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Naver SEO – South Korea is one of the leaders in online adoption among its populace, with an internet adoption rate of over 82% and an astounding 99.3% wireless broadband penetration.
The country also has an active eCommerce market, with the average citizen spending around 30-minutes browsing online retailers every day.
You need a local approach to succeed in internet marketing in South Korea. Naver is South Korea’s most popular search engine, superseding the use of Google.
Currently, Naver has a 70% market share in search queries. Marketers need to focus on this platform to get the best results with their South Korean marketing strategy.
As with any search engine, Naver requires marketers to launch an SEO strategy encompassing on-page and off-page tactics to improve their ranking in search.
Let’s unpack everything you need to know about Naver SEO.
Is Naver Available in English?
Naver is a native platform to South Korea. Therefore, the search engine is only available in Korean, with no option for an English version of the site. However, there are English translations on the signup page and in webtoons.
If you want to get an English experience with Naver, you’ll need to translate the pages, which can lead to some interesting interpretations, with many of them losing the theme of the message.
Naver SEO – Let the Professionals Build Your SEO Strategy
As with any other website, marketers must optimize their website and its offering to rank on Naver. A skilled SEO strategist can assist you with an audit of your website ranking and traffic volumes, creating a Naver SEO strategy that delivers results.
Your SEO professional offers you the following tactics to boost traffic to your site from this search engine. Here are some of the proven tactics that help you rank on Naver.
SERPs
Search Engine Results Pages have a different layout on Naver than they do on Google. Naver splits its SERPs into sections like “Encyclopedia,” “Naver Knowledge,” “Naver Café,” “Naver Blog,” sites, video media, images, news, and maps.
Optimizing your site and webpages using on-page and off-page techniques gives you the best chance of your content and webpages appearing in multiple SERP results.
Submit Your Site To Naver
To rank in Naver’s SEO/search results, marketers must submit their site to Naver for review at https://submit.naver.com.
Failing to register your site with Naver means you don’t have any guarantee that the search bots will crawl your site, index, and rank your content.
Typically, you can expect the admin team at Naver to take up to two weeks to review your submission. The submission form is also in the Korean language, and you’ll need a translator of a native SEO service to help you complete the registration process.
Keep It Native
When targeting the Korean consumer market, it’s essential that all your web content is in the Korean language.
The language barrier is real, and publishing content in English results in the market avoiding your content and a huge failure of your content strategy.
Keyword and Meta Data Optimization
Meta content on your web pages makes it easier for the Naver crawl spiders to determine the quality and information of the content on your web pages.
After assessing your metadata, the Naver search bots rank it for search queries based on the usefulness of the content to its search inquiries.
All your web pages on Naver must feature SEO elements like title tags, keyword tags, and meta descriptions. These tools help you optimize metadata and tags improve your ranking in Naver search.
Like all search engines, Naver penalizes you for keyword-stuffing, so avoid over-optimization of your content to avoid the platform penalizing your site for the practice.
Content Quality
As with Google, Naver emphasizes ranking high-quality content. Your content strategy needs to provide value to your readers. Too many marketers try to write articles for the search engines and not their audience.
Naver penalizes you for this practice by ranking you lower in search. To get the best ranking possible, users must publish rich, engaging content with information on the topic useful for readers.
Critical Naver Algorithm Considerations
Naver also considers the following factors when ranking your website and web pages.
- Your click-through rate (CTR)
- Link quality
- The relevance of your targeted keywords
- The freshness of the content you publish
- Naver account registration for your off-page SEO strategy
Like Google, Naver emphasizes ranking for websites using its products. To gain access to Naver services, you’ll need to complete account registration.
After registering, you can start using Naver products like Naver Café, Naver Blog, Naver Knowledge, and Naver Encyclopedia.
Naver Products and Services to Enhance Your SEO Strategy
Naver Encyclopedia
Naver Encyclopedia brings you a service that’s similar to Wikipedia. Publishing a page about your website on Naver boosts the awareness of your business to the South Korean market.
This practice helps you appear in the Naver Encyclopedia paragraph of search results.
Naver Encyclopedia business pages need to include a description of your company, an image of your logo, and a link to your site.
Naver also includes useful information for searchers, such as product details and service you offer, as well as your company history and sector information.
It’s important to note that while Naver provides a link to your site, it doesn’t include the option for inserting hyperlinks into text. Therefore, you’ll need to populate your description with your top keywords.
Naver Café
This social tool is an important community feature of the platform. You have the option of joining different Cafés, providing searchers with relevant topic information, and you can share ideas with other users on the forum.
Launching a Naver Café for your website or brand lets you interact with South Korean users, allowing you to support your prospects and your community. Network with prospects, clients, and other brands or companies through your Café group.
Ensure your account remains active by publishing top-shelf content regularly. You also have the option of offering incentives like sweepstakes, giveaways, and voucher promotions to fill your prospect pipelines and sales funnels.
As with other search engines, Naver prioritizes accounts that get engagement from their target market. It views this engagement as a sign that you’re producing relevant, fresh content that people want to see – boosting your ranking in search. Encourage shares, likes, and comments for all your content using CTAs.
The more community members you have in your café, the better your content ranks on Naver search. Naver views a large community in your café as a sign that you have an influential brand people want to know about, and you start ranking higher in SERPs.
Naver Blog
When you open your Naver account, the platform automatically creates a blog for you. Blogging is an essential marketing tool for driving qualified traffic to your site. Your blog allows you to boost the results of your SEO campaigns, allowing you to express opinions, promote brands, websites, services, and products.
With the Naver blog, web admins can connect with their target market. Use your Naver blog to deliver high-quality content suitable for consumption by your target audience.
Naver Knowledge
This interactive Q&A forum has a similar look to Yahoo! Answers. Users can ask questions about your company, products, and services, receiving answers from other users about their experience using your company.
Naver Knowledge is a popular tool in South Korea. Currently, there are more than 80-million web pages of user-driven content featuring as Q&A material.
Engage with your target market on Naver Knowledge, answering questions about your suite, products, and services to gain brand awareness and trust in the South Korean consumer market.
Improve your SEO and ranking by optimizing your reply’s using your top-ranking keywords and keyword phrases.
Naver SEO – The Role of Mobile Optimization
South Korea is one of the world’s largest mobile internet markets. An unoptimized site ends up with you leaving money on the table. With the world’s highest mobile internet penetration, Naver emphasizes mobile-friendly websites and pages.
Naver will penalize sites that don’t have mobile optimization. Therefore, it’s critical to ensure that your webpages feature mobile-compatible templates for better ranking in search.
Naver SEO Checklist and Strategy
When you’re ready to start with Naver, use this checklist to ensure you correctly set up your account.
- Submit your site to the Naver team.
- Ensure all your content is in the South Korean language.
- Optimize your content for your keywords and metadata.
- Ensure you only publish high-quality content.
- Use the Naver suite of products to improve your ranking.
- Optimize your website for mobile compatibility.
It’s important to note that you need to optimize your site for fast loading. South Korea has one of the best wireless broadband infrastructures globally, and slow loading times will damage your ranking in search.
Let Naver SEO Supercharge Your South Korean Site
If you want to boost your local SEO ranking in the South Korean market, it’s essential to register your site with Naver. You’ll need to work with a talented team that understands the platform to your advantage.
Your SEO partner must know how to utilize Naver products and services, like Naver Café, to your advantage.