Hi, this is the Daily Overpass, my name is Eric and i make apps!
Now today I wanna talk about the keywords you have no control over!
Ok so today i wanna talk again about keywords, and I know what you're thinking, like man,
does this guy talk about anything else!
How many videos have I done on keywords so far?!
It's kind of labouring the point.
But that's the big question.
The big question that most people have that I speak to is "why won't anybody download
my app?" or "could you have a look at my app and why isn't it doing so well?"
And you have to think about the different stages of getting your app downloaded, get
to that actual download stage, and then download of course is on the route to payment.
So you have to look at - the first thing is they have to be able to find it!
so if that's driven through search as most are, then it's gonna have to be keyword based,
if it's done through advertisement, then you need a bit of money.
If it's done through social media and you're just going out there and just hitting the
pavement and trying to find the right people and getting them to download it, then that's
something too, it's that first stage.
The second stage of course would be getting them to actually download it when they see
it.
So that means having really good screenshots, rally good reviews and that kind of stuff,
and then they download it and hopefully they'll leave a review.
But I wanna focus today on the keywords again, because I found something very interesting.
There's keywords that you can control, so a large part of my time is spent doing keyword
research and trying to find new keywords, or maybe swapping some keywords out, try something
new, and again I don't do it as often as I should, but it is something that I give a
lot of thought to.
But I was doing some searching today, and I found that a lot of the time you can't control
all of the keywords that you actually rank for.
So have a look at my page here on my screen.
Now here's google play, of course we all know google play.
Again, today I'm focusing more on google play.
I'm not sure how much this affects iTunes as well, but I think that it's pretty much
the same.
So again, like most people you have to think about what they're going to be doing.
your strategy could be 'I wanna show up on this new and updated games list', or 'I wanna
be featured', which I think more people are relying on that than they should.
you should be thinking about search.
So, if you're game is like candy crush or one of the big ones, you gotta think how do
you look at what kind of keywords they use, how can you get in there?
So, if I type in 'Spy', which of course is my favourite one - I always put that one in,
because mine shows up on the top.
If I do 'spy gadgets', it doesn't show up at the top, it shows up number four I think.
If I type in 'super-hearing', because we actually changed the ASO to ear spy super hearing.
Type in super-hearing, it doesn't come up first, it comes up second.
This guy here, he's got the top spot, but he's got that keyword more prominently up
in his name.
but if I do some other stuff, like if I type 'hearing aid'.
Hearing aid, we used to be third or fourth, and now we've kind of slipped down to the
bottom row here, and there's a few others.
But what I found interesting - so if I show you the Ear Spy page.
When we first started, it was just called Ear Spy and all this kind of stuff, and then
i added the 'Super Hearing' here, so trying to make use of that.
The description hasn't changed for a few years, so we have all of the keywords that I want
high up in there, then the more reviews we have, the better it posts.
So if you have an app that has the exact same keywords as a very popular app, and that app
has 20,000 reviews, it's gonna be really hard to get up there.
So it's better to go for some different keywords than to try to do that.
If you look over here on the side over here, this is something I deal with a lot, is Ear
Spy sound, Er Spy super hearing, or super whatever.
Occasionally I'll complain to google and say "hey, this guy is using my - the icon is too
similar to mine that it looks like it's trying to make people think that that's my app, it's
too close.
It's not the same concept, its a different theme, it's the exact same app.
Same category, same everything.
But that's just something you have to deal with.
but they don't really rank for the keywords that I do, at least not yet.
but if I go through here, and I have a look at something really strange here, while I
was looking today just doing some experiments.
if I do 'cheating girlfriend' which is something that a lot of people will email me about.
They say "I need to find out of my girlfriend is cheating, I need to find out if my wife
is cheating, I need to find out if my husband is cheating, I need to see their text messages,
I need to see their calls", and I say "I'm sorry but we don't do that".
At first I was really angry that they were asking for that, because I'm kind of insulted.
That's not what this app is, this app is a playful thing.
I have to realise that sometimes people are hurting and stuff like that.
But anyway, I typed in 'cheating girlfriend' and if I scroll down here a little bit, there's
my app, just a few rows down.
So it's ranking for cheating girlfriend for some reason.
Some other ones here.
Some people put 'listen to my parents'.
I've put 'listen to my parents' which doesn't show up too high, but it down right there.
I don't say 'cheating girlfriend' or 'listen to my parents' anywhere in the description,
i don't do it in the title, I don't even do it in the screenshots, as if that would matter.
I don't have keywords that I have around the web.
So where those keywords are coming from, or where those search rankings are coming from
is from the reviews!
So if I go over to the reviews here, and I was looking at it thinking "why is that coming
up?!"
If I go into reviews and I type in 'cheating', you can see here: "I figured out my boyfriend
was cheating with this app", "caught my cheating girlfriend", all this kind of stuff.
So it's been mentioned a few times in the reviews, which is really interesting because
you don't actually have complete control over the keywords that your app ranks for.
So what I would like to say here is, when you're encouraging people to review your app,
what you might want to do is to ask them to mention certain phrases in the reviews.
Now, what you shouldn't do is tell them to give you a 5 star review.
Some of the things that clients always ask me is "can we just give them a free unlock
code or something if they leave a review?"
And you can't do that.
We have something in Ear Spy where we give away an unlock code if they tweet about it,
which is not the same thing.
It goes against the terms and conditions to say "if you leave a 5 star review, we'll give
you whatever", because that's gaming the system.
What you do wanna do is encourage people to leave reviews, because those reviews really
help in the search rankings.
So anyway, just really quickly I was pretty surprised by that!
You know, I'm gonna have to find out what other things the app is ranking for and how
I can use some of those principles on some of my other apps.
Anyway, that's it for today, i'll talk to you guys tomorrow!