App Discovery Optimization

• Nathan Mellor

• CritterMap Software LLC

• Follow up at http://eepurl.com/d9tZj

App Discovery Optimization

• About search

• Keyword Research

• Optimizing for app searches

• Use that optimization in:

• Paid promotion

• Organic promotion

Agenda

• Formerly software engineer at Hewlett-Packard

• Independent App Developer since 2009 as an apprenuer, not a contractor or consultant

• Author of Top grossing Android App

• Trained in Internet Marketing at University of San Francisco online program

My Background

Book

• http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GJHIGY0

Target Audience (potentially interested in your app)

Prospect (has found your app)

The App Marketing Funnel

Lead (has installed)

Customer (Monetized)

Loyal Customer (repeat sales)

Advocate (recommends product)

Target Audience = Outdoor Navigation users 1% of 1.3 million activations per day = 13,000 per day

Prospect = see my app listing ????? - figures not available

App Market Funnel + Numbers

Lead = installs demo product 500 per day

Customer- bought paid app 20% =>100 per day

Loyal Customer= bought an addon 22 per day

Advocate= 5 star 2 per day

App Discovery (knowing a product exists)

Target Audience (potentially interested)

Prospect (has found your app)

Lead (has installed app)

App DiscoverySearch Market

Browse Market

List of Apps

App Listing

Search Internet

Your Website

Browse Internet

Some Other

Website

Ad Campaign

InstallGoogle Play

The State of App Discovery

• For some, App Discovery is about paid campaigns.

• Burst Advertising

• Spend all your advertising budget at once

• Spend your way into a top ten chart

• Hope you stay there.

Is Burst Advertising dead?

• What does that mean?

• Have people stop spending their way to the top?

• No, most of the apps in the top ten charts on the appstore have bought their way there.

• That includes Candy Crush and many other well known apps.

Is Burst Advertising dead?

• What has changed

• Estimates are upwards of $96,000 per day to reach the top ten in the appstore

• And up to $2.75 per install

• Not as much money is spent in Android yet, but it is coming

• It requires continuous spending to stay there.

What does that mean to you?

• Most small to medium developers don’t have $96,000 per day.

• You are better off focusing on search queries, which drive over 60% of installs.

Are New Apps Special?

• Mostly Not.

• Top complaint of IOS Developers that port to Android

• No human review process like Apple

• Top New Paid/Top New Free

• Last 30 days (globally)

• Ordered by downloads

Searches in Google Play

• 12% search for apps daily

• 50% search weekly

• 6 million unique search phrases are used each week.

• (Source: Google I/O 2013).

Google I/O 2014

• Two types of searches:

• Exactly what they are looking for:Search by title

• Not exactly: Search by keyword

Differences from iOSiPhone Google Play

Apps per page 1 7-8

Reaching app #25 25 flicks 1 Flick

App Title Very Important (approved by Apple)

Very Important 30 characters (25

seen)

Tags (secret keywords)Very Important (approved

by Apple) 100 characters

Not used.

Description keywords Unclear if used in search Important in search

4000 characters

Other factors in search Unclear

Installs and Uninstalls Ratings

Links from outside Google Play

Success story• Fall 2010

• Managed to track keywords from Android Market (even Google said that was impossible)

• Description was 250 characters

• But I knew exactly which keywords were making me money

• Made it to the top of my category

• A keyword is generally a multi word search phrase

• You want to evaluate

• RELEVANCE

• TRAFFIC

• COMPETITION

Keyword Research

Relevance

• How likely someone using a particular phrase is looking for your app, will install it, keep it, and

• Determined by your knowledge of the target market of your app.

• Still a guess until you’ve measured it

Traffic

• How many people are using a particular search phrase

• Can generally only be estimated with tools

Competition

• How likely you can actually attain a top position for a particular search phrase

• Is context dependent

• Can be estimated with tools

Rookie Mistakes

• Thinking that there are only six or so phrases for your app

• Thinking that you already know the two most important ones.

• There are always more phrases than you think

• The ones that you think are most important may not be

• Try for 500, then narrow it down to 50

Broadening your scope

• Come up with a number of seed words

• Think of synonyms and variations

• Think of related products or services that your target customer would search for

• Think of how they would search for your competitor’s app

• Consider common brand names in the field.

Example: Video Chat App

Video Chat example• describe it in a few ways

• Video chat,Video conferencing, video call, video conference

• Add popular brand names

• skype,google talk,google hangout, facetime,

• Add related apps

• oovoo, tango, and camfrog

• Put in Adwords Google Keyword planner

Adwords Keyword Planner

• Use exact phrase

• Apply to a category

• Many categories are available

• “Computers and Consumer Electronics”

Where can we use these keywords

• Title

• Description

• Outside Links

• Paid Promotions

• Organic Promotions

Title

• Most important keyword

• More influential than description

• Only 30 characters (no paragraphs like iOS titles).

Branded Title vs Keyword TitleBranded Keyword

ExamplesPandora Amazon

BackCountry Navigator

Music Player Online Book Store

GPS and Maps

Recognizable Trademark Yes Often not

Word of Mouth and reputation

Helpful Less helpful

Functional conveyance Maybe Probably

Search term? Only if already familiar Valuable

Can you do both in 20-30 characters?

Description• Your primary and secondary keywords

• Keep it short if you have a small number of very important keywords

• Longer if you need to target more keywords.

• Mentioning a keyword about five times might be about right

• Use the full phrase if possible.

Targetting keywords Do’s and don’ts

!

• Do: use in a grammatically correct way

• Don’t - violate other trademarks in title

• Don’t keyword stuff - against Market terms

• ie “keywords: angry birds,fun app,games,fun,temple run, candy crush”

• Do: understand limitations and tradeoffs

• Do: review if you are winning

Factors Influencinging all rankings

• Installs in the last few days (determines your category ranking)

• Active installs

• Long Installs

• Number and quality of ratings

Factors Influencing a Keyword Ranking

• A keyword has a search history

• Did they find what they were looking for?

• Google measures Relevance by whether the keywords results in an install and whether the install is long lived

Other phenomenon

• Google will make app suggestions for people in Google search.

• These are starting to show up in Google Analytics.

Sources in analytics

App Indexing

App Indexing

• Does your app have more than one page?

• Or more than one topic?

• Apps with or without corresponding webpages can use the App Indexing API to notify Google of their deep links.

• https://developers.google.com/app-indexing/

• AppIndex.AppIndexApi.view(mClient, this, APP_URI, TITLE, WEB_URL, outlinks);

Tracking Keyword Victories

• Gets a bit hairy if you are targeting 50 keyword phrases

• You want to target more keywords without losing ground on the ones you have.

• Time to use tools

ASO tools

• App Store Optimization

• Searchman.com

• mobiledevhq.com

• appnique.com

• sensortower.com

• appcodes.com

What to look for in your ASO Tool

• Done well:

• Track 50+ keywords over time

• Track competitors and their keywords

• Could always be improved:

• Estimate Traffic for a keyword - guess

• Estimate Difficulty for a keyword - guess

• Suggest more keywords

Using keywords in Paid advertising

• Test keyword phrases

• Test Calls to Action

• Find the perfect message for your first line

• Test out images and icons

Paid advertisement

• You want to track it all the way through user conversions

• You can define an app install as a conversion in Adwords

• But track it past the install

• Do this by monitoring Goals and Ecommerce in Analytics

Adwords keyword targetting

Defining install as a conversion

Paid Advertising - ROI

Text

Drop the losers and keep the winners

Results from paid experiments

• Find the high converting keywords

• Target them more aggressively in Google Play

• Use them in internet marketing promotion and links

Using keywords in Internet marketing

Traffic from Your website

• Can come from search engine

• Can be tracked much easier (can measure the prospects better)

• Do NOT keep this traffic at your site

• Have a BIG OBVIOUS BUTTON that will go directly to the market listing

• Do not use a wimpy little hyperlink

• Do not say “Search the market for . . . “

Your button

• Create link at

• https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/android/devguide#google-play-builder

• https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.crittermap.backcountrynavigator.license&referrer=utm_source%3DWebsite%26utm_medium%3DLink%26utm_term%3Dtopo%2520maps%26utm_campaign%3DAnDevCon

• You can set campaign, source, to whatever you want.

• This will track in Google Analytics.

• From your list of Keywords

• Choose one keyword phrase

• Make one web page optimized for that keyword phrase

• Get links to that page

Web page marketing

Example: Traffic

Attainable: The Top Ten

"To rank on the first page of Google, you must replace a page that’s currently there."

Market Samurai

• Mentions the phrase (ie Android Topo Maps)

• In the url

• In the <title> tag

• In the <meta Description> tag

• In an <h1> tag

• In the first sentence

• In the first sentence of the last paragraph

• 2-3 times in between the first and last parag

• Has about 250-750 words (ave 500).

• That’s all!

An Optimized Page ..

• The most creative part of internet marketing

• The best links:

• Have keywords in the link (anchor text)

• Are from “important” websites

• Are from relevant websites

• Have traffic

• Should link to you own site OR to Google Play listing.

Getting links

Getting Links

• Optimized Press releases

• Article Marketing

• Directories

• Review sites

Check Results (Google webmaster tools)

• Establish a blog with wordpress

• Add a post every day

• Get some links

• At the end of a year, you will have 200+ keywords in the first page of Google.

Rinse and Repeat

Keywords in the world’s second biggest

Search Engine

What is the world’s second biggest Search

Engine?

Use keywords in title, description and tags

URL

Benefits include:• Blended search

• Embedding in other websites.

• YouTube is a social network.

• Get your newsletter subscribers to watch and comment

• Find friends

• Find subscribers

• Consider tools like TubeToolbox or Tube Assist.

Get views and traffic

Find similar videos and interested users

by keyword Collect them into lists

Send them a video you made

Invite them to comment or friend.

Tube ToolBox or Tube Assist

Questions