Naver SEO or Google SEO: which should we invest in first?

Priority depends on your target customers' search environment and your business model.

For domestic B2C and local-focused businesses, Naver (Korea's dominant search engine, ~58% market share) is the standard choice. For B2B, overseas, and high-consideration search, Google is typical.

That said, most mid-size and larger companies need to optimize both engines at once.

How to set search engine priority

• Naver first: beauty, local, commerce, and education targeting domestic general consumers
• Google first: B2B, SaaS, IT, market expansion abroad, professional services, and e-commerce with global targets
• Both required: hospitals and medical (local + academic search), industrial and manufacturing (domestic buyers + overseas buyers), finance and legal (professional + regional at once)

Algorithm differences

• Naver: evaluates content-ecosystem freshness (blog, cafe, VIEW), topical relevance, C-Rank, D.I.A., and AiRSearch quality signals
• Google: assesses page structure, backlinks, domain authority, E-E-A-T, Core Web Vitals, and user behavior signals

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238lab quantifies the differences in how the two engines evaluate content. Even with the same content, we design separate optimization points for each engine.

In the initial consulting phase, we clearly define a 'primary engine / secondary engine' structure, then allocate work accordingly.