A4JP.COM Design Studio & English School

Sapporo SEO

A4JP is based in Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan and offers search engine optimization services at affordable prices. We help you rewrite code and/or content to increase the chances of search engines finding your site or information. Feel free to contact us anytime.

What is SEO?

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the term used for attempts at improving search engine rankings. It is just about getting internet users to read or see the content you make.

In search results, Google and other search engines display links to pages it considers relevant and authoritative. Authority is mainly measured by analyzing the number and quality of links from other web pages.

In simple terms, your web pages have the potential to rank in Google as other web pages link to them.

How to Get Better Search Results?

Write words and phrases that people search for when looking for your products and services without overusing keywords.
Make it easier to share and link to this content.
Repeat the process over and over.

Here are some areas worth focusing on when optimizing your pages.

Remove errors, programming mistakes, links to missing files, spelling mistakes, or anything else that reduces the overall reading quality or experience of viewing pages.
Add relevant titles, keywords and formatting to increase readability.
Try not to have more than one h1 tag per page unless there is a special reason.

How to Get Links from Other Sites?

Quality and quantity are two very different things when it comes to getting links from other sites. Don’t confuse the two or think about links in separately from content. It is vital to understand having great content massively increases the chances of securing natural links from quality relevant pages, and that these links will help you the most.

In simple, if you have something worth linking to you might secure links worth having. Great sites usually link to high quality content.

Be Found Quicker

“Search engine optimization (SEO)” is a term used to refer to increasing the chances of search engines finding your site. Also getting a high rank in search engines searched by special keywords. Most people try to search for what they want on the internet using search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing. When common keywords are searched for a large number of websites appear on the search results. So, it is difficult to get a higher rank and beat your competitors. SEO is, based on thoughts that the higher rank you get the higher potential profit you obtain, so correct html or increasing the number high quality links is highly evaluated by search engines. Since ranking highly in the search results by search engines is said to have a greater effect than placing ads, the number of companies providing SEO services are increasing. Recently, many SEO books sell well and the number of books is expected to increase more and more. Also, marketing by search engines is referred to as search engine marketing (SEM). A4JP builds websites focusing on SEM.

Optimize Websites for Search Engine Bots as well as People

Some people write amazing articles but they just write for people instead of machines. When considering SEO, websites should be structured so that algorithms can analyze the data properly. The way a search engine analyzes data is slightly different from the way you might analyze data on a site. Most people can judge what is important or not, but computers do not understand sentences the same way we do. Search engines are programmed with algorithms that pick up on background code pointing to the most important content, over repeated words, valuable words that have been repeated throughout the content, etc. Points are added or subtracted in a way to rank these pages and hopefully show the highest quality content first. Page views and the length of the views are also taken into consideration in the calculation of page ranks.

A List of SEO Gurus to Study From

Although it is difficult to keep up with all the algorithmic changes of search engines, we like to read online, watch a lot of videos and also go to seminars about SEO for latest and greatest. If you want to learn more about how SEO is changing like us definitely do a search for amazing SEO gurus like Matt Cutts, Rand Fishkin, Aaron Wall, Danny Sullivan, Barry Schwartz, Andy Beal, Adam Heitzman, Dave Naylor, Eric Ward, Neil Patel, Bill Slawski, Bruce Clay, Vanessa Fox, Lee Oden, Eric Enge and Maile Ohye. By watching a few of their videos you can usually hear some good ideas or learn about best practices.

Components of an SEO Branding Strategy

Based on Snezana Ristevska Jovanovska’s scientific paper.

1. Purpose

What differentiates your business from your competitors?

When writing your business purpose, keep examples of companies that are not just trying to make money in mind. While profits are a priority for most businesses, operating under this notion alone does little to set your brand apart from others in your industry.

According to Business Strategy Insider, the functional and intentional business purposes

Functional business purpose:
The evaluation of success in terms of immediate and commercial reasons — i.e. the purpose of the business is to make money.
Intentional business purpose:
Success as it relates to the ability to make money and do good in the world.

2. Consistency

Avoid talking about things that do not relate to or enhance your brand.

Try to stick to a certain style or pattern. Ideas that stray from the main point can confuse customers.

3. Emotion

Cheaper well built items may not attract customers which seems illogical but it is true.

People sometimes just buy items based on their feelings or other factors like feeling they have become part of a group.

By providing customers with an opportunity to feel like they are part of a larger group, companies can hook into the innate desire to build relationships. Psychologists Roy Baumeister and Mark Leary describe this in their “belongingness hypothesis,” which states: “People have a basic psychological need to feel closely connected to others, and that caring, affectionate bonds from close relationships are a major part of human behavior.”

4. Flexibility

Remain flexible to stay relevant.

5. Involvement

Sit down and make a list of rules before you start. For example, rules on writing messages sent out and/or rules on checking and approving posts before publishing. But get employees involved, if possible. If you run a business by yourself you can look for volunteers, use friends on Facebook or even people from your family. It is always nice to hear what other are thinking but sometimes remember to step back and just make sure you are heading towards your goal.

6. Loyalty

Reward people that love you, your company and brand. Cultivating loyalty from people early on will yield more returning customers and profit for your business.

7. Competitive Awareness

Are you watching what your competitors are doing? Do their ideas work or fail? Do you keep track of changes in your industry?

8. Testing

Device specific tests
Does your product, service or website look right on most devices? Use website testing services like https://testmysite.thinkwithgoogle.com to check your site on mobile devices, and other testing sites.

Bug testing
You can improve your search engine ranking just by remove bugs and errors from your site.

Usability tests
Are the buttons on your site too small and difficult to click. Can you zoom in on images or text?