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Friday, December 7, 2012

SEO Best Practices for Android Apps


How often do you think about your App Title, Landing Page and Meta Tags?  Maybe you review it every time there’s an app update, maybe less often. At the end of the day, it’s fairly difficult to tie landing page characteristics to search rank and downloads, so why bother?! Ahem, sorry, wrong answer! Especially when you’re talking about Android...
In a recent study of search rank on Android, Fiksu has revealed that search is the primary means of organic discovery on Android (more than browsing the charts) and that search rank & discovery can be heavily improved through a better understanding of the factors involved.
Search Matters
On the Android platform, about 75 percent of “organic” downloads come from search. And of these, about 50 percent come from searching for a brand title. What’s more, users who find your app are 50 percent more likely to become loyal app users in the long term. So stop focusing on your chart rank for browsers, and start focusing on your search rank for keywords.
App Title
The 32 characters of your App Title are the most important real estate you have on Android, so use it wisely. Inclusion of a keyword in your title can make 80-100 places difference to your search rank for that keyword. But don’t try putting the keyword more than once—unfortunately this makes no difference!
App Description & Promo Text
Within the app description, keywords should be included at least 5 times to make 10-20 places difference to your search rank. Similar keyword are grouped together (e.g. consulting & consultant are treated the same, but consult is considered less similar). Many other factors make no difference to your search rank at all (e.g. keyword stuffing > 5 times), total word count of description and placement of keyword in promo text vs description.
Summing it all up, here’s 10 Steps to Follow to improve your organic discovery from search on Android.
1.    Define keywords that are relevant to your app (Use Google AdWords Traffic Estimator to help you prioritize)
2.    Include top keywords in the App Title (and consider removing your App Name from the title, in order to make room for these).
3.    Include App Name + all other keywords at least 5 times in description
4.    Make developer and bundle name relevant to the app (these also contribute to search)
5.    Make app logo descriptive of App Name
6.    Parasitic: Consider using competitor keywords & app name
7.    Geo-specific: Consider putting city and country names if geographies are relevant to your app
8.    Measure search rank for all your keywords
9.    Measure traffic from search on keywords over the period of a week
10.  Change keyword mix in title and repeat steps 1 - 9!
Via www.fiksu.com