How to get your app to the top of the App Store

[Music] [Music] good afternoon everyone I think you just want to at this point go because I think you've broken the back so far of the the time run out you've got a hundred and sixty odd speakers here and this is like your go down to the final bit to halfway through so well done for the energy is you know almost beer o'clock so I will keep it I will keep it short and sweet and sharply focused okay so I think it's some I think it's one of those bits you know how do you get to the top of the App Store you know okay I decided to come up with the moon okay the reason is there's more people that have walked on

the moon that have accidentally got to the top of the App Store and I think the the kind of message is you know it's going it's gonna go viral this other bits and pieces these things are gone they're very much 2017 or whatever the words are but trust me it's not an easy task and and I've stood here and I've done lots of these speeches and I've heard lots of this features and what I always regret is I never give you the actual bits of things that you can go away and do after this and just kind of address in the audience you know how many people have actually got an app in this audience a show of hands okay so that's fantastic I've did the speech it was a similar one at SMX so they were the big SEO conference put them like one guy in the back put his hand up how's it okay I possibly the wrong speech right let's get on this this statement you know 65 percent of of apps are discovered by search or downloaded by search I mean honestly I've had every single agency on the planet discussing

this everyone searches for at I think the reality is you know it's gonna grow your user now goes hey Siri download the latest calorie Apple how many apps have I how many calories have I burned today download the fun game that everyone's talking about the point is your user has less and less time browsing the App Store proof that's never gonna happen they want it now and then what it finds you and if you're not at the top of the apps or are his left it was all for him it's got right okay I think I think the important bit is we've been doing this ASO and paid search for about five years now and this you know when we kick this off there was a you know there were no books actually now there's an awful lot of information out there about ASO these are not air so ones I just didn't feel appropriate selling someone else's book but the key takeaway on this bit I know when I become rich and famous the hope that require the dream its tenacity over

talent every time okay this is not a hey magic Harry Potter wand I rank top the App Store I'm a millionaire great it is tenacity over talent every time so I want to keep circling back to that fact because it is F and work but key thing is you know you can do it anybody can do it company BIOS man and we're tired it's the end of the day you don't need to hear me waffling on about my business you know there's two sides to it one is an agency the other is an app store platformer I search ads buying platform and I'll wait till these is amazing people time management they will say never mock your your guests but there we go so I think the important piece that I wanted to kind of touch on here today in the seasonal kind of giving you something back there is a $300 waiting for anyone that's got an app now if you want to spend your own money that's fine if you want spend my money log onto my platform

register your app I'll move these chairs use the code Rory is the best beak ticket on one laugh the marketing guys to go take it out it just look like an idiot don't do it no no you don't need a code literally just log on register your app the platform is a media it is a search ads buying platform I'll let the kind of presentation talk through okay it is you know gaming conference let some to get our two apps rock up on the platform icons look very similar so we're going to sort of go you know which one wins so look at that screenshots and I got to do this quickly because I get you know carried away speak for too long and show of hands every screenshot whys behind pixels pixelation is all very in which one's better a quick show of hands forecastle breakouts nobody put their hands up according to the camera half they

wouldn't spin the camera that's great and then you know cops escape who prefers that okay brilliant I mean okay that's fine right the next piece I will be a little bit quieter on this one this is your metadata this is what the you know your algorithm is reading have a quick read okay show of hands for that one sure pants for that one okay this is awesome right it's not up to you alright the reality is you are talking to a machine these are these algorithms inside these you know these app stores or whatever they are on there's lots of other app stores coming in your metadata is writing for a machine it's great the marketing person says hey it must sound like this it must be beautiful if I see there you're talking to a machine your primary purpose of your metadata is to get your app to rank inside the App Store so first piece there

bear in mind you're talking to a machine you're not talking to market ears you have to take that box it can't be keyword stuffing it must be well written but I'll come into more detail on that in a second so Cass will break out one alright they got 26 power 26 pence sorry 26 cents CPA got a thousand four one thousand downloads for a grand spent in the same period this is what the other company did got 52 downloads I had a dollar during the same period because their metadata was appropriately written their screenshots were readily available and the clickbait was in place right okay so how did they win okay now that the first bit and this is very much me I really genuinely want from this point onwards that was all just show before this problem is I want to give you stuff that you can go do now do it right now if you want all you know break it into that so how do they win the first lesson is this absolu optimization who knows about ASO quick

chair hands on that one man that's amazing so many people know about this stuff now I'd have to tell you about it it's great so the first bit to bear in mind is ASO and PageSpeed search they work together anyone that's doing a their paid over here and had their their ASO over there don't okay they have to work together and I'll explain why now I'm really pleased you all know about ASO so I don't need to waste a lot of time on that but primarily the function of App Store optimization is you are getting your app to rank for keywords that are relevant and appropriate to your business ok so your product search and I've just thrown an arcade there arcade game ok so that is an iterative listener I will explain how you get to those words in a couple of seconds the second piece is you boost the hell out of them once you put them into your metadata you use search ads use my platform where you search ads to buy all of those words and again I'll tell you why you need to be doing that this bit here your visual

screenshots how are you reinforcing that search behavior if you are trying to say an arcade game and you put that up it's probably not really an arcade game but how are you reassuring that user visually that you are a premium product there are billions of apps up when there's not billions it's 2 million Appenzeller but my point is your visual representation he's been really important some big changes came in an iOS 11 am I going too fast was Aaron with me oh so okay now the most so you must be getting those conversions the final bit and I was really pleased to hear the previous speaker talked about it none of that matters if you're not monitoring engagement okay forget your vanity metric of hey I rank for this and I got this number of downloads and blip unless they're using it and you're getting these ratings and reviews your ASO and your paid search will break so let's be really clear when we do downloads that user must be using the

app they must be engaging with it and they must be using in whatever timeframe that is okay which is relevant to that app so example this app here for this conference for trying advertising the conference is not on it's pointless builds up that profile okay right so algorithm success let's what's my time lady said there'll be a time oh I'm not 12 minutes in I that's counting down I'm doing better all right great okay so notebooks out this is the bit okay and I kind of would have sort of apologize in advance because I'm not well I am here to tell my platform but actually it's more about this stage let me tell you what you guys can do very quickly I've got things I've got one minute you've all got one minute you looked at Facebook today or something you've got to spare a minute you've got a 10 minute so it's a bit straight cheap can I actually spare 10 minutes in their day yeah it's getting tough 10 hours oh my god you actually haven't to get some serious buy-in from your business to apply 10 hours of your time to actually doing this activity 10 days down that's

a strategic shift in your business I mean it absolutely is your whole entire management team or your own personal time if you're getting 10 hours buy-in for that activity you better believe in what you're trying to do okay so no big surprises here the thing you must achieve is building download velocity okay so if nobody downloads your app it can be the best app in the world if the algorithm just goes you're not getting downloads wow it's not going to give you a keywords you're not gonna rank for anything and you know perhaps slow down on the development key pieces you must be getting velocity of downloads from your app okay stage number one gulp have some water right okay the second bit I really like this and this the circles back to this tenacity over Talent okay because I promise you it's not gonna work first time you might be lucky it might work first time but go with me okay iOS 11 they brought in the the promo

text yeah and everyone know the promo text field inside your your app I can so come back and show you this is amazing you don't need to have to do a whole new update over your app release your Xcode you have to do any of that kind of stuff you can just go in and change the words inside there and what I'm trying to get to is think about your app what's relevant what's timely you're trying to find two or three words that you can put in there in a really nice conversational way that you are gonna buy and you're gonna rank for okay so something you haven't right before before see them in there this is a great great arcade game ready for Christmas you're hoping to rank for arcade game and Christmas game as an example okay then you boost the hell out of them on the platform managing your internal CPI's and return on investments all kind of stuff but your fundamental goal is to get to the top of the App Store when it's right for you to do so so as a field as a place that you can test it's

really underutilized I don't any other company that's doing it properly I keep trying it you know Ribera mind that that bit I said before you're talking to a machine yeah you know I mean it's great it's got a sound vibe you're talking to that machine so it goes Oh lovely yeah it's a good applets let's go and do that so that's the ASM paid ten minute bit of activity and keep trying it you're not gonna hit it first off we we have accounts on on retainer we've tried loads but when you get one it's free you know you're not have to pay for it when it's organic so you might as well do it I'm scared about this next slide okay right ten hours so I go to the creative team and I say to them okay I've got a presentation these guys are really really switched on they know what they're talking about when you write a piece of metadata what do you what do you spend all your time doing I need a presentation to show to an intelligent audience and they're going to give me this and I hope I mean really

creative people but anyway actually there's some very very clever stuff that they've done in here what they've done is they've selected about 35 really important things that you need to bear in mind when you're writing your metadata your ten hours worth of work so they're basically going your character length title is 30 characters promo text 170 characters your description text 4,000 character your key string another hundred characters understand and use them all okay put the words that you want to have in there inside those terms understand what your app does and what you're trying to achieve there are tools in the marketplace now and they're readily available that are free mobile action a pani sensor tower in fact we've got one on the platform but point is and seed those words in four times okay so you just have to put them in there four times sounds tough to do it takes time but actually

stuff like this kiss keep it simple and sweet nicely done visual entice appeal careful explain have a look at that this will be available think about what those words are when you're coming up with your list of metadata all righty okay now this this is I mean I'm quite excited about presenting this because it's never been shown to anyone okay when somebody says hey what's your ASO strategy and then they start talking about that's ASO stack and all this kind of stuff I kind of get lost in it really because I like to have something that I can show to my business or my team can show to me that shows transparency results and performance so this is a proper App Store optimization strategy okay this template of how and it's very simple but we've been using this as a business for in about four years so I'm about five really exciting piece here no

you know no vanity metrics I have no put my clients have no place to say or the other way around when they say to me Rory why'd you take the money you take from me well number one you are going to be totally transparent with what success looks like and if you're not measuring these three things organic where do I rank before where do I rank after is it going up metric number one you can use some tools out there if you want to know I'll tell you the second piece is how is my spend performing is my spend just going on the word game or is my spend spread across five six seven hundred words multi-language localized language and you can track every single piece and then the final bit is that attributed data okay what did the download happen what happened with the download did they use it did they delete it so I do a piece of work now and I absolutely make

sure my organic is being monitored my search ad spend is being monitored down to keyword level and my attribution is giving me that final stick of information okay so now I kind of kind of weary of this one and this is basically a breakdown of the value of these words okay so I'm allowed 30 characters in there that's probably just my name is probably my brand says I'm gonna get one word in there but on my subtitle I'm gonna get two or three three words in there my promo text I'm probably gonna get another three or four in there my description I'm gonna get maybe 20 in there and my keys rating I'm gonna put it in as many as are relevant for me Oh estimates about twenty nine words possibly thirty words that you are trying to get that are going to deliver your rankings inside the app store so it's a simple task find twenty nine words that are super relevant to your brand then you divvy them up okay and

this is not a real one obviously but you say okay eighteen percent of that twenty nine is probably four it's probably forward so I'm gonna allow four words inside my brand they're like the thing about the cool words about my proposition what are those core words and I'm gonna you know put in all my words down there my product in play free game what are there's a product detail about your proposition fill your words up in there same with events is Valentine's can have an impact for you best Valentine the best Valentine's game ever is that going to be important to you do you want to rank for it yes put it in there and the wild card I've Chuck in arcade and virtual reality but my god Wall Street Journal ranking for Briggs it I mean that's real money in their pocket because no one else is buying it and no one else ranks for it and yeah that's that's that was a wild card that we put in for those guys and the final bit is you know the community what's the language the big takeaway from this point is your keyword

backlog you're all Deb's you know how this thing is you want to have a massive keyword backlog and at that in you put your update and you put the metadata in and you go okay organic Easter game I didn't rank for it I didn't you spend away for it I didn't get any downloads for what stop trying to rank for it okay take it out move on to your next one oh sorry um same process with this fantasy game rank for the word fancy game why you have never ranked for it you've never had a download for it it means nothing to your business so stop trying okay when you are ticking these boxes and you're working through your keyword backlog it's very punching it's very performance led olmstead marketing basically right how we doing two minutes boom okay they would say never end on a negative they always say don't do it so I got tried not to the reality is if you're not there I promise you somebody else will be okay these both these app stores are moving up very commercially

Apple bringing search ads only live in seven countries it's going to scale it's going to be global end up just go with it so if you're not there someone else will be there so the tenacity over talent keep going for that piece I've got some really bad sentences on there I can't read on stage so basically my amazing platform does the job of I don't know 20,000 people in terms of the decisions that it that it operates and does only a machine can really keep up with the bid behavior that you're buying it so it's quite punchy but it's so new my god it's six six months old in terms of this proposition so we're quite excited about it I'm probably running out of things to say and I wanted to give only a minute left perfect I'm going to give a bit of time so you can ask me some questions but that is me there's my hash stick tag what it was called and that's it and I can't do mic drop cuz too small I thought I'd pause it there and then ask oh and we are exhibit exhibiting upstairs in Hall I don't know

level one one two three yeah it's something about thanks for that input okay great yeah so that's it any question was it beer time deadpan it's gotta be one I kind of answered all the questions it's always happens okay so there's a really really good question if you have no conversion history against the keywords we're buying and you've got no relevancy against the killer's we're trying to buy I can't spend your money so I can't give you any more downloads but when it really performs as a percentage one hundred two hundred three hundred percent on top of what you're what you're currently getting but it takes time to get up to that spend increase I mean the reality is on on the

platform you didn't magic number seven actually he eventually need to get past seven seven ratings and reviews seven downloads of a very short period of time and seven downloads against the actual terms that you're trying to buy as India goes you are trying to achieve what big agencies are trying to achieve which is why we build the machine which is primarily focused for Indies actually did that answer the question order like Wharf around it from launched from the off as in you set the metadata appropriately you turn the platform on you beasts the keywords you're trying to buy and then you build up relevance in conversion history from the off from the very first you got a seven day window as Indies when you launch the app that the other algorithm treats you favor favorably and it's at that point you want to build up those conversion histories against the words you're trying to buy and that seven-day window it's a really important time actually leaving together do save me one okay right any other questions part from not

difficult thanks like okay I'm done okay well amazing thank you very much well from Red Box mobile there you go [Music] [Music]