Let Your Mobile App Rise to the Top with App Store Optimization

In the words of Global non-profit Mobile Marketing Association – “Mobile marketing is a set of practices that enables organization to engage and communicate with their audience in a relevant and interactive manner via network or mobile device.”

The Existence of Mobile Apps

There are roughly an equal numbers of apps on Google’s Play Store and Apple’s App Store. Currently, the figure reached up to somewhere close



Kevin
VP – Digital Marketing


to billion apps for each store. For your newly launched app, the
chances are quite high that before getting recognition, your app will be lost in the heap and never found. Marketing is just as important, or even more crucial, than the development of your app. Most of the users visit app stores, look through featured apps or type the name of the app they want to discover.

The Rise of Mobile App Marketing

In the recent years, we have witnessed a surge in small and middle-sized business that are developing apps and offering informative mobile content, Geo-fencing and much more. The rate of mobile app marketing has grown rapidly, with many small-scale businesses realizing that Smartphones are the easiest way to reach or stay connected with potential and existing customers.

The Need for App Store Optimization

App Store Optimization is quite similar to the SEO. It is done to rank high in app stores as well as increase the app’s visibility. It’s a similar idea on how you would optimize a website to appear at the top of search results.
The purpose of App Store Optimization is simple; it is to gain a higher rank under the search results on respective application stores. To influence your app ranking, the first and foremost step is to mention the keywords. Rating, reviews and total number of downloads are the other factors that influence the rank of an app under the respective categories.
For optimization of a mobile app, you need to research the relevant keywords that can be regularly modified for better visibility. The name of the app also plays a vital role in the App Store Optimization. The name must consist of basic search keywords associated with functionality of an app. When selecting App Store Optimization, put yourself in the shoes of the user and ask yourself “If I was looking for this type of app, what keywords would I try? What category would I look in? What keywords find competitors?” Out of those keywords and categories, you need to choose which will help raise your ranking to let users find you easily and to help you pull in channel traffic that passed by your competitors.
A nicely developed app always runs the risk of being unnoticed. Therefore, strategic planning and preparation will give you good results.

Remember:

• 63% of all the apps downloaded are found by users browsing for featured apps
• Perform research in order to identify potential markets for your app
• Integrate the prime keywords in the name of the app
• Apps that use keywords in their titles rank higher in the app stores
• Your app icon needs to be unique enough to grab the attention of users
• Screenshots are crucial, as they will be the selling points for your app
• Positive reviews and ratings will allow your app to show high in search results

Without App Store optimization, it’s going to be very hard for people to discover your app and the last thing you want is for your app to go unnoticed.