Own Your App Search Results Pages
February 28, 2011After you Submit the Application: How to Own Your App Search Results Pages
Don’t forget that the same marketing strategies that work on your traditional website will work to promote your application in Google. This includes both SEO and PPC. You can drive links from a variety of different sites directly to your app download page. Based on the fact that Yahoo only shows a total of 185 links to the entire US app store, this strategy is not yet being employed by mainstream mobile marketers or SEO’s. This is a mobile strategy, but even if it does not drive tons of downloads, it can be used like a Universal result, to push your competitors down in the results, so that you and your brand own more of the top positions on your keywords.
iPhone Apps can Rank in Google with the Appropriate SEO Strategy on Submission. The same thing is true with PPC – It is an effective way to own more of the real-estate on the search page than you would otherwise. You can buy PPC keywords in AdWords and send the results directly to your download page in the AppStore. If users are on their mobile phone, it the iPhone will automatically launch the AppStore in the phone. If users are on a traditional computer, it will open the HTML download page in the browser. Unfortunately, neither of these strategies is great on Android phones because the Android Marketplace has yet to create permanent/static HTML pages for the applications they have indexed. It is likely that they will soon so be ready to apply these strategies with apps on other OS’s soon.
You should think of your application launch just like you would a product launch, and create a calendar of promotional tasks to be accomplished both before and after launch. Here is a sample:
Pre Launch Mobile App Promotion
- 3 Months Before Launch:
– Build Promotion Page on Site
- 3 Weeks Before Launch:
– Press Release – Key Features
– Email Prominent Bloggers – Basic Information, Links, Images & Quotes to Use
– Build PPC and Banner Campaigns
- 1 Week Before Launch:
– Press Release – Special Features
– Email Prominent Bloggers – Update & Link to Press Release
– Test PPC and Banner Campaigns
Post Launch Mobile App Promotion
- Day of Launch:
– Press Release – Launch
– Email Bloggers – Link to Download
– Launch PPC Campaigns
– Launch Banner Campaigns
– Internal Email to Employees Prompting Download
- 1 Week After Launch:
– Press Release – Download Stats
– Internal Email to Employees Prompting Review
- Month After Launch
– Announce Next OS Launch
- 3 Months After Launch
– Announce Update for First OS Update
