At this point, it should come as absolutely no surprise to you that search engine optimization is vital for any business looking to improve digital marketing and exposure. Anyone who tells that that SEO is dead simply isn’t living in the same reality as the rest of us!

It also shouldn’t come as a surprise to you that a mobile app can help your business tremendously. This isn’t quite as universal a truth as ‘SEO is vital’, sure. But there’s simply no denying that mobile apps have helped many businesses when it comes to customer connectivity and engagement.

There are certainly businesses that benefit more from mobile apps than others. But the need for a small business to have a mobile app is actually quite large. Many small businesses will simply struggle without an app.

Of course, what’s the use of creating a mobile app if no-one is actually going to use it? And this is where I’m going to refer you back to the first paragraph of this article. A lot of people forget that SEO can be just as crucial to the success of a mobile app as it is to your regular website and business at large.

Let’s take a look at the ways in which SEO and mobile apps interact.

The Quality of the App itself

Good SEO depends on strong quality. Many naysayers claim that SEO is all about clickbait and empty backend solutions that don’t benefit users. But this isn’t true.

So the quality of your app is crucial to SEO success. If a mobile app is highly rated, then it’s more likely to appear on the first page of search results. The more popular it is, and the fewer complaints about functionality problems, the more hits you’ll eventually get from search engines. This is why it’s so important that your mobile application development process is so strong.

The App Directory page

So where do people actually download apps from? App stores, of course – stores that are actually apps themselves. But did you know that the vast majority of people get to those app stores via Google?

You need to remember that every app entry in store apps have a corresponding webpage. Take a look at the web version of Google Play, for example. This is where most people end up clicking through to download apps. And what appears on the webpage of your app is up to you. With this in mind, the way SEO can help link people to your app becomes quite clear. You have to start implementing SEO techniques into the copy of the webpage.

Your brand name has to feature prominently in the app title and in the descriptive copy. The description text needs to include relevant keywords that will result in the page featuring prominently in search results. Making sure there are links to your own website to strengthen legitimacy and social proof is also vital.

Remember that it’s also possible to make SEO goofs in this area. In fact, the webpage can be more sensitive to bad SEO than regular websites. So take care!

We would love to hear your own experiences of using SEO to promote your mobile applications. Please leave us a comment and share your experiences with us.