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If you are a player in the wildly popular app marketplace, whether Apple, Android or both, you face some common marketing challenges that a robust ASO campaign can solve. This is also known as app store optimization and helps to make your app easy to find and more appealing. As with any other online marketing, being found and making your best sales pitch with limited “real estate” are key challenges. Keep reading to learn more about ASO, app store marketing, and SEO. 

Understanding the Basics of App Store Optimization 

Application stores are indexed by their own search engines, so any principle that applies to good SEO can also be useful on the Apple or Android app stores. Any app store listing will offer similar possibilities to make your offering easy to find, and easy to sell. You will be able to enter a name, perhaps a subtitle, a description, and tags. App stores use search algorithms, like search engines do, so you have similar opportunities to make your apps easier to find and more appealing to those who see them. 

Those tags are crucial for the same reason meta-tags on a Web page are important. Choose them carefully, and always after doing some keyword analysis. ASO and SEO are complementary marketing strategies, but ASO has some differences that you need to bear in mind as you promote your app. 

Using Good ASO Practices 

Inside the app store, you have a number of elements that can be tweaked to make the app easier to find and more attractive to your target audience. Let’s back up a minute and think about the app itself. If the name doesn’t make the app’s function clear enough, does the subtitle make it clear? Further, is the value proposition obvious? 

If your app helps users find open spaces in area parking lots, does the text of your listing make your value proposition clear? This is the next most important thing you can do after making the title and subtitle clear. Your app store marketing has to be an ongoing effort, one that generates reviews and customer engagement. Your keyword strategy will also evolve over time. According to Search Engine Journal, both Google and Apple stores use frequency of updates in their applications. So, if you want to expand or tweak the app, definitely do it and post the update.  

Integrating SEO and ASO 

Your efforts to blend SEO and ASO should start before the app is launched. The same keyword research you need for your search engine marketing, Facebook ads, and other digital marketing will prove useful in naming your app. Know your audience. Use keywords that are popular with them to write your meta-descriptions and in tags and a custom app URL. Both SEO and ASO are ongoing efforts where you monitor results and cost-effectiveness, trending keywords, download rates and other variables.  

Partner With an App Store Expert 

If you want to launch and app or revise and re-release your app, DevDigital can help with both application development and with search engine optimization. We have done over 1.6 million hours of development and SEO work for hundreds of clients in a wide range of industries. Contact us via our Web site to learn more.