One of the interesting things about search that Stephen will discuss during the webinar is that things move extremely quickly and the year of the mobile has lasted for 5 years now, so it seems it is here to stay. He will clarify what are we really looking at when we are looking at mobile SEO, mobile search in general, mobile devices. Are we just referring to a responsive website, to mobile applications or a combination of both. And where should you really be investing your time and budget, in order to get the best possible returns for the mobile traffic basically that could be coming to you.
Hopefully by the end of the presentation you will know if your business would benefit from an app, a combination of the two or just a mobile website would be enough. And if you do decide to go down the mobile app route, how do you potentially get traffic to that app, how do you get people in, how do you convert potential visitors into an actual customer.
Diving straight into what a mobile app is useful for, compared to a mobile website: what we can actually achieve on a mobile app is significantly much advanced than it used to be. It's quite strategic as well and how potentially to do that, since it's not just the case of building an app and people will come to it.
There is a huge amount of work involved in building an audience for a mobile app, every bit as much as it goes into your usual SEO activity.
According to this well known graph by ComScore - the time spent on Mobile: app vs browser - Apps lead by more than 80%. There is a bit of (unbalance) in apps like Facebook, Twitter and that kind of app. You don't have a choice of navigation of where they are potentially going foremost of the time, but they do read content, consume websites within their applications. So when you are actually looking at mobile content, there is a bit of a disconnection there.
But the 87% of time spent in application does seem rather significant for what people are doing with those devices now, so we need to know what are people doing with that time and also how consistent can we expect that to be moving forward.
From the same ComScore report as mentioned earlier, one of the things that is pretty striking about this is that even though people spend so much time in mobile apps, it's the mobile web that is growing. More people are visiting the mobile web than ever before and apps are very static when it comes to actual acquisition of an audience, so not just the time spent, but who is spending it. You only need to look back 18 months to see that in June 2014, about 6000 people were browsing the mobile web, while today is up to 9000.
The best explication for this that he's seen is the one offered by a guy who works for Google as a designer, Luke Wroblewski: Mobile Web is for REACH. If you're looking to acquire new audience, if your main KPI is a business and as a market department is get new customers, new people to experience what you're offering, than mobile websites are still probably the best way to go.
If you have a big audience, a big mailing list, an engaged social audience, if you are putting out a lot of content already, a mobile app could really be useful for getting more out of that audience, of engaging it more.
Both have their uses, so taking Luke's comment on face value, probably won't increase the number of users to your brand just through mobile apps, but also you won't get the most out of those users just with the mobile website.
Some anomalies exist
- when is comes to Google, generally you got to accept that things change very quickly and it does what it wants. So when we are looking at reach, that's actually quite different on how apps are used in certain localities. A good example is: if you go to Greece (and it's a really useful trick), what ever it is you are optimizing for, just search for that exact keyword or set of keywords in other localities of Google (this example is just google.gr). For example "bingo" word - if you search in UK, you've got for those 10 blue links mostly huge commercial sites with a real CTA to get people to sign up; it's massively competitive and you can't get the apps near the top. But looking at Greece, and not only, you'll see the app actually outrank all of the organic results. And this is just on iOS, but you can see straight away there are some anomalies there.
- same for poker - the Zynga Poker app on top. Google tends to test things in different countries, in the same way that there are a lot of international businesses that choose a certain location for pushing out their tests. Google does that as well, so you see different results in different countries. Is always interesting to see how Google is using variety to its advantage and showing you different kinds of results depending on location.
The reason for this is Google understands that people have a certain intent when they search for any particular keyword: "bingo" or "poker" = " I want to play". Google can be 90% sure that you don't really want the history of bingo or poker. Other results are different in Greece, such as football: you get informational queries on the top, simply because you don't want to play football on your mobile device, you want to know about it.
All of this plays into the Google proposition, that has been rolling out for the past year: Micro Moments. Stephen recommends you read "Winning the Zero Moment of Truth", launched in 2011 and you can find it on zeromomentoftruth.com.
Google originally started talking about what people want to use Google for and they were talking about research. When people are buying a product, and the traditional model is they'll have a stimulus (maybe a TV add, outdoor advertising etc.) that encourages them to take action and traditionally that means going into a store and experiencing a product (maybe a test drive of a car or going to a shelf). What Google is trying to show with this study is, that things have changed: the whole research base that goes into that, before hand. In 2011 they suggested that people use about 10 resources (web pages, websites or even offline resources) before they'll make a purchase. That has doubled since 2010, so now people are using 20, maybe event 30 pieces of content or web pages before they buy. What Micro Moments and the selection of info that Google has been publishing in the last year, are trying to show is what those research bases could take the form of. So you're looking at: bingo/poker - that is clearly "I want to play" those games when I search for that.
On a mobile device there is heavy emphasis on those "I want to go/do" moments. You get a lot of local results in mobile, because searching on a mobile and with Google being able to know your location, it's very clear that you want to go somewhere and it's not for later. That information still ranks of course, but it ranks a bit lower that the immediate information you might want to see right there. And that's what mobile really changed with this Micro Moment proposition and it's the reason why 40% of search queries show apps in the top 5, because so many of those search queries are very clearly fitting into that bracket of "I want to do/go/know" depending on the type of app. And that's why apps are a clear indication that you want to do something.
So "football" being in the "I want to know" search query, that's why you'll get apps in the top 5, but you're looking at informational apps, not games, not the same apps you can see with bingo/poker.
Reach depends on query intent. What do you want your app to do?
If you're using an app to gain reach, to acquire a new audience, you have to be entirely certain that your app caters to that particular search query with the intent behind it.
There's a few curve balls as far as Google is concerned, because it used to be pretty straight forward until this year, when users could be reached on the mobile web and funnel them straight into your app: you search for a keyword, you see a piece of content, you want it, you click on Google and the first thing you've got is a splash screen that directs you to the App Store or Google Play store, so you can keep the app there.
But that's not really what people want and as a result, Google has updated the mobile friendly algorithm they rolled out on 1st of April. So if your mobile website is really heavy with these app interstitials, basically if your splash takes so much of the screen and people can't see the content that they came for, but can literally see that you just want to funnel them into the app store, you no longer pass the mobile friendly test and as a result you don't rank as well as you should on mobile devices. So it's definitely worth taking off those app interstitials right now. And this has been effective since October, so if you've seen any drops in visibility in organic search on mobile devices since then, this might be the cause of it.
And the big difference actually, with mobile friendly when it rolled out (and it was a huge amount of press about it saying that the amount of search results are going to change drastically, but they didn't), is the number of mobile apps that are listed in organic search results - what you see now is the result of that mobile friendly algorithm with more and more app in the top 5.
How can you drive app downloads from paid/owned media, when you simply can't put out a splash screen?
You can do it from your website and Stephen explains some real life examples.
Holiday Inn (chain of hotels) - has a very good reward scheme (plenty of businesses have reward points etc.). One of the emails they send: if you download their app (IHG) you can earn bonus points towards the hotel stay. They are straight forward from this perspective; you might not even need the app or use it, since it encourages you to get towards another hotel stay with that reward system they already have in place. It also means you not only get an email message reminding you of their app, but also potentially getting pushed notifications by an app to remind you about IHG. So it gives them twice as much real estate on your mobile phone without you having to go and search for a hotel; twice as much real estate to remind you that they exist, which is obviously really useful for a business.
An entirely different way of doing it is TripAdvisor (primarily known for reviews and being able to find locations etc.): on a mobile device if you're just browsing their mobile website, you can see all those reviews, clearly you want to go somewhere, you see the address and all of that, but if you want to engage more with TripAdvisor, if you want to write your own reviews for example you can do that on the mobile website. TripAdvisor forces you to download the app, so they assume a couple of things:
you are engaged enough with them to write a review, you are clearly engaged enough to download an app, so they're vetting on that audience that will be up for that.
if you write one review, they want to make it as easily as possible for you to write more and more reviews and provide them with that user generated content consistently. If you've got a mobile app there and you keep using TripAdvisor again, they can send you push notifications: you've been here on one of our reviews and therefor you are a much valuable customer that if you just look for a particular restaurant and you've been given a splash screen, which you don't want.
Why not use a CTA in ATL campaigns to push customers to your app?*
*(app users more valuable than hashtag tweeters + Google <3 brand search)
So obviously, there are plenty of other unpaid media campaigns that you might be running, with less outdoor advertising etc.
There's been a trend in the last years, where every single TV advertisement has to use a hashtag, which is a little bit ridiculous, because people don't tend to tweet using a hashtag because they've seen a brand advertisement (and if you've clicked on one of those hastags you'll know that): you get a little bit of conversation for a short time, from few people, mostly people who are just complimenting your advertisement, so you can see why add agencies do it.
But what is not really useful as well, is the Twitter audience: if you're driving people to a hashtag you're not driving people to your property and there's no real reason for them to engage with you again. So why not, instead of using a hashtag if you are launching a mobile app, ask people to search for that app, search for it in the Play store or iOS store. Even just put those logos on your screen; try to get the name of the brand out there, not only are you a business that does what you advertise about, but also you have an app that makes it nice and easy for the people to do that as well.
App Store - How to drive downloads from it?
App store optimization is not too different from SEO, in a lot of senses and there are fairly straight forward practices - what kind of info you have to fill in to become relevant and to demonstrate to Apple or Google that you are a quality result as well. And just like SEO it's a combination of relevance and quality.
Short Description - in some app store, like Google Store, the description is really important, but you can't use keywords;
Keywords - however keywords are extremely important for iOS, so it's just about understanding the differences between those two. One of the big changes in SEO for the past 2 years has been the prevalence of long tail search queries and why they are really a big opportunity for most businesses now, regardless whether you are a start up or a massive business.
The big change is that, where you once you used to rank for something like car insurance for example, you would put a load of keyword links to your car insurance page (5-10 year ago) and naturally you rank for those long tail search queries. What's really different now is you have to rank for those long-tail search queries if you want to rank for "car insurance". The app store is quite different from this point of view, because people don't search for long-tail here. There's no real reason to assume they will ever do that, so the app store is a big opportunity to include those short tail high search volume, high competition keywords.
And you can use several tools like App Annie, one of my favorites, and find search volumes in the app store and discover those keywords.
Title: be succinct including your keywords and your brand.
Publisher is important:
- Who's putting the app in the app store: your brand MUST do this! Don't let anyone else (publishing company etc.), because it's really important that your brand is seen to put out the app.
- Build consistently great apps, so the same publisher makes them rank better
- Spam the Play Store and risk getting your brand kicked out of all Google properties. Even if manipulation still works, even in Google, you are still risking being kicked out and then Google takes the clue and kicks your brand out of organic results as well, so don't do it.
- Positive ratings/reviews influence app store ranking, including the overall quality of the reviews, the more styles the better. Also how quickly you are provided with those reviews: if many people want to review your app, than clearly your company is doing something right.
As a coincidence, start ratings/reviews will probably influence Google organic ranking soon. Google wants to rank the best businesses, it's as simple as that, so it wants to be sure that whoever is sending search traffic to, is going to make the best use of that, provide a great customers experience, customer service and not make people search again. So the best they have for that right now is the star rating, including the ones you marked on your website, will influence future results.
Back to the idea that what is needed in this situation is:
- Speed: the faster you get downloaded the more popular you will be and just like in Google, popularity is key here, getting you to rank higher; it's also really important to get people to download your app as soon as it comes out in great numbers;
- As a consequence it is really key that you get your PR and SEO team involved when launching an app, not after;
- If there are mistakes, the iOS App Store takes two weeks to approve changes, so make sure to have the keywords correct, the list optimized properly etc.
- Updating apps frequently does improve rankings, but you still have that popularity to begin with.
Paying to promote apps? Front load budgets
- if you're going to use something like social promotion, Facebook /Twitter advertising or PPC to drive app downloads, if you have a budget set up over a period of time (3, 6 months) I would strongly suggest front loading that budget: spend more in the first week that the rest of the campaign. The important thing is to get it as high in ranking in the App Store as it possibly can be, because naturally it will stay there once it's there.
Speak to journalists/bloggers in advance
- if you want to use app reviews as a tactics for potentially getting links to your app or whatever it might be, in order to get attention, is very important to keep your PR team in the loop to begin with, since they need time to talk to the journalists etc. in advance.
Links
- remember Apple doesn't use links for App Store rankings, it doesn't have access to page rank, to the link graph that Google does, so it's not going to make any difference for Apple at all. You don't necessarily need to link to the app itself, a lot of the time when building links from a Google perspective, what's really important is getting people to download it, see it, trust it.
Plan your launch date carefully
- both for your teams, but especially keep in mind seasonality, including on mobile markets. Whenever is the right time, also the competition is high, everyone is trying to achieve the same thing. So choose the moment carefully, when the competition is only from your competitors and not everyone who want to create a mobile app.
Drive app downloads from social media
- 80% of Twitter's 300M+ active users are on mobile; but keep in mind this channel is mostly "I want to know", not necessarily "I want to play"
- from this remember the fact that the user doesn't display an immediate need (they want to play a mobile app etc.), so there's no immediate competition; so the old advertising idea, hoping that people might catch you, still works in channels like Twitter, so if you can reach them here it's really great. Actually Twitter is really helpful to put together what you need to do to reach this, like you can see below.
Very straight forward and clear
- drive app downloads from search engines. PPC listing together with the app extension - really useful because it improves CTR with a pictures, so you are getting noticed as a brand a lot more easy. Downside - it pushes your mobile website or responsive website down the page, so typically your users won't be able to see your actual organic listing without the app card at the top. Hence it's mostly clear that if someone wants an app they won't go to your responsive website, so when you launch something like this, expect some low tail. But the bright side is that there's not many opportunities that get your logo in search results anymore without authorship (as an example), so it's one way to get attention.
Also the below list, created by Distilled, can be used to know what to do when it comes to Android app indexing.
The iOS app indexing checklist is pretty similar.
Add your app to Google Search Console
Why?
shows impressions, which is massively useful, how many people are potentially seeing your app, because you can see where it appears in terms of position; also you can see click through rate, meaning you can estimate how much traffic each position is worth to you and your business, also for more budget for pushing your app. Even make a forecast - where your app will be with the extra budget, so you can estimate much more accurately what your app is going to return to you in terms of traffic.
you can fetch your app as Google, so you can see what Google sees.
separate bot that Google has (besides the one that crawls over your website etc.), that works in a different way for apps, so you can expect to see different issues cropping up. And at the bottom of the page you can see what is potentially causing the problems with your app, when it comes to indexing.
App Deep Linking
It's quite a complicated subject, but the team from DeepCrawl has made the best guide explaining how to do his in this article: App Deep Linking for Beginners .
Important statistics to keep in mind
2/3 installed apps are never used.
Most are used just to remember the customers the brand still exists, they are a good way to build repeat custom; actually Ryanair made a great app, where they make sure it is downloaded and used, if the passenger want to use his boarding pass on the phone.
you can even index content from apps that users haven't installed.
Some months ago, while there was not much noise made about this, Google bought a start up - Agawi, which deals with app streaming. You can use apps in the way you would do a website, so Google is using it for pushing businesses to provide a deeper, richer experience on a mobile app, providing more content, more informational pages in an app and trying to get them indexed in Google that way, rather that simply providing a booking function on an app and having all the other info somewhere else, on a website.
Google has already started rolling this out: indexed app that are not on your mobile phone at all.
That's where all of this is going - All reach, no retention - you will expect to see more and more people being reached, people who are growing straight into apps, rather than going viral on the mobile website into an app.
Which option is applicable?
1. Mobile Web + mobile App. Even if you can get a mobile app indexed, it's not going to be efficient for a brand to just have a mobile app.
2. Mobile web only
3. Mobile app only - not really an option, not even with app indexing the adoption isn't quite there yet, to make it feasible.
The key take away
Doesn't matter how much time people spend on apps or how competitive the app store is, it is looking at your direct competitors - who has indexed it, who is getting that repeat custom from their apps.
The final point made by Stephen Kenwright is: because of where the market is today, which continues to grow, but it's not quite mature, he suspects that the ROI of building an app is never going to be as high again.
You can do some less expensive things with that as well:
- PhoneGap that allows you to shrink a mobile responsive website into an app. Change some aspects to get it in the app store, but there's no need to pay a company to create an app.
- Cordova and many more.
In the end, he encourages people to experiment and if they see an opportunity to act quickly and get an app out there when no one else does, they should really do that.