A fictional business. The figures are a modelled scenario, not a client result.
Tatami Ren · Machiya renovation architects · Kyoto
+410%
international sessions over 14 months
Home & Real Estate · Asia-Pacific · Content Engine plan · Topic clusters · Hreflang · Case-study schema · AI Overviews
Chapter 1
Rising overseas interest in old townhouses was going to forums, because the studio's site was Japanese-only.
Tatami Ren restores Kyoto’s wooden townhouses — the narrow, deep machiya with their earthen floors and lattice fronts. Interest from abroad was climbing: buyers in the US, Taiwan, Hong Kong and France were searching how to restore one, what it costs and whether it can be managed from overseas.
Those searches ended in forum threads and travel blogs. The studio, with eighteen finished restorations and the answers to every question in those threads, published only in Japanese — and its project pages were photographs without words.
Modelled share of clicks from 1,900 overseas queries.
Chapter 2
Japanese-only site: no /en/ pages, no hreflang, and English visitors auto-redirected to the Japanese homepage.
Fix → Locale subfolders with reciprocal hreflang and an x-default.
18 restorations shown as photo galleries with no text: nothing for search or AI answers to read, and no costs or timelines.
Fix → One written case page per restoration, with era, area, cost band and duration.
Overseas buyers asked about cost, permits, earthquake retrofit and remote supervision — 260 forum threads answered them instead.
Fix → Topic clusters built around those exact questions.
Studio name romanised three ways (Tatami-Ren, Tatamiren, Tatami Ren) across the site and directories.
Fix → One English entity name, Organization schema and sameAs links.
4–9 MB uncompressed hero photos; Largest Contentful Paint of 6.1 s on mobile from Europe.
Fix → Responsive AVIF images and a CDN edge close to overseas readers.
AI Overviews for “restore machiya kyoto” cited two forums and a travel blog; the studio was never mentioned.
Fix → Answer-first summaries with dated, quotable figures.
Chapter 3
The engagement ran on our Content Engine plan: content and AI-search work, built around one idea — say in each buyer’s language what the studio already knew.
Screen 1 · 主題
Three pillars — restoring, buying, living in a machiya — each answering one overseas buyer’s journey, with clusters linked up and across.
Screen 2 · 言語
Subfolders for English, Traditional Chinese and French, reciprocal tags on every page set and a sitemap per locale — localised by editors, never machine-translated.
Screen 3 · 事例
Each restoration became a written page marked up as an Article about a Place, with the era, floor area, cost band and duration that buyers search for.
Screen 4 · 回答
Pages open with a two-sentence answer, carry dated figures and end in FAQ blocks, so AI answers can quote the studio instead of a forum.
Chapter 4
1,900 overseas queries mapped from Search Console and 260 forum threads about buying and restoring old townhouses.
600 intl. sessions · 2 enquiries
/en/, /zh-hant/ and /fr/ subfolders planned; a 140-term glossary (tōri-niwa, kyō-ma, mushiko-mado) agreed with native editors.
640 intl. sessions · 2 enquiries
“Restoring a Kyoto machiya: the overseas buyer’s guide” published in English, 6,800 words, answer-first.
700 intl. sessions · 3 enquiries
Reciprocal tags on 42 page sets, x-default to /en/, one XML sitemap per locale, no automatic redirects by IP.
790 intl. sessions · 3 enquiries
18 restorations marked up with era, floor area, cost band and duration; each one a page, not a gallery.
910 intl. sessions · 4 enquiries
Budget bands, structural surprises, earthquake retrofit, landscape-ordinance permits, roof tiles — five linked articles.
1,060 intl. sessions · 5 enquiries
zh-Hant pillar and six cluster pages localised (not machine-translated) for Taiwan and Hong Kong buyers.
1,250 intl. sessions · 6 enquiries
30 pages rewritten with a two-sentence answer up top, dated cost figures and FAQ blocks that can be quoted cleanly.
1,460 intl. sessions · 7 enquiries
Pillar plus the remote-project guide: site diaries, video walk-throughs and payment milestones.
1,710 intl. sessions · 8 enquiries
Akiya versus machiya, finding a property, the inspection checklist and what a survey misses.
1,980 intl. sessions · 9 enquiries
Time-zone-aware consultation booking with a budget band and a property-link field.
2,260 intl. sessions · 10 enquiries
2026 cost data updated sitewide; nine thin pages merged; internal links rebuilt around the pillars.
2,540 intl. sessions · 11 enquiries
The glossary published as its own hub; its definitions become the most-cited pages in AI answers.
2,810 intl. sessions · 12 enquiries
140 keywords in the top 10 across four languages; roadmap for German and Korean.
3,060 intl. sessions · 13 enquiries
Chapter 5
International sessions / month
600 → 3,060
Overseas enquiries / month
2 → 13
Keywords in top 10
12 → 140
| Month | Intl. sessions | Enquiries | Top-10 keywords |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 600 | 2 | 12 |
| 2 | 640 | 2 | 14 |
| 3 | 700 | 3 | 19 |
| 4 | 790 | 3 | 27 |
| 5 | 910 | 4 | 38 |
| 6 | 1,060 | 5 | 52 |
| 7 | 1,250 | 6 | 66 |
| 8 | 1,460 | 7 | 80 |
| 9 | 1,710 | 8 | 93 |
| 10 | 1,980 | 9 | 105 |
| 11 | 2,260 | 10 | 116 |
| 12 | 2,540 | 11 | 125 |
| 13 | 2,810 | 12 | 133 |
| 14 | 3,060 | 13 | 140 |
Slide the screens: each market, before and after
58% of month-14 international sessions
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="https://tatami-ren.example/en/restoration-guide/" />
| Keyword | Language | Before | After | Movement |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| restore machiya kyoto | en | 100+ | 1 | |
| kyoto townhouse restoration architect | en | 41 | 1 | |
| machiya renovation cost | en | 64 | 2 | |
| machiya earthquake retrofit | en | 100+ | 3 | |
| buy and renovate a townhouse in japan | en | 100+ | 4 | |
| akiya renovation kyoto | en | 100+ | 6 | |
| 京都町家 翻修 | zh-Hant | 100+ | 2 | |
| 日本老屋 改建 費用 | zh-Hant | 100+ | 5 | |
| rénover une machiya à Kyoto | fr | 100+ | 1 | |
| acheter maison traditionnelle japon | fr | 100+ | 7 | |
| 町家 改修 京都 | ja | 9 | 3 |
Topic clusters, hreflang done properly and pages written to be quoted by AI answers — the Content Engine plan, scoped to your markets.