I really do. On Friday I did a cover day in Ebisu, and I was kinda hoping my last student of the day would cancel so that I could leave at 7.30 instead of 9. And I’ve got to say I’m really glad he didn’t. As it turns out my last student was a guy called Asanao, who is the head of SEO at Excite Japan. Doesn’t sound very exciting? Well it is to me, as SEO was my new favourite area of work before I decided to up and leave for Tokyo.

SEO (or Search Engine Optimisation) is a pretty geeky subject by all means - but when you work in online publishing and content management, like I did and still do in my spare time, it’s a pretty big thing. So anyways turns out this guy is the head of SEO at Excite Japan, a pretty big online directory, search engine and portal. Those of you in the UK might know the name quite well if you browse the net regularly. Excite.com burnt out in the US following the burst of the online bubble, but the Japan (and Italian) branches of the company stayed strong, and in Japan it’s doing quite well.

So we get talking and this guy is telling me about all this new SEO stuff happening out here, including the big new mobile SEO stuff which out here is becoming key in 2007, as a huge portion of the Japanese population accesses online content via their mobile and also uses them for email (SMS is pretty much dead in Japan, though you can still use it). And if you’ve ever rode a train out here you’ll know that to be the case seeing as most people are glued to their mobiles constantly - whether they’re browsing or playing games.

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written by Laurent