What your App Requires
You need to have an app that people want to come back to. This will keep your active device numbers as high as possible which is the key to continuous downloads. (Users find the most relevant, most popular apps at the top.)
Good looking / Well designed android app will get noticed by the Android Review team; which promotes apps for free on a weekly basis. So its important to work on the apps design!
Test Your App to avoid bad reviews, Use different Screen sizes and Android OS versions.
Make your package name seo friendly, for example for a princess painting app have: paint.coloring.princess
Use a High Quality Icon for your app; helps when people search for your app, they will be more likely to download it.
Google Play Admin
Cover image
This can really boost user downloads. Make it unique, and don’t use the same picture from the screenshot.
App Name
Putting your main keyword in your app title: refer to the keyword section in this article.
Include a relevant key search phrase to your app name (e.g., Unblock me: [Puzzle game]). Tip: Apps starting by a letter closest to ‘A’ may also get better display.
Try to get relevant keywords into this field. Obviously, sometimes this may not be practical, or it may look too awkward from a user perspective, so use your judgment. Also, do your research, if there’s a hundred apps called “Stop Watch App”, then you’ll want to differentiate your title somehow. Maybe it would be better to target a less competitive keyphrase like “Timer App”, even if you suspect it doesn’t carry quite as much search volume. Or at least differentiate by using a popular modifier like “Free”.
Publisher Name
The publisher field does has a big impact on search in the App Store and Google Play. In the case of Apple, it’s treated as strongly as the app title. So it’s worth pushing a relevant keyword into this field. It may even be worth creating different publisher names for the different types of apps that you develop. For instance, your ‘Stop Watch’ Apps could be published under “Time Dev” then you can rank for both ‘Stop Watch’ and ‘Timer’.
Include keywords associated with publisher name (e.g., Zynga: [Social Games Services]).
Youtube Video
This is a must for each app
Screenshots
- HQ Screenshots
- Use all available screenshots
- Show your best screen shot first – users see your first screenshot in the search results
- explanations on your screenshots
Localize Description
Should be localised in most common languages such as Chinese, Korean, Spanish, French and any other languages of your markets.
Category
When you publish an app in Google Play, you pick the category in which you want users to find your app. More than 30 categories are available. Inside each category, apps are ranked based on a combination of ratings, reviews, downloads, country, and other factors. Many popular categories also start with a collection of featured apps selected by the Google Play editorial staff.
Description
Don’t forget to talk about any permission your app is requesting upon installing. The user will see them anyway so it’s better to be honest from the start. List all your app’s features, while also being transparent about any monetization modals you have in place.
This is the place to target keywords and meta descriptions text.
Keywords
Put keywords in your app description (unlike on iOS, the body of the description is searched) and your promo text.
Make sure your app name is frequently used (for brand search) and repeat several times your main keywords (up to 5).
The Algorithm understands that if your app is about Dog Nutrition, it’s also going to talk about Dog food… achieving a level of Authority will bring tons of traffic for long tail keywords related to your topic/niche. The reason ? Google LSI algorithm
Remember A small increase in ranking can bring serious number of downloads, so dont get hung up on ranking high on difficult words.. read below.
Picking your Keywords
Method:
- Find all relevant keywords and there difficulty for your app (by looking at other apps, Adwords Keyword Tool)
- Method 1: Try Targeting the most relevant, see if you can list in top 10; if not, Target the second most relevant; and so on.
- Method 2: Try Targeting less difficult, relevant search terms first, then slowly try adding more difficult search terms
- Once you have found a relevant keyword you rank in the Top 10 for and look at its difficulty level. Now only target other relevant keywords with this difficulty level
Its important to track your keywords Prune your list and select new keywords that you can rank for. Your goal is to get your app in the top 10 for every one of your keywords. This is not always possible and being ranked #22 for a valuable keyword is still pretty good.
So throw out poorly ranked keywords and find another. You should also get rid of a keyword if it is not closely related to your app.
So how do you find/pick your keywords? Start with the most relevant, then filter by ranking difficulty.
- 1 – Relevance: Be sure that your keywords are not only related, but are what people might search for when looking for an app like yours
- 2 – Ranking difficulty: If you do not rank well for those keywords, then all that traffic is worthless.
- Start small and get a feel for the average Difficulty Score that will get your app into the top 10 for most of your keywords.
- For example, while examining your keyword rankings you might notice that the keywords that you are able to get ranked in the top 10 for have a Difficulty Score of about 3.2. This tells you that if you choose keywords that have a Difficulty Score of 3.2 or less, there will be a much better chance that you can get into the top 10 for those terms. As your app gets downloaded more, you will be able rank for more difficult (and higher traffic) keywords.
- if relevance and difficulty are similar, then choose the keyword that has more traffic.
Go on the normal Adwords Keyword Tool and search for lateral keywords to use as well. Using lateral keywords (the ones suggested by Google after you’ve done your main search) will improve your app’s chance to get into the search results for those main keywords.
Also check what keywords your competition targets (start with the apps ranked in the 20’s/30’s which have alot of downloads) getting your keywords and phrases into this description field.
But again, avoid keyword stuffing, it’s not user-friendly and it may raise Google’s wrath! Experimenting with different combinations of keywords is a good way to figure out how to maximise your search ranking and downloads. Google Play’s relaxed submission rules allow you to easily update the title and keywords, resubmit the app to the store, and then monitor the effect on rankings.
Helpful tools for keyword generation:
- AppCod.es can predict what keywords your competitor apps are using and suggest optimum keywords for your app.
- Google keyword tool
- There are tools that use third party data to generate keyword volumes. Mobile Dev HQ is one of them. So it may be worth checking out
- Check out Chomp, which release some metrics on app search queries through its store.
Target Your Keywords
Your description should contain certain keywords you’re targeting with your app. Say you have a camera app named “Funky Camera Tricks”. Use the word ‘camera’ 3-6 times in your app description, (while keeping it relevant) and also use the words ‘tricks’ and ‘funky’ a few times.
You want to create a Goldilocks description: not too much keyword usage, not too long or too short. Keep it balanced.
Using your keywords 5 times in your app description generally does the trick.
Ratings / Reviews
A Google Play / Android app with no constant flow of reviews will not survive… Google needs, feeds from those reviews to understand you are not just buying bulk downloads. Reviews matter… matter so much is a bit scary. Your app’s rating is one of the most important factors influencing its ranking in the various lists and search results in Google Play. It’s also one of the key signals that the editorial staff looks for, when curating apps and games for promotion in the store.
- Ensuring that an app’s user base is actively providing reviews is scripts like Appirater, which automatically prompts the user with a message asking for a review.
- Ask for feedback and get reviews on websites, blogs, forums.
Social Media
- Facebook connect
- tweets,
- google + inside your app.
- Facebook fan pages
Other
The following should be done, but are not as important as the ones listed above.
PPC / Admob to generate downloads
Seek out relevant journalists and review sites before the release “We Google the most popular sites that are focused on reviewing mobile applications, and where our competitors have reviews.”
Going beyond the standard app review sites, look at the journalists discussing tools for the market you serve
cheap link building
Chomp is a popular app discovery search engine
Mobile specific agencies such as AppShout which can help you contact a massive number of blogs and publications.
You can link web users directly to your product details page from outside Google Play, such as from your web site, an ad campaign, reviews, social media posts, and more. See Linking to Your Products to find out how
links don’t really bring permanent ranking, but more of a flow and momentum (see the wave in the graph). Although my research still in baby steps I don’t believe all links count in Google Play and more “passive” or “soft” link building could work better than conventional SEO/Website link building.
Offer your app for free or at half price for a period of time
Google Play Search Algorithm
- Number of ratings: how many people have rated and reviewed your app.
- Ratings: how high (or low) they are
- Amount of downloads: how many app downloads
- Downloads growth: the growth of downloads over the last 30 days
- Uninstalls: how many people uninstall the app
- Usage: frequency with which your app is used (reported by some developers)
- Update 2/9/12: Links to Play Store page: “Getting people to write about your app improves your search rankings in the Play Store” (Google I/O June 2012)
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