App store op­tim­isa­tion: create your own app, part 6.1

When it comes to app stores (be it the Google Play Store or the Apple App Store), ranking has a huge influence on the success of an ap­plic­a­tion. And this is fairly logical really: Ap­plic­a­tions that reach the top spots on an app store’s ranking pages are seen much more often than those apps that find them­selves at the bottom of the search results. Un­sur­pris­ingly, this cor­rel­ates strongly with download figures as well. As a result both iOS and Android app designers should be weary of their ranking on the re­spect­ive app stores at all times. The good news is that it’s possible to influence your own ranking. And this will be the topic of the sixth and final part of our series on creating, de­vel­op­ing, and marketing your own ap­plic­a­tion. In the previous editions of our article series on creating your own app, we’ve discussed how to plan and design an app, the best software to use for de­vel­op­ing your app, and how to carry out extensive and efficient app testing. The latest two articles, parts 5.1 and 5.2, were concerned with the pub­lic­a­tion of an Android app on the Google Play Store and the creation of an iOS ap­plic­a­tion on the Apple App Store. This final chapter of our series will look at the defin­i­tion of ASO (app store op­tim­isa­tion), and how it can help to change your ranking in the official app stores of Google and Apple. This article, the first of a two-parter, will focus on Android app op­tim­iz­a­tion, while part 6.2 will look at how to optimise your iOS app for the App Store.

Most users find new ap­plic­a­tions by using the search function within their chosen app store. This is where app store op­tim­isa­tion comes into play: ASO aims to improve the ranking of native apps in the search results of a given app store – so, in other words, it should help make your app appear near the top of search results. This is directly linked to the correct as­sump­tion that an app with a better app ranking will see higher download figures than apps with a lower ranking. So why do we just assume that a better ranking should auto­mat­ic­ally mean more success for an ap­plic­a­tion? First of all, the ranking of an app has been proven to have an effect on the per­cep­tion of the app. Shop visitors often make the as­sump­tion that apps listed as the top hits in the app store ranking pages are the best ap­plic­a­tions offered on the store. And when users open Google’s app store - without having a specific app or brand in mind – and search for an app with a par­tic­u­lar function (like ‘torch’ or ‘alarm clock’), ranking really becomes a key factor: apps that appear near the top of the app store search results page are down­loaded much more often than their coun­ter­parts at the bottom. There are a number of different measures that can be taken to help push your app towards the top results in the app store. These strategies, known as ASO methods (app store op­tim­isa­tion) are actually pretty similar to tra­di­tion­al search engine op­tim­isa­tion methods (also known as SEO for short) – and so, like SEO, there are also two different areas of app store op­tim­isa­tion that can have an influence on ranking.

• Onsite (similar to onpage in search engine op­tim­isa­tion): all measures that are taken directly on the app store page of an ap­plic­a­tion can be con­sidered to be onsite app store op­tim­isa­tion. This includes the name of an app, the de­scrip­tion of its content, and the visu­al­isa­tion of this content in the form of an app icon and screen­shots that are displayed on the app store page. Onsite factors can be actively edited to give apps a major boost in their ranking potential.

• Offsite (similar to offpage search engine op­tim­isa­tion): offsite ASO includes all in­flu­en­cing factors that can’t be directly edited on the app store. This includes values like the number of downloads and ratings an app receives as well as the reviews left by users. Unlike onsite ASO measures, offsite in­dic­at­ors aren’t in your direct control – they can only be in­flu­enced. This can happen in­dir­ectly by ensuring that the quality, usability, func­tion­al­ity, and marketing of your app are all optimised. These factors can then help determine how often your app will be down­loaded and how positive user feedback will be.
  

It’s difficult to precisely measure the influence that onsite and offsite factors have on app ranking – neither Google nor Apple (the two biggest app store operators in the industry by a distance) have released official state­ments about their ranking criteria. But for­tu­nately many online marketing experts have shared their knowledge on the subject and offered insights into the function mech­an­isms of the ranking al­gorithms for each app store. The general consensus is that the following aspects have an impact on an app’s ranking on app store results pages (these aspects apply to both Android and iOS apps):

• Onsite criteria for app ranking:
  • Use of ap­pro­pri­ate keywords (precise and clear terms used to describe app’s content) in the app’s name and the details page for the app on the app store
  • Use of an optimised app icon
  • Upload of app screen­shots to il­lus­trate the content of an ap­plic­a­tion
  • Upload of a video to il­lus­trate the content of an ap­plic­a­tion
  • Use of and response to in-app usage stat­ist­ics

• Offsite criteria for app ranking:
  • Number of downloads
  • Number of in­stall­a­tions
  • Number of un­in­stall­a­tions
  • Number of reviews
  • Average user rating
  • De­vel­op­ment of download figures (par­tic­u­larly used for de­term­in­ing if an app is trending)
  • De­vel­op­ment of app ratings (par­tic­u­larly used for de­term­in­ing if an app is trending)

The two major app stores don’t really offer much more help besides providing the in­dic­at­ors mentioned above. Other than the number of downloads an app has and its user rating, there’s almost no in­form­a­tion about how an app is per­form­ing. Neither Apple nor Google’s app store offer visible in­form­a­tion about the number of clicks and page views of an app’s details page.

When it comes to re­cog­nising and ex­ploit­ing these factors, many app store marketers turn to ad­di­tion­al ASO tools offered by external providers. Two of the most popular app store op­tim­iz­a­tion tools are provided by Sensor­Tower and AppRadar, but these both come at a price. For­tu­nately, there are also plenty of free ASO tools (including the app analytics programme App Annie), though these naturally offer less in the way of stat­ist­ic­al tools and features than their fee-based com­pet­it­ors. But, crucially, none of these tools have access to actual data and values from Google or Apple’s app stores. App store op­tim­isa­tion pro­grammes are just designed to offer guidance on ex­tern­ally con­trolled factors, like the typical keyword volume for different search terms. This means that data acquired from ASO tools should always be treated with caution and never taken as gospel – although they are certainly useful in helping you to improve your app’s ranking, even if they just help you to gain a better un­der­stand­ing of what the offsite values listed above really mean.

The degree to which the positive and negative factors in the app store ranking affect your app’s po­s­i­tion­ing on the app store search results page will vary from platform to platform. For this reason, it’s important to dif­fer­en­ti­ate between the different app stores when analysing the effects of onsite and offsite ranking factors. We’ll focus on the Google Play Store, before turning our at­ten­tions to the Apple App Store in part 6.2 of our series.

Google has never pub­lic­ally listed its criteria for ranking on the Play Store. But despite this, ASO for Google Play should pre­sum­ably be similar to search engine op­tim­isa­tion for Google’s flagship product, the Google Search Engine. Un­for­tu­nately, the Silicon Valley company doesn’t really offer anything in the way of an official statement as to how ranking on their search engine works either. Most of the in­form­a­tion about ranking factors comes from external parties who have conducted ex­per­i­ments and analysis on Google’s search engine al­gorithms.

The same is true of app store op­tim­isa­tion on the Google Play Store. Even though it can’t be 100% proven, the general consensus for most experts is that the onsite and offsite factors listed above have a big effect on the Google Play ranking of an Android app. We’ll take you through the most important factors you need to consider in order to achieve a better Android app ranking on the Play Store.

Keywords play a similar role in the field of ASO as they do in SEO. But, unlike in search engine op­tim­iz­a­tion, there’s only one page for you to include keywords on the Play Store – the details page of your app on Google Play. Here, you have the option for keyword op­tim­iz­a­tion in the following fields:

• Keywords in the app title: building keywords into the name of your app rep­res­ents the biggest op­por­tun­ity for in­flu­en­cing your Google Play Store ranking. So if you’ve created a gaming app, you should try to include the genre or theme of the game in the form of a keyword in the title (like ‘puzzle’ or ‘football’). It’s also possible to include several keywords in your app title, but you should make sure your title doesn’t become too lengthy (re­com­men­ded title length is normally a maximum of 20-25 char­ac­ters), because otherwise the name of your app will be cut off on mobile devices with smaller display screens. One important factor for brand man­age­ment of an ap­plic­a­tion is to come up with a unique brand name that can feature in your app title (or use your current brand name if you have an existing and es­tab­lished one). It’s a good idea to promote your brand in the name of your app if it’s a re­cog­nis­able one, but the truth is that many apps are one-time products, and brand loyalty tends to be less of a feature for many app store users. Instead, they’re much more likely to choose their app based on current needs for par­tic­u­lar content or functions, like wanting a new puzzle game to pass time on their daily commute or a star­gas­ing app to enjoy the con­stel­la­tions. But if your app is directly related to your brand, it’s a good idea to feature the brand name in the title. It can also be tricky to decide on whether to use a catchy name or a more de­script­ive tagline in the app title section. Some apps choose to combine both – a formula which is proven to be effective if kept within the confines of 25 char­ac­ters. In these cases, the following pattern is common: Actual name of the app – Slogan/in­form­a­tion about the app (with relevant keywords too of course)

• Keywords in the app de­scrip­tion: the app de­scrip­tion offers you the most room to add keywords. Here, you should explain the content of your app and what it offers your potential users. The Play Store has two fields for app de­scrip­tion – you should pri­or­it­ise keyword op­tim­isa­tion in both, making sure you get all the ap­pro­pri­ate terms into your text. You should be aware that the first few sentences of the first box are the most important, so try to give the reader as much in­form­a­tion as possible here to save them needing to scroll through the app details page. If you can ensure that page visitors get all the essential in­form­a­tion they need at a glance, they’ll be more likely to download your product. Further down on the app details page, you’ll find a second box for a more detailed de­scrip­tion. This should still contain plenty of keywords, but is less likely to be read by visitors so should offer ad­di­tion­al in­form­a­tion. Be sure that you’ve read Google’s developer guidelines before com­plet­ing either de­scrip­tion box.

When it comes to checking that your chosen keywords have a search volume at all (i.e. users do search for your keywords), you can simply use the quick and easy auto-suggest function from Google Play. When you type the keyword into the app search feature on the Play Store, letter by letter, you’ll receive suggested search terms. The terms that appear here are the most common searches and so can be used as an indicator as to whether a single keyword or long-tail keyword com­bin­a­tion has a high search volume. But there are also a number of ASO tools that offer functions you can use to help you to find the right keywords for your app.

Without powerful il­lus­tra­tions of the app interface or appealing screen­shots, your Play Store page will struggle to stand out from the crowd. Since the app details page is designed to arouse the user’s curiosity, it’s very important to make sure that everything on the page is reader-friendly. This means present­ing a number of images of the app and (if possible) a short video demon­strat­ing its features. It’s also important to be aware that ap­plic­a­tions are organized into cat­egor­ies on the Google Play Store. While it’s not possible to say exactly how much of an effect good present­a­tion and sensible cat­egor­isa­tion have on an app’s Google Play ranking, it certainly helps your app come across as more pro­fes­sion­al and at­tract­ive. And these two things should help lead to a higher per­cent­age of app store visitors down­load­ing your ap­plic­a­tion.

• Images, video, and the app icon: there’s a very straight­for­ward formula when it comes to visual present­a­tion – the higher the quality of the visual elements, the better the app page will be received by store visitors. On Google Play, you’re actually required to provide several images in order to suc­cess­fully add your app to the app store (at least four screen­shots, one in­tro­duct­ory graphic and an app icon). But it helps site visitors if you provide ad­di­tion­al in-app images (which help your pro­spect­ive users to better visualise the main features of the app) as well as in­form­at­ive graphics to give a clearer idea of how the app functions. The app icon plays a special role: it isn’t just displayed in the search results pages of the Play Store, it also becomes the start button for the app on a user’s device after in­stall­a­tion. For this reason, the app symbol should be re­cog­nis­able even at a very small size and should also look the part. It’s equally important to make sure that the app logo fits to the rest of the design for the app as a whole – in par­tic­u­lar when it comes to colour and shape design.

• Choose the right app category: when you create your app on the Google Play Store, you’ll need to select the category heading under which your ap­plic­a­tion will be listed. The first basic choice the type of app (you can choose between simply ‘Apps’ and ‘Games’), after which there’s the option of many different cat­egor­ies to choose from to represent the topic of your app. Be sure to get this right: If you choose an incorrect category for your app, it’s likely to confuse and sub­sequently deter users from down­load­ing it. And it stands to reason that a gaming app won’t be found by users if it’s cat­egor­ised as something other than a game. So getting your app clas­si­fic­a­tion wrong will lead to the loss of many potential users.

External linking plays a similarly important role in ranking on Google’s app store as it does for Google’s search engine. Unlike on the Apple App Store, the Google Play Store attaches a great deal of im­port­ance to backlinks when it comes to ranking apps. But this isn’t es­pe­cially sur­pris­ing given that it’s one of the main criteria for indexing websites on the Google search engine. It makes sense for Google as well – they have strong al­gorithms in place to measure and analyse number and quality of incoming links to a website, so applying the same ranking factor to the Play Store ties the two together well.

On the whole, backlinks appear and grow or­gan­ic­ally for popular ap­plic­a­tions: an es­tab­lished app will soon find itself mentioned and linked to on websites, blogs, forums, and more, as these give the reader added value and allow them to see the app being discussed first hand. If a Play Store details page has a lot of apps with these backlinks, Google takes this as an indicator that the app is popular. And popular apps naturally receive a bump in the Google Play ranking. Un­for­tu­nately, this ranking factor is con­sidered offsite and can’t be easily in­flu­enced actively by an app designer (unless you resort to black hat ASO methods). The best way to influence external linking and improve your repu­ta­tion on the Play Store is to form part­ner­ships with websites that regularly link to Google’s app store, such as review sites, app blogs, tech­no­logy magazines, etc.

The app store op­tim­isa­tion measures mentioned above are useful and ap­plic­able to every app on the Google Play Store – app ranking affects all Android apps. Good app ranking on the Play Store will mean your app is found more quickly and easily by visitors, and that it’s taken more seriously by users. This in turn has a positive effect on download figures for Android apps.

To achieve this as quickly as possible, you should be sure to focus on your onsite op­tim­isa­tion – making every im­prove­ment you can to the details page of your app on the Google Play Store. Some of the simplest but most effective measures you can use to achieve this include the strategic use of ap­pro­pri­ate keywords and a good present­a­tion of your app via screen­shots and an at­tract­ive app icon, as all of these are proven to have a positive effect on Google Play ranking.

Offsite factors (aspects that you can’t control and influence directly), on the other hand, are closely connected to the content and func­tion­al­ity of your app. But marketing also plays a big role here too. In­dic­at­ors like good or bad ratings and reviews, number of downloads, number of in­stall­a­tions, and number of un­in­stall­a­tions can be used to show you how well your app is per­form­ing and will affect your ranking. Suc­cess­ful marketing will help make your ap­plic­a­tion well-known and should lead to increased download figures. And the quality of your app will be the final decision-maker in de­term­in­ing whether users are happy with your product or not. If users find your app frus­trat­ing, difficult to use, or simply not worth keeping hold of, you’ll soon see bad ratings and high un­in­stall­a­tion figures appearing. And Google will respond to these negative in­dic­at­ors by dropping you down the Google Play ranking for search results in future. So producing a high quality app and marketing it thor­oughly outside of the Play Store can actually play just as big a role in de­term­in­ing your app’s ranking as what you do on the details page of the Play Store.

Onsite and offsite ASO factors are un­doubtedly important when it comes to de­term­in­ing where your app ranks on the Google Play Store, so you certainly can’t overlook them. But op­tim­ising your Android ap­plic­a­tion on the details page of the Play Store isn’t enough. You’ll need to deploy a mix of classic marketing strategies ex­tern­ally as well. Whether you decide to use ad­vert­ising, marketing campaigns, part­ner­ships, or other strategies will depend on the type of app you’ve created and how it’s per­form­ing. Lastly, there are a mix of different factors that affect the success of your ap­plic­a­tion more generally. The quality, content, user friend­li­ness, and stability of your app are all just as important as the marketing measures you decide to adopt. This is true of Android and iOS ap­plic­a­tions. However, app store op­tim­isa­tion for the Apple App Store does differ slightly from the Google Play Store. We’ll examine the key areas to look out for when it comes to ASO for iOS apps in part 6.2: Apple’s App Store ranking factors, the last in our series on the de­vel­op­ment and marketing of a mobile native app.