The document discusses optimizing apps for discovery through search engine optimization techniques. It covers conducting keyword research to find relevant search terms, optimizing app metadata like the title and description for keywords, and using keywords effectively in paid promotions and other marketing efforts. Tracking keywords is also discussed to measure success and refine optimization strategies.

1. App Discovery
Optimization
• Nathan Mellor
• CritterMap Software LLC
• Follow up at http://eepurl.com/d9tZj

2. Agenda
• About search
• Keyword Research
• Optimizing for app searches
• Use that optimization in:
• Paid promotion
• Organic promotion

3. My Background
• 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

4. Book
• http://www.amazon.com/
dp/B00GJHIGY0

5. The App Marketing Funnel
Target Audience
(potentially interested in your app)
Prospect
(has found your app)
Lead
(has installed)
Customer
(Monetized)
Loyal Customer
(repeat sales)
Advocate
(recommends product)

6. App Market Funnel + Numbers
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
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

7. App Discovery
(knowing a product exists)
Target Audience
(potentially interested)
Prospect
(has found your app)
Lead
(has installed app)

8. App Discovery
Search
Market
Browse
Market
List of
Apps
App
Listing
Search
Internet
Your
Website
Browse
Internet
Google Play Install
Some
Other
Website
Ad
Campaign

9. 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.

10. 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.

11. 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.

12. 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.

13. 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

14. 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).

15. Google I/O 2014
• Two types of searches:
• Exactly what they are looking for:Search
by title
• Not exactly: Search by keyword

16. Differences from iOS
iPhone 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

17. 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

18. Keyword Research
• A keyword is generally a multi word search
phrase
• You want to evaluate
• RELEVANCE
• TRAFFIC
• COMPETITION

19. 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

20. Traffic
• How many people are using a particular
search phrase
• Can generally only be estimated with tools

21. Competition
• How likely you can actually attain a top
position for a particular search phrase
• Is context dependent
• Can be estimated with tools

22. 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

23. 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.

24. Example: Video Chat App

25. 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

27. Adwords Keyword
Planner
• Use exact phrase
• Apply to a category
• Many categories are available
• “Computers and Consumer Electronics”

29. Where can we use
these keywords
• Title
• Description
• Outside Links
• Paid Promotions
• Organic Promotions

30. Title
• Most important keyword
• More influential than description
• Only 30 characters (no paragraphs like iOS
titles).

31. Branded Title vs Keyword Title
Branded Keyword
Examples
Pandora
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?

32. 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.

33. 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

34. Factors Influencinging
all rankings
• Installs in the last few days (determines
your category ranking)
• Active installs
• Long Installs
• Number and quality of ratings

35. 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

36. Other phenomenon
• Google will make app suggestions for
people in Google search.
• These are starting to show up in Google
Analytics.

37. Sources in analytics

39. App Indexing

40. 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);

41. 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

42. ASO tools
• App Store Optimization
• Searchman.com
• mobiledevhq.com
• appnique.com
• sensortower.com
• appcodes.com

43. 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

47. 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

48. 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

49. Adwords
keyword
targetting

50. Defining install as a
conversion

51. Paid Advertising - ROI
Text
Drop the losers and keep the winners

52. Results from paid
experiments
• Find the high converting keywords
• Target them more aggressively in Google
Play
• Use them in internet marketing promotion
and links

53. Using keywords in
Internet marketing

54. 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 . . . “

55. 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&ref
errer=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.

56. Web page marketing
• From your list of Keywords
• Choose one keyword phrase
• Make one web page optimized for that
keyword phrase
• Get links to that page

57. Example: Traffic

58. Attainable: The Top Ten
"To rank on the first page of Google, you
must replace a page that’s currently there."
Market Samurai

59. An Optimized Page ..
• 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!

60. Getting links
• 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.

61. Getting Links
• Optimized Press releases
• Article Marketing
• Directories
• Review sites

62. Check Results (Google
webmaster tools)

63. Rinse and Repeat
• 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.

64. Keywords in the
world’s second biggest
Search Engine

65. What is the world’s
second biggest Search
Engine?

66. Use keywords in title,
description and tags
URL

67. Benefits include:
• Blended search
• Embedding in other websites.

68. Get views and traffic
• YouTube is a social network.
• Get your newsletter subscribers to watch
and comment
• Find friends
• Find subscribers
• Consider tools like TubeToolbox or Tube
Assist.

69. Tube ToolBox or Tube
Find similar videos
and interested users
by keyword
Collect them into lists
Send them a video
you made
Invite them to
comment or friend.
Assist

70. Questions