and content that meets the expectations of each market's consumers — Japanese consumers expect significantly more specification detail and trust signals than English-language buyers. Technically, we implement hreflang tags in the HTML head or XML sitemap, confirm correct page pairing in Google Search Console's International Targeting report, and audit for common errors (missing x-default, incorrect region codes, broken return tags). Japanese pages require Japanese-language schema in structured data fields — not just Japanese page content — for rich results eligibility on Google Japan. We conduct Japanese keyword research natively, and content is written or commissioned in Japanese, not machine-translated from English.
Not a black box. Real specialists you can call, with their names on the work.
We audit your store's indexation state across both Japanese and English pages, hreflang implementation, schema language accuracy, crawl budget waste, and own-domain organic keyword gaps before recommending any engagement. The diagnostic tells you exactly what's suppressing organic revenue in Japan — and whether we're the right fit to address it.
Fixed-fee diagnostic — no ongoing commitment required · JPY pricing, invoiced monthly, no minimum contract term · Bilingual diagnostic report available in Japanese and English
Ignited Nepal
Growth engineering · replies within 1 business day
By continuing you agree to our privacy policy.
