Low cost, easy to use and install, and incredibly effective, beacon technology has become a popular way to engage with customers – especially in retail and marketing.

Picture this: you step into a store to look at their shoe display, and suddenly you get a notification on your smartphone. You check it and discover a 20% off coupon for those brand-name sneakers you’ve had your eye on, just for you! That’s just one example of the power of beacon technology.

Beacons aren’t new. In fact, they’ve been around since 2013, when Apple released their iBeacon. While usage has grown slowly, demand has reached record levels. Indeed, according to reporting from Allied Market Research, the global beacon market generated $3 billion in 2020, and is expected to top out at $103.94 billion by 2030.

But what is beacon technology? How does it work? And what benefits are driving this rise in demand? Let’s discuss.

What is Bluetooth Beacon Technology?

Put simply, a Bluetooth beacon is a tiny, wireless, battery-powered radio transmitter. This minuscule radio transmitter can be “discovered” by mobile devices within a certain distance. The beacon, however, cannot “see” the devices in return.

One of the advantages of beacon technology is that it doesn’t require an internet connection, yet broadcasts within a short radius. Receiving devices, like smartphones, can then act as something of a middle-man that uses the information transmitted by the beacon to perform some task.

The distance beacons can transmit is usually between ten and thirty meters of indoor space, and creates a connection between the physical and digital worlds. This is achieved by forming a communication bridge between the device, a user’s smartphone, and the user themselves.

The goal of beacon technology is to allow businesses to automate some processes, and, more importantly, improve user experience and interactions. This is thanks to the fact that beacons are a part of the Internet of Things (IoT). IoT is the connection between enabled devices and machines to gather and transmit data without the need for a human-to-human, or even human-to-computer interaction.

How Does Beacon Technology Work?

Beacons transmit data packets which are then picked up by compatible devices, like smartphones. These data packets can be either self-contained, or act as triggers for events on the receiving device. These events might include push notifications, app actions, prompts, etc.

Many beacons utilize Low-Energy Bluetooth, or BLE, as their transmission protocol. BLE uses the same radio spectrum as Bluetooth Classic (2.400 – 2.4835 GHz ISM band), but uses different channels. In fact, BLE utilizes three primary advertising channels, which help make it faster for devices to connect, and reduces the time a listening device scans for the signal.

In theory, a Bluetooth beacon works at a maximum distance of less than 100 meters. What’s more, the latency can be up to 6 milliseconds from a non-connected state. The actual range and response time in real life depends on a variety of factors, including the beacon itself, and what process it has been programmed to achieve. Most beacons can reliably transit to about thirty meters, provided no physical obstacles lie in the path of the signal. In real-world usage, you can expect a reliable range of between two and five meters. Of course, the higher the range, the faster the battery dies.

Some beacons work with Wi-Fi, which may offer a wider range depending on where the emitter is located.

The Benefits of Beacons

Beacon technology offers an impressive range of applications, especially when it comes to retail. Let’s take a look at some of the most prominent.

Track In-Store Movement

One of beacon technology’s most incredible applications is its ability to create a united online and in-store experience. Beacons can be used to track customers’ in-store movements, which allows you to send them targeted information and discounts based on the products they are near – and presumably browsing.

This can help improve conversion rates, and it’s not hard to understand why; a customer is more likely to use a discount for an item if they are in that item’s section of the store.

A prime example of this is Macy’s. The department store has been using beacon technology since 2016. When a customer visits the store and opens the Macy’s app on their smartphone, the app connects to the nearest beacon and recognizes where the smartphone is in the store. If the customer is in the shoe department, for example, the app will remind them of the shoe brands they have already liked online. This targeted information, provided at just the right time, can help convince the customer to make a purchase.

In-Store Navigation

Speaking of department stores, many are so large they can be overwhelming. How often have you spent time wandering aimlessly around a store looking for what you came in for, only to get frustrated and leave without it? Beacon technology is an ideal solution for this common problem! With the combination of a mobile app and strategically placed beacons, you can provide customers with a real-time indoor map of the store.

A real-world example of this comes from Target. Back in 2017 the big box retailer began using beacon technology to provide a “GPS for your shopping cart” function. In practice, this means in-store customers can use the Target app to create a shopping list. From there, the app lets them see where their items are located, and where they are in relation to them. As they move about the store, their position in the app changes in real-time, helping them hone in on what they want.

While the most obvious application of this is for retail, it can also be applied to any large venue. Imagine how much easier it could be to find your way around hospitals, stadiums, or airports.

Proximity (or Out-of-Store) Marketing

Another benefit of beacon technology that is widely used is proximity marketing. Beacons installed in shops, event venues, or even public places can allow businesses to track the location of their customers. With this real-time information in hand, it’s easier to notify users that they are near your shop, or provide a targeted deal to bring them in. Additionally, this offers the chance to do something more complicated, like send messages related to sales, discounts, loyalty programs, and competitions. Even brands that you carry in-store can themselves push product discounts to draw customers in.

By using beacon technology, you have the ability to personalize your out-of-store marketing, and improve your potential foot-traffic. Now, with smartphones in virtually every pocket, proximity marketing will undoubtedly continue to grow.

Asset Tracking

Asset tracking, sometimes called asset management or asset visibility, is a core component of any Real-Time Location System (RTLS). It allows you to know the exact location and condition of your assets. This, in turn, lets you locate them quickly on site, keep track of their flow and usage, and make better, data-driven decisions regarding replenishment, purchases, or efficiency.

Of course, when it comes to asset tracking a long battery life and strong signal stability are critical. The signal performance in particular will have a big impact on the accuracy of your tracking efforts. Furthermore, you’ll need to prioritize the lifespan of your hardware. This will save you the time and effort of replacing them more often than is necessary.

Additional Beacon Technology Benefits and Uses

• Contact tracing.
• Occupancy monitoring.
• Loyalty programs.
• Mobile ticketing.
• Advanced data gathering.

Final Thoughts on Beacon Technology

It’s difficult to predict just how popular beacon technology will become. The technology itself isn’t exactly new, and has experienced some setbacks. That said, the recent rise in its popularity is undeniable.

However, one indisputable advantage beacons offer is their relatively inexpensive price tag, especially when compared to other technologies. That means any business of any size can adopt – and adapt – the technology with very little risk.

In the end, beacon technology can help you gain a better understanding of your audience, while also supporting and complementing your existing marketing. In other words, beacons help you find new, exciting, and targeted ways to communicate with your mobile app users.

Keep Reading:

• Mobile Commerce: Definition, Advantages & Disadvantages
• Why You Should Add Voice Search to Your App
• 9 Amazing Trends in Wearable Apps

Any company with a mobile app aspires for “sticky,” but pulling it off isn’t easy – or, at least, that’s what you’ve been told. Yes, the numbers are often discouraging. Studies on the matter show that roughly 79 percent of users abandon a product after day one, and by three months that number can plummet to nearly 98 percent. It’s no wonder that retention strategy is one of the most talked-about topics in mobile app development and typically low retention rates indicate a problem, but the problem isn’t necessarily what you think it is. 

We’re going to share a secret. Low retention isn’t entirely a marketing problem; poor retention rates are a foundational planning problem. There are countless articles listing stacks of marketing strategies for improving mobile app retention, and while all these strategies are worthwhile, if you build a retention strategy into the core of your app, the product will be inherently sticky. So, if you want to release an uncommonly sticky mobile app, here’s what you do. 

Mobile app retention is proactive, not reactive 

We can’t stress the importance of proper planning for mobile app development, enough; and retention is no exception. An in-depth understanding of a product’s users is essential to mobile app retention. Users download mobile apps for a number of different reasons, but there is still one critical component necessary for winning the mobile app retention game – a basic understanding of the human brain. No matter who your users are, this insight will result in stickiness. Your product can literally be for anyone and this knowledge will drive repeated use. 

 Newness is the indispensable ingredient for mobile app retention.

The average mobile user will check their phone 47 times a day or more, and a majority of people check their phone immediately upon waking up. Why? The prefrontal cortex of the human brain has what’s called novelty bias. In other words, our minds create a compulsive dopamine response loop for every new thing we direct our attention towards. Newness is the indispensable ingredient for mobile app retention. 

Social media apps are a true testament to this psychology. Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and TikTok all exploit novelty bias. One can even argue that TikTok’s explosive success (800 million installs and 500 million active users globally in only one year) is directly related to indulging novelty bias. Every time we open one of these apps, we’re exposed to something new – new content, new people, new conversations, and a continuously replenished reward system of likes and shares. Spotify is another prominent example of this concept; the app constantly supplies users with new music, reshuffled playlists, and entirely original ways to experience music. Think of any sports score application, media streaming, or news publishing product. Newness is a commonality in all of the world’s most popular and frequently used mobile apps. 

When a mobile app is designed to deliver a valuable solution and a steady stream of new content (of any kind), mobile app retention is inevitable because the product capitalizes on our mental hardwiring. 

Updates vs. Newness 

Maintenance is crucial for mobile app retention, but there’s an important distinction to make between product updates and the concept of newness. After launching a mobile app the project is definitely not finished. You will still have to release updates, fix bugs, add new features, and improve functionality. In other words, an app should be seen as a living thing that needs continuous attention to grow, and this process certainly perpetuates the newness factor, but newness is more organic in nature. The concept of novelty needs to be baked into the design and functionality of the mobile app. Newness is not a feature, instead, it’s a disposition that prevails independently from the strategies in place to maintain the stickiness of the app. 

Let’s take the dating app, Bumble, as an example. The intrinsic character of the app leverages novelty bias by presenting the user with a succession of new people to meet. The fundamental make-up of the product creates the dopamine response loop that keeps users coming back to the product. Now, when Bumble released an updated version of the app that expanded the breadth of people a user can meet from potential partners to friends and career mentors that change falls into the update or maintenance category. However, the concept of newness is still independently present in each variation of that update. At this point, marketing strategies (like push notifications) come into play to trigger our inclination to gratify novelty bias. Irrelevant push notifications do nothing for mobile app retention, instead, push notifications or other marketing tactics need the conviction of newness to evoke action from users. 

Instagram is another easy example. The social media platform has an impressive user base of over 1 billion people, so it’s safe to say the app doesn’t have a retention problem. Again, the reason is novelty bias. If you take a look at how Instagram evolved over time, newness is built into every feature release from stories to following hashtags to including shopping tags in posts. Instagram is so sticky push notifications are dispensable; users don’t need a push to open Instagram, they just use the platform. 

Push notifications don’t guarantee mobile app retention 

When it comes to push notifications, this is where mobile app retention gets tricky. Push notifications are undoubtedly an invaluable marketing tactic for driving engagement and retention, but many companies are guilty of abusing the notification layer. As a result, there are significant repercussions for mistreating a user’s attention. People are very much aware that mobile products hijack productivity, and that’s why a push notification strategy should only convey what’s meaningful and beneficial to the user. Again, aligning with the idea that an app should serve a purpose in a user’s life. There are long-term consequences for irrelevance, and mobile app marketing needs to emphasize user experience with every message. Marketers need to consider whether or not particular messages are contextual and valuable to their target audience.

If your product is designed to incorporate fresh content, push notifications won’t be imperative to mobile app retention. By using this concept, marketing can serve a more contextually significant purpose to prompt engagement at times when retention dips or fluctuates. 

Final Thoughts

Mobile apps that dominate the industry weren’t built overnight. Exceptional mobile app retention starts with planning a mobile product that incorporates the psychological reason users pick up their phones in the first place. By leveraging the concept of novelty bias, companies can intelligently plan sticky solutions to evolving user needs as they become apparent, maintain long-term retention, and sustain competitive leadership.

A mobile app user decides whether or not to download an app in only a few seconds. These critical few seconds don’t afford marketers much leeway to tell an app’s story, let alone convey its unique value proposition.

We often write about why you need to plan marketing initiatives before mobile app development, and this post is no exception. Without proper research and planning, you run the risk of wasting a lot of your marketing and advertising budget if users engage with a campaign link, but don’t download the product. There was initial interest, but what went wrong? Achieving success in the app stores is impossible if your app store optimization (ASO) decisions aren’t rooted in data.

A/B testing your app store creatives is a requisite for a successful mobile app launch.

ASO is More Than Keywords

Optimizing various elements of your app store listing helps you attain a higher ranking in search results. A popular tactic for increasing app store visibility is strategically placing keywords throughout the product listing. Three main factors contribute to the quality of a keyword: relevancy to your audience, the competitiveness of the keyword, and search volume. Even though search still accounts for 65% of app downloads, a well-rounded ASO strategy is more than keyword optimization. That’s not to say keyword targeting shouldn’t be a significant aspect of your promotional strategy, but it’s only one piece of the puzzle. Mobile app publishers can’t underestimate the conversion value in product listing components like an app icon, product screenshots, and video preview.

Your app store listing and creatives serve the central goal of enticing new users to download your product. The key is to present your app to potential users in such a way that you increase conversion rates for the lowest possible cost per conversion.

Recommended: How to Optimize Your App Store Listing to Boost Conversions

Your app store listing is the touchpoint in the user journey where the final decision to download takes place. The presentation of your product in this listing influences every potential user entering the marketing funnel to download the app, seek more information, or drop off entirely. To get the most out of your acquisition efforts, you need to understand which elements of your app store listing resonate with your users’ expectations and drive the most conversions. Enter A/B testing.

Use Research as the Foundation for A/B Testing

There’s no magic formula for determining what tactics will turn browsers into users. However, A/B tests can give you the data you need to target a particular audience. For A/B testing to work, you can’t choose test elements at random; all of your decisions have to come from thorough research.

Look at Your Competition

Start your research by performing a competitor audit. Explore every angle of your competition’s app store listing to gain insight into their ASO strategy. How are they showcasing their brand? What images or video are they using? Can you determine any standout keywords? What product features are they highlighting? You’re looking for areas where you can enhance your listing to establish a competitive edge.

While you’re examining your competition, you should also look at how they’re generating traffic to their app store listing. Take a look at their online presence and content marketing strategy; how are they targeting users with their content? What type of content do they create and how often? Do your competitors publish content on other online channels or publications? Can you discern a prominent link building strategy?

Tools like Hubspot, Moz, and Buzzsumo are helpful for monitoring your competitors’ performance and finding link building opportunities.

Look at the Industry Leaders

Narrow down several of the top performing app store listings in your product category and note what they do well. What is it about these product pages that resonate with users? Would these listings perform just as well in a different category? Make a list of all the techniques and best practices you observe and consider ways you can incorporate them into your creative assets.

Get to Know Your Audience

To succeed in the app store, you need to know every single detail about your target audience. In-depth audience research allows you to prepare product messaging that addresses your users’ pain points. First, know why your audience wants to use your product and then tailor your marketing efforts to that need.

Qualify Your Traffic

The last area of research involves analyzing your traffic sources. It’s of vital importance to know what traffic and advertising channels bring in the most qualified leads. One way to perform this research is to launch two identical targeting campaigns in two different advertising funnels and dissect their performance later.

Creating an App Store Listing with Data

Again, you only have a few seconds to make a first impression, which is why it’s vitally important to test app store pages before launching a campaign. Mobile app marketers can improve conversion rates by experimenting with several presentation elements like the app icon, screenshots, title, description, and video. For Android apps, the Google Play Store has a built-in tool for running split tests called Google Experiments. This tool allows you to run tests without relying on third-party solutions. Apple’s App Store, however, does not offer this option. Instead, you can either test on your app’s mobile landing page, or use third-party software to emulate the look and feel of the App Store.

Recommended: How to Submit An App to the App Store

Now that you’ve done your background research, qualified your traffic sources, and determined what tools you’ll be using to execute your tests, you can start putting together combinations of test cases.

Formulate a Hypothesis

A concise hypothesis states what you plan to learn from your A/B test. It includes the following:

1. Change to be implemented;
2. The expected outcome of the change;
3. The reason you anticipate those results;

An example hypothesis could be: If we change our app store page to include a video demo instead of a screenshot demo we will get more downloads because a video is an excellent medium for delivering messages that don’t translate well through static images.

Once you have your hypothesis in place, it’s essential to validate your assumption. For example, a recent study shows experiments with video only improve conversion performance by 16%, before going on to reveal that in many cases, many app store listings perform better without video.    

This example illustrates the importance of A/B testing perfectly. Certain additions may seem like improvements, but the reality is, you won’t be able to tell without actionable data.

ASO Metrics to Measure

When you finish A/B testing, there are specific metrics you’ll want to pay attention to aside from conversion rate.

Bounce Rate

Take a look at the number of visitors that load the page and leave right away. If there is a high percentage of bounced visitors, this could indicate a need for redesign. If you segment particular user groups, you may be able to discern multiple reasons for an elevated bounce rate.

Recommended: Anticipate User Drop-Off With a Mobile App Cohort Analysis

Direct Installs vs. Explored Installs

Two types of visitors will end up on your app store listing: decisive visitors and exploring visitors. Decisive visitors don’t engage with your app store content before deciding to download the product or bounce. In contrast, exploring visitors take in as much information as possible before making their decision.

Decisive visitors make the direct installs; they convert on the page immediately. A high number of direct installs indicates that users are getting information about your app from word-of-mouth or a combination of other marketing initiatives.

When it comes to exploring visitors, if they spend a lot of time on your listing and conversions are high as well, your segmentation techniques are working. However, if explorers are spending a lot of time on your page, but conversions are low, it’s time to think about a stronger call-to-action.

A/B Testing Best Practices

1. Test one element at a time. It doesn’t make sense to perform A/B testing if you change multiple elements of the listing at once. You may find that a particular change does yield more conversions, but you’ll have no accurate way of determining what element caused the change.
2. Timing is everything. Statistically significant results take time. You will have to give your A/B test enough time to smooth out all the natural peaks, valleys, and plateaus that come along with aggregated data. Also, make sure you don’t run A/B tests during unusual times of the year like holidays, or major sporting and political events. Paying attention to timing reduces the risk of atypical data points skewing your results.
3. Remember that app stores are dynamic. Keep in mind that both the App Store and Google Play Store are subject to turbulence. Be prepared to run several A/B tests to scale your results.

Final Word

For your app to stand out in app stores, you need to look at ASO as more than a keyword strategy. There are multiple factors that contribute to app store visibility. A/B testing is an effective and data-driven method for determining the best way to present yourself to potential users once they’ve found your product.

With the proliferation of the internet and numerous powerful online promotion techniques, creating and distributing an excellent app is now an option to many. However, this also makes the digital landscape fiercer for mobile app publishers. Today, when promoting your app, you’re competing with 3.8 million Android apps and over 2 million iOS apps. Unsurprisingly, in the competitive mobile app development space, getting your app published is one thing, getting your app noticed is another.

With the app marketing landscape the way it is, you need to have a robust app promotion plan that combines the most effective mobile app ASO and SEO practices.

Why Combine Mobile App ASO and SEO?

SEO is all about optimizing your site for search engines, while mobile app ASO applies to an app store for basically the same purpose. We can freely say that ASO and SEO are two different sides of the same coin. And, to reach their ultimate performance, they should be used together.

Statistics say that Google is still one of the most important sources of app discoverability. So, if you don’t play by its rules and optimize your site for it, your rankings, traffic, and visibility will suffer. In other words, you will miss out on an opportunity to serve your app to the right people.

On the other hand, app stores also serve as closed site search engines. So, it’s not that surprising that the idea behind mobile app ASO is similar to SEO – the higher your app ranks in the app store, the more visible it is to your target audience.

As the line between desktop and mobile is getting blurrier, web marketing and app marketing is becoming merged. Marketers focus on providing exceptional user experience, be it via apps or web. The result is more active engagement with your prospects, who have the potential to become your loyal customers one day.

As a result, mobile app ASO and SEO need to be two equally important aspects of your app promotion strategy.

Learn More: How to Gain More Exposure for Your Mobile App With Keyword Optimization

SEO is the Foundation of Mobile App ASO

To get the most out of app promotion, don’t approach SEO and ASO as conflicting strategies. Organic search optimization is still the foundation of your online presence, and it needs to be an integral part of your mobile app ASO. Numerous SEO techniques can directly benefit your app store optimization. Some of them are:

• Keyword research and targeting. Keyword targeting is one of the most complex and delicate aspects of your SEO. Choose keywords carefully because they are the pillars of your online presence. Make sure you back up this process with the right keyword research tools or even invest in SEO consulting services.
• The optimization of your app name, title, and URL for your major keywords
• Generating app rating and reviews
• Using deep linking in your mobile app
• Indexation of your app on Google
• Click-through rate optimization
• Link building techniques

One of the significant mistakes app developers make is underestimating the power of a quality, responsive website. In today’s competitive digital landscape, your website serves as your online portfolio. Your target audience uses your website to learn more about your app before downloading it; it should be as informative as possible. Also, it needs to guide them through the information seeking process, providing them with a personalized user experience and turning them into engaged prospects.

Your website also helps you position yourself as an authority and a reliable source of information. Starting a blog and creating highly interactive and engaging content boosts app awareness and visibility. Most importantly, creating domain authority drives more web traffic and increases downloads.

Improving Your In-App Store Techniques

63% of users discover apps via app stores, and not boosting your rankings in these channels means you’re giving up on a major promotional opportunity for your app. While the features of app stores vary, there are still some fundamental aspects of optimization you need to focus on:

• A meta title. Keep in mind that longer titles usually get truncated in the SERPs. You need to keep your meta title short, sweet, and memorable. Don’t forget to add your major keywords to it, too. Namely, the recent report shows that apps with a top-value keyword in their title rank 10.3% higher than those without a keyword.
• A meta description is a sort of a call to action for your target audience. Write your meta description in simple language, list your unique benefits, and inspire people to download your app. Make sure you add your major keywords to it and refurbish it every time you update your product page.
• App ratings and reviews are the validation of your app’s quality. As such, they boost your brand’s credibility.
• App keyword fields. When optimizing your app page for keywords, make sure you write your titles and descriptions for your target audience first. Your content is how you will entice users to download your app. Keep in mind that ranking algorithms take both keywords and your customer conversion into consideration.  
• Screenshots and preview videos are important, as they bring your text to life and help your customers see the app before downloading it.
• App icon optimization. Just keep in mind that Google Play and the App Store have different standards for an icon’s ideal size, color, and geometry. iOS icons need to be at least 1024×1024 pixels, while Android ones are required to be 512×512 pixels.

Recommended: A Step-By-Step Guide to Marketing Your Mobile App [Checklist]

Update Your App Data Regularly

The highest-ranking apps in app stores are those that are continually getting improved, such as changes in technology, feature improvements, or adding new user feedback. Making regular updates helps you build a positive brand image and trust among your target audience. The fact that you’re continually working on your app improvements and keeping your users up-to-date on them sets you apart from your competitors and even boosts your rankings in the app stores. Namely, both Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store assess the consistency of app upgrades when ranking it.

Over to You

You can see from the previous examples that mobile app ASO and web SEO are overlapping strategies. Sure, these strategies can work separately, but if you are not using them together, you are not leveraging visibility properly. Don’t forget that SEO allows you to target those people that are not browsing app stores. By focusing on the elements mentioned above, you are able to boost your rankings in both search engines and app stores and drive more quality traffic to your app.

Nate Vickery is a marketing consultant and author mostly engaged in researching the latest marketing technology trends and practices applicable to startups and SMBs. He is also the editor at Bizzmark Blog and an author on The Next Web.

As a developer, you have to do tons of work to release your mobile app. But if it gets no more than a hundred downloads after a while, that’s definitely not the ROI you aimed for. There are many ways to gain more exposure for your app.

You can approach participants of local events, but they may forget about your app on coming home. Tech bloggers are also passionate about reviewing new stuff, but their passion can cost you three- or four-digit sums. The good thing is mobile app marketing doesn’t end with outreach and face-to-face meetings. 

Learn More: A Step-By-Step Guide to Marketing your Mobile App

Potential users of your app can stumble upon it when browsing the web. For that, your content must rank on the first page of organic search results. By saying “your content,” I mean not only the copy on your site but also descriptions you submit to app stores and guest posts you publish on third-party resources.

To hold high positions in SERP, you must optimize your promo content with the right keywords. Here’s the thing. Not all keywords that have the potential for generating a lot of traffic do so eventually. In this guide, you’ll learn how to pick keywords that will work for your mobile app promotion.

Step 1: Choose keywords based on use cases of your app.

It may sound like a paradox, but keyword research involving app promotion doesn’t start with the app itself. It starts with brainstorming users’ needs and the ways your app meets them.

Let’s say you developed a mobile app for PayPal. Think of the purposes it serves to people who may want to download it. The best pattern to follow in purpose-driven keyword research is a how-to:

• how to send mobile payments to the bank account;
• how to manage payments on the go;
• how to access transaction details from your mobile;

Once you make a list of your app use cases, you can expand it with real users’ queries. Google reveals them in two places on the results page. Thanks to Autocomplete in the search field, you can check different variations of your keyword, while you’re typing it.

If you scroll down to the bottom of SERP, you will also see Related Searches. That box includes even more suggestions on how to phrase your app use cases. 

Step 2: Modify broad keywords to more specific phrases.

With cut-throat competition online, broad keywords will get your mobile app nowhere. Traffic from them already goes to big players in your industry. I mean app developers with an excellent reputation, loyal audience, and strong backlink profiles. Obviously, you won’t outperform them with something generic.

Instead, your wording must be more specific if you want app keyword optimization to work. You can mention anything from your app features and purposes to the target audience and devices it’s meant for.

Here are some modifiers that can make the broad phrase “mobile apps” more specific. You can even combine modifiers from different categories in one keyword to achieve a higher level of specificity.

Specific phrases you’ll use in your promo content are called long-tail keywords. They get around 30-90 searches per month, unlike broad terms whose volume can reach a few thousand searches.

Don’t let those comparatively small numbers mislead you. Here’s how things work in modern SEO; different users type in different phrases when searching for the same kind of information. With the launch of the RankBrain algorithm, Google has become smart enough to understand their search intent and return relevant results regardless of different phrasing.

In other words, if you optimize your promo content for a single long-tail keyword, it can rank for hundreds or even more.

Learn what differences in the keyword structure Google ignores when processing users’ queries.

Word Form

It doesn’t matter whether there’s a letter-for-letter match between the original query and search results. The query “bank apps” gets results with the word “bank” used with an -ing ending.

Abbreviations

Since abbreviations are common to online communication, Google equates them to full word forms. For the query “television apps,” the engine gives results with the word “television” abbreviated to “TV.”

Conjunctions & Prepositions

While conjunctions and prepositions make phrases coherent, they can hardly change their meaning. If you type in “apps to use when waiting in line,” Google will show results with the conjunction “while” used instead of “when.”

Word Order

The way words are arranged in a query is a small matter for Google too. Let’s check it out on the example of “mobile apps 2018 for small businesses.” In the search result, “small business” is in the middle of the target phrase, while “2018” is at its end.

Closely Related Words

In everyday speech, people use synonyms interchangeably, ignoring minor distinctions in their meaning. Google has the same policy. For the query “mobile apps for food,” some results are optimized for the word “restaurant.”

Step 3. Identify easy pickings among broad keywords.

Long-tail keywords are not the only options to make it to the top. Your promo content can rank high for broad keywords too. To pick the low-hanging fruit, analyze the following metrics.

Difficulty

This is a critical metric to check when researching keywords. If a term has a high difficulty score, it means top app developers already hold the highest positions for it. There’s little to no chance you’ll push them down and take their place, especially if your backlink profile yields to theirs. Instead, choose keywords with a minimum difficulty score. 

For example, the phrase “food apps” has a difficulty score of only 3 points, which makes it a must-try if you develop apps in this niche.

Clicks

A high search volume gives the impression that a keyword will generate a lot of traffic. But it doesn’t always happen. When SERP contains an instant answer in the form of Google’s Knowledge Card, most users don’t click through organic results.

For example, 72% of searches never convert into page visits for the keyword “Snapchat founder.”

As you can see below, SERP has a Knowledge Card for such a query. Unless you want to learn more details about Snapchat founders, there’s no need to visit any suggested pages. So, make sure SERP doesn’t contain an instant answer for your target keyword.

Seasonality

The next thing to analyze is how long the interest for a keyword lasts during a year. There are seasonal keywords that have a high search volume during a limited period only. For the rest of the year, hardly anyone searches for them.

The search volume of “Olympics app” is high only during the Games. Then, it drops and doesn’t rise until the next Olympics. Enter Google Trends to learn whether the interest for your app lasts throughout the year or, say, during a month.

Step 4. Borrow keywords from the top-ranking content.

Ever wondered how users land on the top ten pages in SERP? You can access the secret data with the help of SERP checkers. These tools reveal what keywords popular content ranks for and how much traffic they generate. On click, you can check them all one by one. To outrank competing pages, use phrases with a low difficulty score.

Step 5. Move from cliches to unique keywords.

Do you run a blog to support your mobile apps? Then, focus on topics that haven’t been covered like a thousand times. You can find original keyword ideas in places where app users hang out, i.e. tech forums, social communities, and Quora.

If you come across the same app-related query time and time again, there’s probably no useful content about it. Be the first developer who writes an ultimate guide on that issue. That’s how you’ll get a step ahead of your competitors.

Answer the Public can be your source of unique keywords. This free online tool gives 780+ suggestions for the query “mobile apps.” You can explore them by categories:

• 129 question ideas;
• 118 prepositional keywords;
• 82 comparisons;
• 437 alphabeticals;
• 20 related phrases.

On click, you will enter SERP for the keyword of your interest. There, you’ll see whether you can cover the given topic from a new angle or at least add some unique points others overlooked.

Afterword

You don’t have to be a professional SEO expert to pick juicy keywords for your mobile app promotion. Using this detailed guide, you’ll easily analyze all the pros and cons of each keyword. Just note that app keyword optimization works best when combined with link building. Your site needs a high-quality backlink profile to look rank-worthy in the eyes of Google.

About the Author

Nick Campbell is a content creator and marketer at Ahrefs with a passion for technology, SEO, and copywriting. Work up every idea from chaos to clarity is his motto.