Logan: Hello everybody! Logan, here from Buzinga. And today I am joined here with my friend, David Jenyns from Melbourne SEO. Today I want to learn something very specific, it’s about Keyword Search for mobile apps. So I got David here because He specializes in SEO and Keyword Analysis. I thought I want to grab the best so I have to look online and just googled Melbourne SEO and David came up. And so that is why he is here today. Now, I have a few inquiries just about keyword search and keyword optimization and specific questions and I have to write them down because there’s no way I can remember all the questions. Would you mind if I ask you a couple of this?
David: Nah Shoot (Sure).
Logan: Beautiful. So starting off Why is it so important to have a proper keyword and analysis before you start implementing keywords.
David: Yeah, Okay so, no matter what you’re using oftentimes keywords are the driver for someone running a search. It gives you great insight into knowing what the person is thinking about whether they are in Google or in an App Store or if they are using a search engine they always start with a keyword. It gives you the best insight to the person typing things in. So the reason you wanna start with keyword research, I don’t know too much of that App Keyword Research…
Logan: Yup, Sorry David’s not actually an App SEO (ASO) Specialist but I know App SEO and SEO are exactly the same thing so sorry.
David: Yeah Yes so it’s all about getting into the mind of your prospect and thinking about what it is that they’ve been typing into whatever search engine they are using whether it is for App SEO. I’m just getting into their mind and thinking what would they be looking for prior to making a purchase for your product or service. So that is usually where I like to start. I think about who Am I targeting, What is it that I am actually selling? What is my product or service? And then try to think what phrases would they will be searching for that will lead them to make a buying decision. Because there is always variations in what we consider browsing phrases versus buying phrases like someone searching, “sony handy cam” or “Sony” even that is a very broad search that they might be just doing research on the word. If they search “Sony handycam”, “HDI”, S11, very specific model numbers, and maybe even geographic terms they further along in that buying cycle picking the right keywords and so is a little bit of an art and science were you trying to pick keywords that have commercial value the person is looking to make a purchase. Your meeting them almost same in the conversation that is already going on in their mind. They’ve got a conversation and that’s why they come into the search engine looking to find the solution to whatever their problem is. and we just want to make sure that picking the right keyword that we come up and make them at that point in time. Hopefully present their offering, you know you need to have a good message to market matches as well so when someone actually types a keyword and then land in to your product or service, you don’t want to have a disconnect you know sometimes you want to search and it just feels like a page comes up and you look at the page and hey that’s really got nothing to do with the phrase I actually put in there. And so you hit back. So there’s a whole lot of things you got to weigh out there to get that sweet spot. And that’s usually the way it starts off to get visitors coming to your website. So if you got like sort of Analytics you can dig in a little bit deeper and start to find out how people are engaging with your product or service. And use that to help feed the data back in to helping you into make further keyword choices in the future.
Logan: That’s right. Yeah. Of course, when you were saying that people jump on your website from the keyword that you try to rank for, and it is not coming from a relevant site, since your website should be relevant to that keyword. It doesn’t do much to your ranking online, does it?
David: Yeah there’s a little bit of a discussion to whether or not to bounce right and things like that affect rankings, Google is definitely taking a lot more data into account and Google doesn’t announce what their algorithm is. But I would imagine like for App Store, and let’s say that Apple’s closely monitoring you know how people are engaging on the App Store. It seems logical and something or someone would think about if someone visited your App page when you optimize, it will bounce straight back, we’ll use what they are looking for and that could potentially influence rankings. I don’t know but this is just the basic feel if you think about it. It just seems logical when someone can’t find what they are looking for they’re gonna come straight back. So why wouldn’t that be an indicator to Apple or search engine.
Logan: Well, that is why, pretty much what you are saying is that if your application is a Tower Defense Game then don’t search for keywords like Temple Run, 2 different types of apps. But yeah that’s really good.
David: Yep, Yeah.
Logan: A couple more questions. So what are the actual steps from step 1 through Z. You know what do you go through.
David: A little bit of that site and sometimes you almost internalize every time internalize the keyword selection. You sent me some of these questions beforehand. But if i was to break it down into steps that I would go through, First is obviously figuring out what type of market is, thinking about what it is that you are looking to sell, what your product or service, then thinking about and what someone will be typing in, you put yourself in their shoes. And you’re looking for almost a few seed keywords at that point in time. For me seed keyword is usually a shorter phrase, helps to represent what the person might be searching for, and then we can do some good research around that keyword. Because often times there are a few keyword tool we use, things like Market Samurai, SEM Rush, Google Free keyword Tool this is quite a few little different tool out there that you can use. Well most of them end up feeding data from the same space anyway which is the Google Free Keyword Tool, so you might as well go there. And when you get to that tool you might as well start with some seed keywords you can put in and which they can uncover the whole variations. I think a lot of people go wrong, especially when they started first get interested in keyword research and learning a little about SEO, they will take very short one or two keyword phrases, which has two words in it, and try to optimize for terms like that. Depending on how competitive the market placed in organic SEO, the space now is very crowded, for a lot of different industries. So you go after that 2 keywords phrases on its own might not end you up on a best results. Because its like going after, Sony, you have a very difficult time trying to rank for that keyword rather than going for that longer tail phrase. Or mobile SEO. There’s a little bit of thinking, I mean that’s really a good insight, to the way that we choose keywords, so we started of with what’s the seed keyword, SEO services, someone looking for SEO services, or looking to get SEO, a direct match for the would be, if that’s what I want, that’s what I am going to type in into Google. So we started there, but look if I could wave a magic wand, I think if someone typed in “SEO”, SEO at it own term in the market, it will be a little bit too broad. For SEO services, that’s a little bit tighter, while not going a real tight keyword so we started off it as an initial phrase. Because we thought yep there is a good message to market match to what we offer on that keyword. What I do is was i looked for awesome slightly longer tail versions or any geographic we call them modifies. What some additional keywords that we can add on to that primary phrase help modified, so it was very quick for us to get Melbourne SEO services as a ranking term, we got that very quickly. Next stop, people also stop to search for SEO Services Melbourne, so then we try to optimize by moving the geographic term to the end and then we rank for that very quickly. Then we chunked it down further, its almost like from the long tail first, but SEO services is still built into all of that link building done previously, and is built into that phrase. Now we got SEO Services Melbourne, and Melbourne SEO Services, we’ve chunked in and to SEO services now. So thinking in terms of that, again I don’t know too much of that App and why it works and a couple of things, it will be less competitive than normal organic search, which means, choosing the right keywords on its own and making sure that you optimize as a page for that keyword phrase might be enough. Assuming you picked the right keyword to rank well. There might be other things with the algorithm but it’s got something to do with how many apps or how many times they download.
Logan: So pretty much for this will be, It should have an App Title, same as website you have the URL, you have the Title on the App Store, the description, so the keywords should be on the description, of course the number of people who downloaded it, the reviews and writings, the publisher, a lot comes from the publisher, not me for example, Rovio, Angry Birds, immediately it will be pushed up higher, so if you’ll start releasing applications today.
David: I mean its really similar to the Search Engine algorithm if the domain name named white and then they create a new page for the domain name and tried to rank a phrase, they’ll get a lift of almost because of the internal power, the domain name has. They already built up some authority and they can pass that authority out. I can see some similarities, with the way that it would work. I can see some similarities to the way that ranking Google + page is in Google local, you know in organics you get sometimes the local search, that’s quite affected by reviews as well, that’s a strong rank effect for that. The way that I think about it is Step 1 Find what those seed keywords are, go to some tools and drill down a little bit deeper, try thinking terms of finding phrases usually in organic search, I would be looking for at least 3 keyword in a phrase because if you go anything shorter, often times it is too broad, and more competitive, and so it might not so for the app store stuff. It might be in 3,and, 5 app word case long. That sounds like a good spot for us to do. And then it is a bit of a balancing act, again there’s no really hot and fast tools but if you want to be picking a keyword that usually got searches, you can look on the Google Free Keyword Tool, and you look up the monthly column, you can see how many search, which is getting done. and normally it depends where that keyword is getting placed. You see, the way I think of the website, In the home page you have the most competitive keyword phrase, then you got your one page from the homepage, this slightly down, then slightly less competitive, you might got a blogpost longest tail phrases. So Melbourne SEO services, might be the home page, then it will be one click away, It might be SEO Services Company Melbourne or SEO Specialist Melbourne, slightly longer tail type less competitive keyword. or some kind of SEO Services or SEO, and then fill it down the channel, the phrase will might be like how to do your own SEO or how to select a good SEO Provider or slightly longer term phrases they might end up when you blog. In a situation like the App Store, I wonder, I would probably, intuitively go second tail keyword for your app. I think the really long tail stuff might not generate enough traffic, I think the high inch top ones will be competitive, and the sweet spot might be in that middle bracket again probably in that 3, 4 keyword that would think direct match, I think direct match, commercially someone would is going to thinking, about buying the problem and then looking for a solution because that is what really the app store is about. The app store is about people has this problems, and they are finding apps to solve those problems.
Logan: Any search engine is finding information as quickly as possible and the App Store is pretty much in the same way. You can probably search for Temple Run and you might not find it. Its bizarre but if you search running games then Temple Run might come up first. Some apps don’t actually think to optimize keywords for their own app name which is incredibly important. For those people who get the word out, you might be just throwing itself out.
David: Yeah you kinda let a little bit leg up by building the keyword, into a potential brand. I mean that is what we did for Melbourne SEO Services. It builds into the brand, like this is the brand and this is the keyword. I would be thinking of one keyword, wave my magic wand and what would that be I might get a slot variation in that keyword, and then I will be putting it in relevant places. Title, Description, those type of things. And of course the app store is not the only place that we need to put the keywords. Like how will you work across all your platforms your social media network, your facebook, Twitter and Google + and all those. As well as your website and your blog. The primary one, with your site, maybe you got whatever your primary keyword, this might have a slightly optimized for that, and that you got your longer tail. stuff which ends up on your blog. Then you have used social media, your website as the core have all the social media all its doing is driving traffic in. You want to build up a platform or central business point on someone elses platform. Let’s say, In youtube, in facebook, that is what happens in Google if you don’t like YouTube. or in Facebook if you get banned for doing something. Your whole business crumples away. So all of this other strategies feed into your website, without generating and driving traffic. Snippets on those different platforms that you can link through with specific keywords that you’re trying to optimize for and again that just helps to build up the authority of your domain name which at the time, as you add additional page. i think the idea of having a centralized brand, that if you’re lucky, you’re building some keywords on it you getting across all other platforms all tied together with the same branding. I think that’s a good strategy. I think it somehow corners the market for you. You use the app store as your central hub. David: Yeah just like the activity the whole point of this sides is to drive traffic back.
Logan: You build up social media and and traffic coming in here and you build up, maybe your blog, plus traffic, YouTube plus traffic, pull in back into the app store account.
David: Again I would probably not do it again on the app store because I think your building it on someone else’s platform. So I will do it all on your website. And then the app store comes another generator. I would be using whether it is on the description, you want to find traffic back to your website. The whole end of the game whether you want to sell the website whether the selling this comes back to the understanding of building on someone else’s platform. You want to build on the platform where you have ultimate control. I wonder what happened, let’s just say hypothetically, if Google for whatever reason, bans an app that you got. Let’s say that’s your business, and you continue to sell an app that can be used on iphone, which is not approved by Google.
Logan: Google has Google Play. So they drive the android platform and android app store. But if you get banned by them, I don’t think you will be crying too much better like business has been totally ruined. At the same time you can sell same build with the android and put it in the other app stores. And you’re good to go. And if you get banned by iphone i think that will be a different story,
David: However, regardless of the way I would think your website as your central hub and everything else. So if ever you get all these knocked off, there’s still social media, maybe you have built some database. You guys are doing it in the Buzinga website. I am just starting to get the report out, and help try to built the database. So overtime, regardless of what happens with SEO, with Youtube, whatever it has traffic channels out. and you have built up a database on your own and not rely on someone else.
Logan: It sort of like the latest stand out or your cause is right here. And if you start to branch out like a blackberry os, or went to android or windows phone, you know all those other areas. That’s really good I just learned something. Here’s a good one back to the keyword research, the app store or most app store is going international, which means we are talking about different languages, your app might be popular in Germany. Or your app is popular in Poland, as well as english. Do you use the same keywords or optimize, or change the language, how does that work?
David: Most cross platform cross different languages. Its not nearly as competitive. You can translate some pages, where you do very well or you built up authority on your site. You can often times do very well in Google.com, Google.eu or a different extension. Just creating the page, often enough in another language. Because the competition isn’t there yet.
Logan: Going back to the keyword research, there are some long tail keywords that is pretty competitive, would you grab a list of the keywords or and sort of rank them, between competitive 1 to 10. How does that things work?
David: There’s really a little competition, Firstly, take them to some tools and longer tail keywords and you start to get the ones who have long traffic because you don’t want to go with something that doesn’t. If you’re looking for commerciality, we talked about, you want to look at a competition that has different tools, on a way you can compare domains or keywords against other keywords you do with Market Samurai with keywords we want to rank for. Type it into the tool, and it shows the top 5 listings and what’s coming out for that particular phrase and how well does it look like if we optimize it.
Logan: When trying to target different keywords every month? Is it an ongoing process with the keyword
David: I don’t know with App SEO but what we look for, in normal organic search the ongoing process, obviously creating a different content to those new pieces optimized. You can run to your analytics, you can go which keywords that are driving traffic tools, you can set up some goals and tracking, and go which ones are converting to get off these keywords. Actually it end up better for us. You look for seed keyword, then it all comes back to optimization site.