Search Engine Optimization

March 3, 2004 8:20 PM

Yahoo! Japan search rankings - can you pay to improve your ranking? At work, we have been asked by one of our representative offices in Japan to pay AUD1,126.00 to boost our search rankings, but I am very skeptical of the truth in this. I have spoken to a couple of Japanese people (including one of our staff members) who use Yahoo! Japan's search engine a lot and they confirm that it is possible to pay a fee to improve rankings of a site. Can anyone definitely confirm or deny this? If it does improve our ranking, it would be worth paying, but I can't help feeling it is a scam.
posted by dg to computers & internet (4 comments total)

I guess so
posted by amberglow at 8:56 PM on March 3, 2004

I've had great luck getting high in the search rankings on Google, Yahoo!, and MSN. The trick is having pages that addres the things people will be searching for. Simple as that. But remember it isn't your site that will be high in the results. It will be specific keywords. You need to guess what people are interested in, while at the same time tying it in to your business.

Lately the Quizno's commercial looked like a good target. So.......

pictures marmoset and quizno's rat commercial

1) Have lots of pages. Lots. Like maybe several hundred. Use backend scripting to build pages based on the keywords you want to target.
2) Take advantage of memes or other stuff that will have folks running to their search engine.
3) Get your target keywords in the title. Order is important.
posted by y6y6y6 at 9:24 PM on March 3, 2004

Perhaps I was not clear enough in my question - the question refers specifically and only to Yahoo! Japan, which seems to operate differently from the rest of the world according to my (Japanese) sources. Put more simply - does paying money move your search rankings further up the scale or not?
posted by dg at 10:46 PM on March 3, 2004

Well you can do it for all the other Yahoo's but I have heard that Japan is different... so if I were you, I would find a way to get in touch with Yahoo! Japan (perhaps call the American or Oz office and ask them how to get someone on the line in Japan) and just ask them directly. Alternatively, find another company in the same business in Japan or Australia and ask them.
posted by chaz at 2:12 PM on March 4, 2004