Google dominates some markets but not all. Take South Korea for example, where the market is dominated by Naver, a search engine that is very different from Google and so requires very different techniques for search optimisation.
It is best to consider the Naver search engine as something very different to ‘just search’ especially if you wish to ‘do SEO work in Korea’.
The Korean search engine, Naver is a ‘provider of information’ and needs very different SEO techniques to that used on Google.
Before doing any Naver SEO work on you need to understand how the search results work. You get a lot of result, in fact a huge number, but these are sorted into types and best considered as different sets of provided information.
The top of the page is reserved for the paid ads – there is still a need to make money. And these can also appear at the bottom as well.
Below the paid ads comes a large amount of social and user generated content. This is taken from many sources, but Naver cafe is hugely important. This is no different to Google giving undue weight to its own Google+ social media platform
Underneath the social content with Naver café results there is a current news section, again emphasising the local and current. Usually you then get a map with local results. Each of these sections is neatly grouped together. Other sets of information returned include images, videos, news archive and ebooks.
But what about natural search results? Well on Naver they are not always there! Understanding this is key to understanding ‘Naver SEO’ . If you are trying to promote webpages naturally you are doing the wrong thing. To get good listings on Naver you need to place high importance on social SEO and specifically social Naver café SEO.
