seo tips

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has traditionally been applied to websites only, and mobile websites in a certain measure. However, talking about SEO for mobile apps is more seldom. Yet, having your mobile application visible online is actually crucial for your success. 

What is SEO for Apps?

As more and more people submit apps to the mobile application market places, notably Apple App Store and Android Market, the competition to rank high for application searches becomes even fiercer. 

Application marketplaces work similarly to simple search engines that only search a select inventory of mobile apps. Therefore all you know from SEO can be used when submitting an app.

When you think of SEO for mobile apps, keep in mind that you can actually talk about two things:

- Optimize your app rankings within mobile application marketplaces: key ranking factors include number of downloads, reviews, title, keywords, etc.

- Optimize your app rankings within search engines results pages (SERPs): traditional SEO ranking factors apply to app's download page.

Let me give you very specific SEO tips on how to optimize your app rankings both in Apple App Store and Android Market, as well as in search engines such as Google, Bing, and Baidu.

How to Optimize your App?

If your end goal is to increase downloads and installs of your app, you have to optimize it to make it more visible in app stores and SERPs.

Here are 10 SEO tips to optimize your app in both mobile marketplaces and SERPs: 

1. Define Target Audience Keywords

As for traditional SEO, you first have to define and understand your target market: who would be interested in downloading and using your app?

Following that, you must know what words and terms your audience search. You can use free SEO tools to see what keywords people use according to specific filters such as country, language, etc., and also get additional suggestions.

Of course, when you target a specific audience, it doesn’t exclude other users to find and use your app, you’re just more likely to attract the users who are most valuable to you.

2. Optimize App name

Having a good name for your App has positive impacts in terms of SEO, both in search engines and mobile app marketplaces.  

When I say a good name, I mean you should consider having relevant keywords in your app’s name that can include your brand name, but more importantly additional keywords that describe the app, and will be added to your keywords tag (see below).

Remember you have to think about character limits and ensure you follow the guidelines for each application store, especially if you use brand names (you may be requested to show licenses before your app can be approved).

3. Optimize App URL

As in “traditional” SEO, the URL of the app is also a ranking factor. You must ensure that the URL of your app contains your keywords. 

Note that the name of your app will automatically be used as your file name in the URL for your application.

If you don’t want to have an SEO-unfriendly auto-generated URL with numeric APP ID, it clearly means you should be sure to have the keywords you want in your file name (and avoid including special characters).

4. Create  Keyword Tag

After downloads, reviews, and name, keywords play an important role in promoting your app in Android Market and Apple App Store. 

For instance, in the Apple App Store, you should optimize all your keywords for 100 characters maximum, including spaces. You can separate your keywords with commas only.

Keep in mind that Apple App Store understands keywords one-at-a-time (rather than in phrases) unlike search engines. Therefore don’t forget to include plurals and synonyms to rank for those keywords. 

I’d recommend you to think about what people who don’t know your application may search if they're interested in an app like yours. 

And contrary to what you may read, spamming the keyword tag with un-related keywords or your competitor’s name won’t help you rank higher, and may even result in having your app rejected. 

5. Optimize App Description

When you write your app description, think about it in terms of potential users just scanning it. Most people won’t read your app description, especially if it’s free, so the vital information must be clearly highlighted.

What should you write in your app description? Share insight on what makes your app unique, without going overboard on features and specs. Focus on the main values your app offers.

Pay strong attention to how the text is formatted in the app, notably where line breaks since most of users will read your app description from their mobile phone.

For instance, in the Apple app store, each line can contain 120 characters, and  you only get three lines above the fold (before you have to click “more”), so that is a maximum of 360 characters including spaces.

A great tip is also to include user reviews directly in your app’s description, especially if your app doesn’t have many reviews in the store yet. This will encourage people to download your app, as well as add pertinent keywords in your download’s page, and therefore help you rank in search engines.

6. Choose Right App Category

Choosing the right category to submit your application to is actually crucial. 

Your app can be listed in multiple categories but you have to find the ones that both reach your target audience and have the least competition, notably in terms of apps and keyword search rankings.

MobClix is a very useful tool that can help you determine the level of competition between different categories of Apple apps. 

For example, you can divide the number of apps by free and paid, and then even sub-divide within the different categories. 

7. Display Screenshots and Icons

Don’t neglect your images as they may have a great influence on conversion for apps. Your application should display great images, especially good quality icons, as well as visual screenshots.

Pay attention to quality of images, as well as sizes that may differ from one mobile marketplace to another.  Besides, remember that large landscape images may be cropped.

8. Add Video Trailer

Another great feature of Android Market is video trailers that enable you to showcase your app. 

You simply need to add the URL of your video on YouTube. As text description, keep it short and highlight the top features of your app.

Video trailers clearly increase downloads and conversions for apps.

9. Get User Reviews

User reviews are taken into account by mobile marketplaces to rank your app. Of course, the more positive you have, the better.

If your app is new and doesn’t have many reviews, you can invite your users to leave positive feedbacks. However, make sure they like as reviews don’t expire. 

In addition, and as social media, interaction with the community is something vital. Try to spot top influencers among your users and interact directly with them. That is how you’ll satisfy them and get more and more users.

10. Promote App on Social Networks

Anything that is done online to promote your app is good for your SEO. From websites’ reviews to social networks, strive to promote your application online.

Use all your knowledge about SEO to optimize your pages to drive traffic to your app’s page.

For instance, the Android Market allows visitors mark apps as +1 and recommend them with their followers on Twitter. Those are simple but great ways to lead visitors to your app’s download page.

Feel free to share your other SEO tips for mobile apps!

In our SEO blog, we usually give you some SEO tips to increase your rankings on any search engine, including Google, Bing, and of course Baidu in China.

Today I am writing about Baidu SEO audit tool available in Baidu Zhanzhang, the Chinese search engine’s equivalent of Google Webmaster Tools.

The service is currently in a beta version and isn't available to everyone.

The tool checks and grades your website on a scale of 0-100 according to several factors, namely:

- The length of your URLs. Keep them short! According to Baidu, the length of your URLs should not exceed 255 bytes.

- The use of dynamic parameters. Check your URL parameters to avoid creating several URLs which access the same page, and therefore avoid having duplicate content issues.

- Your Meta data. If you do not include or use generic terms in Title and Meta Description, you could negatively affect your display and rankings in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

- Your frame information. Baidu recommends you not to use any iframe on your website.

- Your flash. As you know, search engines cannot read everything contained in flash animations. However you can write text descriptions to help Baidu better understand the content of your flash animation.

- Your images. The use of “alt” tag helps Baidu better index your website’s images.

Well, this is not very detailed SEO information but Baidu makes a good step in providing users with support. If you want to read more, you can have a look at our previous articles on how to do Baidu SEO.

Please note we recently released our Baidu SEO tool for Chrome that enables you to easily check your organic rankings on the Chinese search engine in addition to our Baidu Ranking Tool.

Google released its +1 button. Basically, when someone likes you, he/she clicks on the button to show their appreciation.
it means that google will have access to millions of people’s  vote (a bit like the facebook “like” button).

What is google going to do with this piece of information?
Well, they included it in their rankings algorithm to know where to show your website when someone searches for what your website deals with.
To which extend?
We don’t know, experience will tell. The impact of this +1 button is not known for now. They just said they’ll take it into account.

What I think ?
Ok, so I see on the forums people arguing that this information won’t really be used because people can create fake accounts. That is simply not possible. And here is why :

-    Facebook (the enemy) has already this “likes” and has millions of them, if google doesn’t react now, facebook could build … a better search engine than google. And let me tell you this is the biggest threat the mountain view company is facing.

-    If they are smart, and I bet they are, their algorithm will take into account numbers that will separate fake accounts with real ones : is the google account used everyday?  Is it open since a long time? Do they correspond with more than 100 / 1000 people? They have access to data that could help them differentiate most part of fake and real accounts. They would be stupid not to use it (and again, I believe they are not)

-    They make you work for them for free ! yes, they have wonderful computers, but what if they had millions of people liking something, wouldn’t that be a sign that this something is interesting, probably, somehow ? yes.

Should you add that button?
Well, if traffic, visitors, prospects, clients, buyers, are important to you. Then YES you should. If you don’t care about it (then can you remind me why the hell did you open a website ? ;)

Where to find it to add it to your website?

here : http://www.google.com/intl/en/webmasters/+1/button/index.html

Google I/O 2010 hosted a SEO site review on May 20 in San Fransisco. Google I/O is an annual web developer-focused conference.

SEO experts, Matt Cutts, Tiffany Lane, Greg Grothaus, and Vanessa Fox reviewed several websites and gave SEO tips in order to optimize the websites for search.

Here is the video of the session:

Matt Cutts gave very simple SEO advice as well as more tricky SEO tips. Here are some reminders on how to optimize your website for search:

- Think what users will type when searching for your services and put those words on the page (entering text on your website pages is something you should always keep in mind).

- If you have pages with many images but without any text, it can be a good idea to allow comments and reviews, so that it generates content in your pages. Users will enter keywords in the comment for you ! See also our previous post on how to optimize your images for Google image search with 'alt text' and 'title tag'.

- Provide original content, so your visitors would like to come back to your website. Pages with duplicate content will rank worse than pages with original content. However, does Google really detect duplicate content ?.

- You can also stand up from the crowd by choosing an orginal domain name that can be more more brandable. It doesn't have to be the same kind of name as anyone else.

- Web CMSs such as WordPress and Drupal provide keywords in your page URL by default and this is very good for SEO. However, keep your version up-to-date to avoid getting hacked. 

- When you write a page URL, prefer dash (or period) over underscore. If you write a_b, Google will index one term, but most people tend to type 'a b', not 'a_b'. Read also our article about how to optimize Chinese URLs for Baidu.

- Having backlinks to your site is crucial for good ranking. However, you don't have to fight for each individual backlink. The best way to get backlinks is to provide content with value that differentiates yourself from the crowd and lead people to link to your pages.