#apps optimization

With increase in use of mobile phones from past few years, App Store Optimization has become a new marketing technique for all the marketers. App Store Optimization is equally important as SEO for the websites. But of course, there is a difference in ASO and SEO. App Store Optimization is very important as many people search for the apps they need and download them through various app stores like Google Play Store, App Store, etc.  

SEO and ASO have become legal marketing methods to increase the traffic for websites as well as apps. Everyone who are familiar with SEO and ASO know that both are quite similar but not the same. ASO can be said as SEO for apps, but there are many different things besides that. On the other side, SEO might seem similar to the search optimization that ASO marketers perform. Although, there are some similarities in SEO and ASO, there are some differences too which every marketer should know before starting any of the technique. Each of them have their own distinctions and to know there difference.

Some facts about SEO and ASO:

Every mobile app has a public URL hosted on apple.com/google.com that is indexed and ranked by Google in the mobile web search.

Doing ASO for your app you are indirectly doing SEO for it.

As billions of applications already make the major app stores crowded and every year thousands of new apps add to it, making an app visible is a gigantic task. Mobile app publishers face tremendous trouble in highlighting it in front of the right audience at the right time. Here comes the role of App store search optimization, the magical technique of attracting several eyeballs. It is a methodical way of optimizing an app to achieve higher rank in the search result. The higher an app ranks, the more apparent it is to those who are interested in it. The visibility gets directly converted into increased traffic to the app page. The primary goal of the optimization is to pull more crowds to the app’s page so that people download it.

Deciding right keywords is highly important for bringing a large number of viewers to your app. That’s why ASO experts put maximum efforts for understanding the phrases users use while searching a particular app.

Why App store search optimization becomes critical today?

Statistics reveals that about two-third of apps are searched through app stores. The probability of downloading an app is quite high, when users search it quickly. It means when an app is not optimized for search ranking; it loses a lot of potential business. As there are hundreds other similar applications standing in the queue, users conveniently pick up the next one.

Primary and secondary factors of effective ASO

Two factors are primarily important while deciding App store search optimization strategy. Firstly, the title must contain a keyword that is used in the maximum search traffic. A thorough research is required to find out the top ones. It isn’t a good thing to keep it frequently changing. As the app achieves higher ranks and gets more reviews, it becomes popular in the virtual world. Hence, frequent changes in the title affect the consistency. Secondly, keep the track of most searched keywords. Look at the competitors closely to compare your performance on a periodic basis. Keep them regularly optimized.

There are a few secondary factors that are also important in determining the ways of maintaining high ranks. Total number of downloads, reviews, feedback and ratings are also critical. Though these parameters are difficult to control, there can be ways of keeping them high. Incentivizing users may help in achieving higher ranks.

App store search optimization is very much essential for grabbing maximum business in the highly competitive world. It assures high ROI and an excellent throughput!

App stores are becoming a battlefield for app developers. Fight is to improve the visibility of the app and getting maximum downloads to build the popularity of the apps. On an average , we have more then 1000 app submissions in itunes app store daily. 65% users download apps from app store search results. So it has become very challenging to get our apps ranked on top in app store search results.

As a Digital Marketing Expert, i get several requests from my clients who want to get their apps optimized for app store search results. This has pushed me to learn and share more about app store optimization.

To be specific regarding the goals of ASO,

1. To be found easily by users in top search results of app store

2. Getting ranked higher in search results for targeted keywords

3. Getting ranked higher from competitors in App Store.

Now ASO is not just a game of keywords i.e selecting best possible keywords, ranking for those keywords and then getting downloads for the app. It involves efficient use of meta data, icons and screenshots to convince users about the importance of the mobile app.

We have several properties which influence the ranking of our app in App Store.

These are: 

1) Title of the App - Character Length 255 for itunes and maximum 55 for Google Play. In iTunes, search page app title will be 35 characters long and on product page it will be 70 characters long.

2) Publisher Name of the App

3) Keywords of the App. - Character Limit: 100

4) Reviews and Downloads

5) Icons and screenshots:

Value of Title and Keywords field is very high, so it is very much required to optimize them properly for targeted keywords. These three fields should be targeted to build the visibility and discoverability of the mobile app. On the other hand, meta description text don't influence the ranking of app in app store, so we can design our description in a way to get maximum conversions. 

The keywords field in itunes is limited to 100 characters and you can't do stemming. i.e if you want to target two keywords player and players, you will have to add them individually. This makes the life of app developers difficult.

Reviews and downloads for a specific app also influence the ranking of App in App store. Keep updating your website with latest ios and Android updates. Ask your app customers to leave positive reviews for your app. One more thing which influence app rankings is how many times it was deleted. So make your mobile app, useful and interactive. Use proper keywords in the title, i.e specific keywords,so that the app is visible to targeted users. Never stuff app title with irrelevant keywords. Avoid use of special characters in title. Title is added in the url of your app. So keep title clean and strong.

Icons and screenshots also play a vital role in getting the best out of your application. Apps stores allows us to add upto 5 screenshots of our application. So it is advisable to use maximum 5 screen captures and use proper image alt tags.

Here are some Top Free and Paid Keywords Research tool for App Store Optimization:

Google Trends and Google Keyword Plannar Tool: This tool don't give you the search count or the traffic on a specific keyword in the app store, but gives you the option to search for the keywords which are in trend and people are searching for them in the news and on web. Google Trends results are updated hourly and thus gives you latest results.

Appcode.es: It is a more dedicated tool designed and built for ASO purpose. It has two propoerties, one which helps you find out best possible keywords for your app and second which tells you about the rankings your app can achieve in app store depending upon the use of those keywords by competitors. As the apple and google app store don't release apps keywords data publicly, so Appcode.es picks up the data from a database of 4,50,000 apps and 1,50,000 keywords.

MobileDevHQ: It is a complete tool, which provides various modules required for ASO. It gives analysis of keyword rankings and the keywords our competitors are ranking for. This is a paid tool with different packages.

Sensor Tower: Another high rated tool for app store optimization, sensor tower helps in competitors analysis, review analysis and finding out intelligence, importance of your app depending upon the downloads and reviews generated. Also you can check the latest trends and updates which influence the rankings of your app.

Search man: This is another paid tool with free trial version available for app store optimization. Clear and easy to use interface makes it popular among frequent app publishers.