How to get more organic downloads for your apps

The Digital Marketing Podcast with Mandar Marathe

As of July 2019, there are 2.7 million apps on the Play Store and 1.9 million apps on the app store (iTunes). If you would have realized, you would have 30-40 apps installed on your phone. With the limited shelf space and real estate available, it is difficult to gain market share and downloads for your apps. Moreover, if you need to get organic downloads (without spending on Ads), it gets doubly difficult.

How to get more organic downloads for your apps?

App Store Optimization: This is SEO for your app that is listed on the Play store or App store. By optimizing your app listing for searches happening on the store, you can rank higher.

a) Research : First and foremost, you need to conduct detailed research for other apps listed on the app stores. Type in your focus keyword and see which apps are showing up. You need to look at the reviews they have received. Also the ratings they have. You need to look at the keyword usage in the app title and description. Go one step further and download the apps. See what features they have and whats making the app sticky - why are people downloading the app? Make a list of features that you would like to have in your app and prepare an implementation roadmap.

b) Keyword Research: As stated earlier, using keywords in your`app title and description will help you rank higher. You can use your favorite keyword research tool such as UberSuggest or Google Keyword Planner to type in your focus keyword and find related long tail keywords. Or you can simply go to Google, type in the focus keyword (e.g. "car booking app") and see the related searches. Use the focus keyword and LSI keywords in title and description.

Deep links in App: Deep links are URLs that take users directly to specific content in your app. In Android, you can set up deep links by adding intent filters and extracting data from incoming intents to drive users to the right activity. While you are developing the app, you can use Firebase and dynamic links SDK to setup deep links. That way, when people are searching on Google, they might come across links to content within your app and organically download your app.

App page on website: One way to get more organic downloads for your app is to create a page for your app on your website. We created a page /learn-singing-app on True School of Music website and started generating traffic to the page. This has increased organic downloads for the app. On the app page, you have complete liberty of describing each and every feature of the app in detail.