Technical SEO for websites targeting Japan

What breaks on Japanese sites

Most technical problems in Japan are the same as anywhere: blocked pages, duplicate URLs and slow templates. A few are particular to Japanese text and to how Japanese companies build sites. Knowing them speeds up the audit.

Google and Yahoo! JAPAN

Google is the main engine in Japan, and Yahoo! JAPAN search is powered by Google's results. That means one set of technical fixes serves both audiences. We check the site in Search Console, review crawl stats, confirm important pages are indexed and watch for pages that Google treats as duplicates. Bing Webmaster Tools is a secondary check, since Bing feeds some AI answers.

A Japan-targeted site should also confirm the right language in Search Console reports and that no accidental noindex, geo-block or login wall stops Googlebot. Some sites block overseas traffic for security reasons, and if the filter catches crawlers, the pages vanish from results.

Structure, hreflang and domains

A .jp domain from JPRS needs a contact address in Japan; co.jp is limited to registered Japanese companies. Foreign brands often serve Japan from a /ja/ folder on their main domain. Both approaches work if language signals are consistent. Use ja-JP in hreflang, link every language pair both ways, and keep a self-reference on each page. Our hreflang generator helps build the tags, and the international SEO service covers larger structure questions.

If you use both a Japanese and an English version, make sure automatic language redirects do not stop Googlebot from reaching either one. Offer a visible language switch instead of forcing a redirect based on location.

Speed, mobile and structured data

Mobile pages carry most traffic, so Core Web Vitals are measured on phones. Japanese pages often fail on largest contentful paint because of fonts and large images. We run the Core Web Vitals checker, identify the slowest templates and fix them first. For markup we add Organization, Breadcrumb, Product, Article and FAQ types where the page really contains that content, with Japanese names and, for the organization, the Japanese and romanized company name.

Use the technical SEO checklist as a reference for the items we check.

We also look at third-party scripts such as chat widgets, tag managers and map embeds. They often cost more speed than the page itself, and removing one unused script can improve results sharply.

How the work runs

1. AuditCrawl, Search Console review and a ranked list of fixes, each with evidence.
2. Fix planTasks written for your developers or CMS admin, with test steps.
3. ImplementationWe make changes ourselves where we have access, or review your developers' work.
4. MonitoringMonthly Search Console report. Japan is 3.5 hours ahead of India, so 11:00 in Pune is 14:30 in Tokyo.

We plan site releases away from Golden Week and the year-end break, when your team may not be around to roll back a bad deploy.

Japanese font loading in detail

A full Japanese font can weigh several megabytes, because it contains thousands of characters. Loading it blocks text or causes layout shifts, and both hurt Core Web Vitals on phones. We use subsetting so only needed characters ship, load one or two weights instead of five, and set a fallback stack so text appears at once in a system Japanese font while the web font loads.

We then compare line height and size between the fallback and the web font, so the page does not jump when the swap happens. Sites that use a hosted font service should check how it splits files, since good services deliver only the ranges a page uses.

Price

Projects start at $1,500, with a rate of $30 an hour and a fixed quote after a short call on the contact page. Site size, platform and how much development work is needed move the price. The general method is on our technical SEO service page.