The success of an app depends on several factors. Our article ‘5 Tips for Creating an Engaging Mobile App’ explains a few of those components, such as having a thorough understanding of your audience and a sleek design. Still, even if you excel in those guidelines, other variables are at play.
A recent report on mobile commerce from Ecommerce Tips observes that the average consumer spends 4.4 hours daily on their phone, with 88% of that time spent on apps. Though this means there’s an existing audience for your app, it also implies that the market may be over-saturated—and you need to take extra steps to help your app stand out.
Two invaluable tools you can use here are SEO and PPC. Here’s everything you need to know about them as a mobile app developer.
What is SEO?
SEO stands for search engine optimization, and its goal is to help your product—in this case, a mobile app—become visible in organic search results. These are search listings that are not paid for. It works like this: search engine algorithms prioritize certain landing pages because of elements like how well a page matches a user’s query, the quality of the page’s content, and the usability of the page. If you use SEO well and rank high, your mobile app can attain the competitive advantages of reaching far more people and being seen as incredibly credible in what it sets out to do.
What is PPC?
PPC means pay-per-click—a type of digital advertising where you pay a search engine or platform for targeted visits to your landing page. Your ad rank will appear on top of search engine results pages if it scores above others who have paid for this privilege. While you might be skeptical that users would be interested in viewing advertised listings, current research finds the opposite is true. A 2020 study from the Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology examining advertisement influences found that subjects who aren’t well-versed in search advertising are less willing to scroll down to organic search results—especially when using a mobile screen—and instead click on ad listings near the top of a page. This tendency can make PPC helpful for increasing the visibility of your mobile app.
How you can use SEO and PPC to promote your mobile app
The two digital marketing techniques above can help you market your app more effectively. Ayima outlines how integrating SEO and PPC will help you cover all your bases. SEO can target more upper-funnel, longer-tail terms for users seeking more information and who may wish to try out an app first before paying. Meanwhile, PPC will be more valuable for commercial keywords aimed at people in your target audience who want to make in-app purchases. SEO can be a long-term strategy for your app, ensuring it ranks higher and looks more credible with every update, while PPC can drive more immediate results.
One way you can integrate them is to help your app’s landing page or website rank higher on results from search engines like Google or Bing. For example, you can use PPC to get rapid feedback for SEO, which provides revenue tracking on a keyword-by-keyword basis. You can then launch a simple version of your app’s landing page with relevant keywords in its title, subtitle, and description to measure more accurately the conversion rates and search volumes of these pages. If there’s little traffic, you might want to tweak your app’s concept or marketing strategy. If it’s successful, however, you can apply SEO to further boost the traffic.
This strategy also works for app stores—which ElegantCode projects to grow from further investment by marketplace providers in the next several years. You can utilize PPC via AdWords Enhanced Campaigns, which shows potential consumers your app and allows them to download it with one click. While the ad format has the option of automating a template, you can instead apply SEO to the title, description, and other text to boost your conversions.
You’ll want to strategize how you promote your app to help it stand out in an over-saturated market. With your newfound knowledge of PPC and SEO, you can do just that.
Article written by Regina James
Exclusively submitted to JG
