{"id":574,"date":"2012-09-27T06:39:30","date_gmt":"2012-09-27T06:39:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sparktoro.com\/blog\/?p=574"},"modified":"2012-09-27T06:39:30","modified_gmt":"2012-09-27T06:39:30","slug":"app-store-seo-why-im-still-a-skeptic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sparktoro.com\/blog\/app-store-seo-why-im-still-a-skeptic\/","title":{"rendered":"App Store SEO: Why I&#8217;m Still a Skeptic"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I love how the field of SEO has branched out to include a lot of tasks and channels greater than just the search engines. That said, although I hear a lot about SEO for the app stores (mostly Android&#8217;s &#8220;Play Store&#8221; and iPhone&#8217;s &#8220;app store&#8221;), I have a lot of skepticism about making big investments there for a few reasons:<!--more--><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The vast majority of downloads come through browsing, branded search, and web-based links rather than searches.<\/li>\n<li>Search volume in the app store is completely opaque, and thus hard to optimize toward (though <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mobiledevhq.com\/\">MobileDevHQ<\/a> has some impressive substitutes).<\/li>\n<li>Mobile app developers who build creative stuff are likely to get very little generic\/non-branded search volume, so SEO in the way we classically think of it isn&#8217;t high on the list of critical marketing tasks\/channels.<\/li>\n<li>Professional app developers in mid-size to large companies will be doing some app store SEO on an ongoing basis, but the SMBs of app development likely won&#8217;t. Churn would be extremely high for this customer set, as many app builder create one or two things, then move on.<\/li>\n<li>Although apps are popular, the volume (in terms of number of apps vs. number of websites) isn&#8217;t anything close to how much people use the web. <a href=\"http:\/\/thenextweb.com\/insider\/2012\/05\/16\/nielsen-us-smartphones-have-an-average-of-41-apps-installed-up-from-32-last-year\/\">Usage time may be high<\/a> (due to the &#8220;Angry Birds,&#8221; &#8220;Facebook,&#8221; and &#8220;Google Maps&#8221; phenomena), but the long tail of apps don&#8217;t get the diverse usage that websites do.<\/li>\n<li>The app store ranking and featuring systems are not even close to fully baked, and I expect they&#8217;ll continue to change dramatically, making SEO practices in the app store a gamble even in the short term.<\/li>\n<li>The inputs for app store ranking algorithms are both limited and hard to control. Get keywords in your app name, keywords and description, get a large number of positive reviews, and&#8230; well, actually, that&#8217;s pretty much it (to be fair, there are a few other metrics and best practices, but compared to web search, it&#8217;s puny).<\/li>\n<li>App store SEO is still very gameable, and black hat practices aren&#8217;t well controlled yet.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Long term, I think this will turn into an interesting market, but for now, I&#8217;d be skeptical about investing in an app store SEO product at Moz vs. growing web-based SEO, social, and inbound products &amp; data.<\/p>\n<p>I would love to hear the opposite viewpoint, and more about which points above I may have gotten wrong.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I love how the field of SEO has branched out to include a lot of tasks and channels greater than just the search engines. That said, although I hear a lot about SEO for the app stores (mostly Android&#8217;s &#8220;Play Store&#8221; and iPhone&#8217;s &#8220;app store&#8221;), I have a lot of skepticism about making big investments<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-product"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>App Store SEO: Why I&#039;m Still a Skeptic - SparkToro<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I love how the field of SEO has branched out to include a lot of tasks and channels greater than just the search engines. That said, although I hear a lot\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/sparktoro.com\/blog\/app-store-seo-why-im-still-a-skeptic\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"App Store SEO: Why I&#039;m Still a Skeptic - SparkToro\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I love how the field of SEO has branched out to include a lot of tasks and channels greater than just the search engines. That said, although I hear a lot\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/sparktoro.com\/blog\/app-store-seo-why-im-still-a-skeptic\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"SparkToro\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/facebook.com\/sparktoro\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-09-27T06:39:30+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Rand Fishkin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@sparktoro\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@sparktoro\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Rand Fishkin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/sparktoro.com\\\/blog\\\/app-store-seo-why-im-still-a-skeptic\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/sparktoro.com\\\/blog\\\/app-store-seo-why-im-still-a-skeptic\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Rand Fishkin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/sparktoro.com\\\/blog\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/2acd0781db4d1905cecfec9bea406570\"},\"headline\":\"App Store SEO: Why I&#8217;m Still a Skeptic\",\"datePublished\":\"2012-09-27T06:39:30+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/sparktoro.com\\\/blog\\\/app-store-seo-why-im-still-a-skeptic\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":420,\"commentCount\":10,\"articleSection\":[\"Product\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/sparktoro.com\\\/blog\\\/app-store-seo-why-im-still-a-skeptic\\\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/sparktoro.com\\\/blog\\\/app-store-seo-why-im-still-a-skeptic\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/sparktoro.com\\\/blog\\\/app-store-seo-why-im-still-a-skeptic\\\/\",\"name\":\"App Store SEO: Why I'm Still a Skeptic - SparkToro\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/sparktoro.com\\\/blog\\\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2012-09-27T06:39:30+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/sparktoro.com\\\/blog\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/2acd0781db4d1905cecfec9bea406570\"},\"description\":\"I love how the field of SEO has branched out to include a lot of tasks and channels greater than just the search engines. 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