Hey, this is the Daily Overpass!
My name is Eric and I make apps!
Now today, let's talk about putting keywords into responses on app reviews.
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Okay, so today I want to answer a question that came in last week from True Dreams.
True Dreams said, "Hey Eric, I have a question.
Is it okay to use keywords while replying to reviews like if someone gives you 5 star
or 4-star rating?
Can we reply to him/her like Thanks for trying this cool arcade game?
Or something like that.
Is this fine?
Do Google Play will ban us if we use relevant keywords while replying?"
Now, this is something that I heard last year by an ASO person that I was having a conversation
with, and he was saying that it was something that they were doing on the iOS side which
was replying to reviews with keywords, and I thought that was fantastic!
And it was something that we do.
We tried to put them in there but not so blatant has to do like "thanks for using this cool
arcade game' or something like that.
Which I don't think that's very good keywords, by the way, I mean, just because they are
so saturated.
But if you have better keyword than that.
But we do try to do to put keywords into the responses.
I know for a fact that the reviews are or that the keywords in reviews are ranked.
Because I did a video about this.
About two years ago on Ear Spy where I talking about how we were ranking for keywords like
- we were ranking for phrases like "catch a cheating boyfriend", "catch a cheating girlfriend",
things that were not even in my app.
But people were like leaving in the reviews and they were doing things like that.
And even the word spy is used so often in the reviews that it still ranks really high
even though we've taken spy out of the title, out of the description, out of everywhere.And
we know that it' still working.
So, that's one way to do it.
But I don't want to be so blatant about it.
If you could work it on the conversation a little bit more, that would be great.
We do try to reply to all our reviews because we think that - since Google is making this
option available to us, we're gonna use everything that Google throws our way.
If they want to see you something, we'll use it.
Yeah, I think it needs to be relevant, the English have to be good.
If you put those keywords a little bit, I think that's okay.
I don't know if the replies work as well as the actual reviews.
I do know that the reviews work.
Now, a few years ago, I was having a con- I had like two - over the past few years,
I've had a few consultations with AdMob people where they'll give me some advice.
And one of the times, they've told me about using keywords in links.
So, you got to have backlinks and go to Google Play, then you want to put the keywords in
the link.
We focused on this a little bit early on where we started going, trying to put backlinks
on our Google Play page as opposed to our own website so that we could boost those up
in the ranking.
And one of the things the Google representative told me that rather than put the name of your
app in the link, so like Ear Spy as a link to the Ear Spy page, put spy app or spy game,
whatever it is like that.
So, that's where you'd want to put that because that does work too.
And this is one of the reasons that - there's one of the ways that Google Play is much different
than the App Store.
Because it does take all of the backlinks, everything into consideration that goes into
that.
And the advice was two years old but I assume it's still the same.
I mean, I haven't - early on I went onto Fiverr and I was trying to find some backlinks, I
was going to do those different methods because somebody suggested it to me.
I just hate dealing with SEO people coz that just seems - it just seems slimy to me.
Just the way that they work, I'll just put the links in all these comments and all these
blogs and everything like that.
So, it's something I did, I did like one Fiverr job, I think I did 20 backlinks, we've had
other backlinks from other websites like Gizmodo features us once and that really helped.
and we saw everything shoot up and I think that's really helped in terms of the rankings
too.
So, yes, I would say this is just my advice if any of you, guys, out there disagree with
me, then please let me know.
Yes, I would say if you're gonna reply, try to reply with the keywords in the review but
don't do it obviously.
You don't stuff the keywords - the review keywords coz if that looks bad, then that's
just gonna stop doing all together.
And it's just - and I don't know how well it would help.
I would say, if you're gonna do it, start measuring it coz that's something I never
bothered measuring it - that kind of thing.
But my belief is that - is that the entire Google Play page is part of the page rank
algorithm when it does the ranking.
I know that the reviews are, I know that the description is and the title definitely is,
so in terms of the review responses, it's just something that we do to try to get up
the rankings.
So, yes, I would say yes.
Do that.
If anybody else has other - have different experiences with that, let us know.
My experiences have always been - yeah, I mean, we might as well.
But when I say we might as well, it has to be relevant to the person you're replying
to.
Like we'll say for our Chinese Mandarin Learning app we'd say, "Thank you very much for the
five stars.
We really hope this helps you learn Chinese better."
That's just - that makes sense and also brings the keywords in there as opposed to "Thanks
for trying this cool arcade game.", because that doesn't - that just sounds a bit spammy
to me.
But that's just me.
Anyway, True Dreams, I hope that helps.
I hope I see you all of you, guys, tonight at the live stream.
That is it for today.
I'll talk to you, guys, tomorrow!