Hello. Let's discuss App SEO. Let's start off with a brief discussion on what App SEO and ASO is. We will be covering both of these topics. For the purpose of this course, when I say ASO, I am speaking more of the practice of optimizing your app in the individual app stores, such as Apple or Google Play. When I speak of App SEO, I'm speaking of how you can optimize your website or other external properties to target people interested in the app and then drive traffic from that to your app. Note that these aren't industry specific terms, so you may not hear these elsewhere. I'm just using them to differentiate the two practices in this course. For many, App SEO will also be ASEO, so try not to get confused later if you don't hear the two terms like that. ASO allows you to rank highly in the app stores themselves. This increases your presence for people looking for apps in your category, either browsing categories directly or using keywords within the individual app store, either Apple or Google Play. External App SEO is optimizing your website or other sites outside of app search engines that allow you to acquire additional traffic outside of what the App Store themselves provide. Because you're limited to people searching for a very specific phrases or categories in both Apple and Google Play, external optimization will allow you to develop brand awareness about your app outside of the App Store. Let's talk some benefits of ASO. According to Apple search ads data, App Store optimization comes with many benefits. These include a 35-40 percent uplift inorganic downloads over time and the stat that 65 percent of all apps are discovered through App Store search, meaning that you have a great chance of getting visibility in the App Store if done right. The LTV, also called Lifetime Value, of organic users, can be 3-5 times that of paid search. Improving your apps conversion rate will also benefit other user acquisition strategies by increasing the lifetime value and then lowering the cost of paid ads to acquire them. Now let's discuss some of the benefits of External App SEO. Some of these benefits are saving money on commission fees for your app, depending on the type of app you have. We'll discuss this more in a moment. Lowering paid ads spend by capturing a larger share of organic traffic outside of the app, and increasing brand awareness and visibility by showing up in organic search results for both your app homepage in the App Store and your own website. Don't forget that App Store homepages can now rank a natural organic search as well. Let's talk more about those commission fees I just mentioned. Apple and Google both take about a 15-30 percent cut off app purchases and subscriptions. The amount of fee they take gets lower the longer you've had your app in their stores. This can add up to a lot of money for some retailers. For this reason, some people like Netflix for example, choose to drive traffic to their website to subscribe, and then allow people to use that service and the app itself. Some apps take more of a hybrid approach, trying to get more people to sign up organically, but still allowing inner purchases. This can get tricky though, because Apple in particular has very arbitrary rules about which apps can do this and developers have easily found themselves banned from the store. The high commission fees make generating organic sign-ups to your website even more critical. This can end up saving accompany a lot of money in fees paid to the individual app stores over time. Speaking of the rules for how and when they charge fees, I have included some links in the resource notes. Because these rules are just really arbitrary, they have unclear interpretations. I think it's a good idea to read these articles with some examples of apps that have been removed from the App Store because they haven't met these rules and some examples about how these practices are sometimes unfair. It's really interesting to read. Now that we've discussed some of the benefits of external optimization of your app, let's discuss some External App SEO methods for increasing brand awareness and visibility outside of the App Store. The first and most important thing, it's critical that you have a website for your app. Many app companies feel like they don't need a Physical Web presence because they're just an app. Some of these have just a really basic landing page with very little content. These apps are losing a tone of potential traffic opportunities, but not diversifying their online presence. This is especially true for e-commerce stores. Study suggests that customers are still more comfortable checking out and making purchases on a website. Even if it's on a mobile website, than within an app itself. I do expect that this [inaudible] diminish over time as we get more used to more apps that allow this. But for now, it's still consumer behavior to seek out a website to make purchases. Only having an app with no website that allows that, probably will make you lose a lot of money in the long run. Even outside of that, you're losing a lot of opportunity for visibility for people to find out about your app, without searching for you in the App Store itself. There are many different methods of External App SEO. You'll notice a lot of similarities between a normal SEO strategy and an external app SEO strategy. That's a lot of different phrases of SEO. These include a well-thought-out content marketing strategy that targets users in different stages of the buying funnel. You should utilize reviews and testimonials, use usually user generated content and participate in online communities, forums, and more all to increase your brand presence. It's really important to have a content marketing strategy for your app. When developing a content marketing strategy, you should think of what areas of your website will house content that can then funnel users to your app. Having a blog with regular posts about complimentary topics your audience is looking for, is a really great way to get more visibility; around people typing in questions related to those blog posts. Think about related blog topics. For example, while creating the SEO strategy at Fishbrain, we write fishing guides, on various subjects and experienced levels, and then relate that back to how the app can help the user. These are people who may not have been specifically looking for a fishing app. They may have just been looking for advice about fishing or a question they had about fishing and trying to find an answer or a solution. This allows Fishbrain to solve their problem and introduce users to both the brand and the app, while providing a helpful user experience. Don't forget also that your app has specific features or characteristics that make it unique. People search for these things specifically. Sometimes with the intent to find a recommendation for an app, and sometimes just seeking a solution to a bigger problem without realizing that an app exists and offers a solution to that. Create dedicated landing pages that highlight what your app offers. For example, at Fishbrain, we create a pages around individual app features, and that not only helped draw in more traffic, but increased sign-up conversion rate, by five percent. It's also really important not to discount review and category-based searches. It's really important to target keywords relating to the type of app category you have, and also combine this with the keyword reviews. Reviews tend to be significantly less volume. But this is where a lot of the convergence will happen and the really valuable and low competition. So really good keywords to target. Targeting keywords related to the type of app you have is critical to getting brand awareness. All of these searches in the example happened on Google outside of any App Store. People are specifically searching the web for these types of apps, oftentimes before they even go to the app store. This is a great opportunity to get in front of customers looking for what you have to offer with less competition than the app stores themselves. Always take time to look for missed opportunities with your app. Try turning a feature that only exists on your app into usable tool on your website. You can then limit these features and convince the user to download the app for full access. This is a great way to attract an audience who wants exactly what you have to offer. For example, with Fishbrain, one of the main draws to the app has been helping people find fishing spots near them. However, there was no tool for this online by adding a giant database of fishing spots to the web, which we did here around the February mark. You can see a little dot there, and then allowing Google to crawl this data, it took a little while to build up traffic and momentum. But we were able to capture visits to people looking for places to fish, and then convert them to app users. Always find these little opportunities and don't be afraid of taking a feature of your app and putting a limited version online as a way to actually get more people to your app. Earlier I mentioned community participation. It's a really good idea to monitor and participate in online communities related to your app. Going back to some previous examples, if we choose a popular online community, let's take Reddit as an example in this case, and simply Google, Reddit plus a category term like workout apps. You can see that people are constantly turning to their favorite communities, seeking recommendations. This is a great place to discuss your app and take place in these conversations that are happening about your app, or competitor apps, and you can just participate in them naturally and very organically and introduce people to your app that way. For your app optimization strategy, it's important to ask yourself or your coworkers the following questions so that you can develop an SEO content plan that addresses all of these questions. Have a brainstorming session with your coworkers or with the marketing team if you work as maybe an agency or freelance specialists. This will be really helpful to generate answers to these questions and generate a lot of inspiration. In summary, we've discussed why external app optimization is important, and I've shown you some examples of where this has paid off. You ideally understand how you can create a content strategy that drives people to your website to then download your app. You understand why it's important to rank well for category-based searches and how incorporating keywords around reviews can be helpful to your strategy, and you understand why it's important to participate in communities where there's already discussions happening around your brand, your competitors, or even your general app category.
