seo

Posted by noahlemas

[Estimated read time: 13 minutes]

I had planned on writing about losslessness, about accurate reproduction. I’ve always found it strange that at just about the same time that true losslessness became widely available cheaply, we suddenly seemed to care less about fidelity than ever before. So I had wanted to discuss the Internet’s imminent future, almost undoubtedly VR-based and highly resolution-dependent, and how that vision is slightly at odds with its history of relegating virtually everything to simple, low-resolution, compressed formats.

With the path to writing such a post research and time-intensive, deadline-bound, and rife with potential rabbit holes that could very well result in me unintentionally plumbing the depths of the Internet, I began framing it as though it were typical proposed work — which, for me, means organizing a basic Gantt chart. It’s something I do to frame the projects included in client engagements, beginning even during the proposal stage.

Remind me again what a Gantt chart is…

A Gantt chart is a rather simple matrix of a project’s activities and its associated start dates and deadlines. You’ve seen them but perhaps not known they had a name (activities on the left, activity duration on the right):
Given the rise of agile project management within the technology and software industries in recent years, the humble Gantt chart is often forgotten about, mainly because a Gantt chart rarely meets the highly adaptive needs of more complicated projects (like software product development). But the same simplicity that has doomed it in complex spaces is also what makes it so easy to create and share in relation to the organization of simpler projects.

A Gantt chart is an assurance that we have a plan

Clients want only two things: the first is a plan, the second results. In our industry, the results (or sometimes lack thereof) get the focus, with the plan usually an implicit conceptual agreement from the outset. If we don’t have a tangible plan from the outset, though, results will be largely arbitrary.

During the pitch/proposal stage, the reported results are usually case studies from our past work. Supplementing such case studies with a customized Gantt chart can illustrate to the prospective client that we’ve put more than cursory thought into the work we’re proposing and planning, and the results that we’re hoping to achieve.

It took me trial and error in both conventional client services and business development roles to learn that our agency work is often incomplete without a Gantt chart. I now find myself using them increasingly. Here, for example, is a very generic example of a simple Gantt chart framing a very basic SEO site audit:

Aren’t Gantt charts only needed in project management & sales?

Treating sales as somebody else’s duty is a common mistake that we make in search. If we are client-facing in any capacity, though, we should be considering things, both in scope and out (often we can’t help but think of the out-of-scope anyway), that could provide clients the best possible results. That is to say that since finding and presenting opportunities to clients is an important aspect of growing both client results and agency business, then we all really are in sales.

In fact, we are all working not just in sales, but also in project management. Realizing that and capitalizing on it wherever possible is an additional means of “getting closer to the customer.” Embracing the humble Gantt chart helps us to better organize projects by providing the needed framework in a standardized format that translates across roles, companies, or even industries. Gantt charts help us speak the “language” of project management, organization, sales, and business in general.

Gantt charts are part of the common language of business

As a general rule of thumb, the bigger or more sophisticated the client, the higher the chance that a Gantt chart will be an important part of planning and winning the business, and the greater the chances that our point of contact frames work like a typical project manager.

Successfully navigating the proposal process is almost always a product of communicating in the common language. Gantt charts, then, are not only another means of speaking the common language but, as Vince Lombardi once famously said, of acting “like you’ve been there before.”

As with any other industry or interest, speaking the common language can be the only way to ensure that a wide variety of people within an organization can understand exactly what it is that we’re proposing.

A Gantt chart can also meet the expectations of legal & procurement

In business development, the unfortunate reality is that a “verbal yes” (especially with a bigger client) is nothing but permission to proceed to the legal and/or procurement departments, where many a business development director has been maddeningly frustrated, and where important initiatives, unfortunately, can go to die a slow and painful death.

I stumbled into emphasizing Gantt charts entirely by accident. In researching a promising prospective client, I found a page on their site that outlined a case study from an entirely unrelated field. In one of the page’s images was a Gantt chart with redacted identifying details. On a lark, I included a rudimentary timeline that I thought represented something close to a Gantt chart. That process made me better understand the work that I was proposing, and I’ve been using Gantt charts since.

Not only did I win the business that time by implementing a Gantt chart, I have also won other accounts simply by knowing the audience, in so doing acting as though every last member is a project manager. A Gantt chart certainly isn’t a magic key to legal and procurement, but it’s a relatively small, subtle addition that can have a disproportionately strong impact.

Internal client teams expect, want, or need Gantt charts

Assume for a moment that we did “get ink,” that we won a contract with a sophisticated client without a project plan or Gantt chart. In such a case, the internal team(s) will probably put together their own project plan and/or Gantt chart as a baseline reference point and as part of beginning to allocate resources.

When we hand this brand new account over to our client services team, would we prefer that they receive the Gantt chart that we carefully constructed and agreed on during the proposal process? Or would we prefer that the work be defined and framed by the people who had to hire our agency to consult on the work in the first place? Which is our most realistic path to being able to deliver the framed work and meet the goals of the campaign(s)?

Gantt charts help agency-side teams, too

The handover and kickoff can be phenomenally easy and well organized when we prepare an easily relatable and understandable Gantt chart to every member of our team (and our client’s). The handover is then as simple as sharing file permissions with the teams of our agency and our new client.

The typical handover to your client services should be smooth and easy, accompanied by a well-outlined plan. Often, though, handovers to client services can be a cluster of questions to which nobody really knows the exact answer(s). A basic Gantt chart goes a long way toward an orderly, sensible, smooth handover, something that only instills further confidence in the new client’s team. The Gantt chart serves as a great means of bridging the gap between what was promised by sales and what will be delivered by client services.

Competitors use Gantt charts, too

Experienced as we are, we all know that clients and prospects respond almost viscerally to reports on competition, especially where their competition is clearly beating them.

On that note, you know who uses project plans? Some of your competitors. If all else in a proposal is equal (and you’d be shocked at how often that happens), the planning can be the tie-breaker, both because it implies sophistication and because, as noted above, it is much more likely to be converted into a contract/SOW that breezes through legal and procurement.

How to make a Gantt chart for that article about fidelity vs. connectivity

Okay, now it’s time to dig in and and to actually put together a top-level outline of the article’s components, which include in this case preparation, research, writing, and editing. An outline is the best place to start building our Gantt chart.

In this case, we’ve created a 23-step outline (details below) for writing that article on “Fidelity vs. Connectivity.” Now, let’s make a Gantt chart of it…

Make a Gantt chart easily from a Trello board

To make a basic Gantt chart using Trello, frame a Trello board. I’ve created one called “Interesting Article Idea,” with a list; in this case, “Fidelity Vs. Connectivity” :
Next, fill out the related cards (which in this case consist of the 23 outline steps noted above) below the Fidelity vs. Connectivity list to include specific activities:

It’s a card list of how the article progresses and in what order. It’s still not ready to be a Gantt chart, but it’s close. In order to build our Gantt chart, define start dates and due dates for each card related to its associated activity, starting with what we anticipate to be the first, in this case “Research the history of ‘high fidelity’”:
When you hover over that card, you’ll see a small pencil icon. Click that edit/pencil icon to open an expanded menu of options. Then click “Change Due Date,” from which the following calendar menu will appear:
Click on the appropriate “due date” from the calendar (I’ve chosen a March 11 due date for this card, as we can see) and save changes, at which point our edited card will look like this (minus the giant red arrow, of course):

At that point, the card has a due date but no start date. In order to add a start date, go back to the card list and click on the March 11 due date (where the red arrow above is pointing), at which point we will have an this expanded menu:
Adding the start date here can be a bit elusive only because there is no “button” to do so. Instead, click on “Edit the description” (red arrow above) in order to open the following window:

In order to establish the start date, add it to the description window, using the format below (in this example a start date of March 7, 2016):

Repeat this process for all remaining 22 cards and you’ll end up with a card list like this:

What you’ll need to make a basic Gantt chart

I prefer to use Ganttify, integrating a Trello board, largely out of habit. Ganttify also provides compatibility with Basecamp or even, yes it’s true, Google Calendar, so there are certainly other options if you’re not a Trello user. A rather impressive Gantt chart can also be built in Excel (for our spreadsheet-obsessed colleagues). Point is, there is no shortage of options for making free Gantt charts.

Also worth noting: the Gantt chart is NOT a complete project plan, but instead merely a part of one. The Gantt chart organizes the “what” and “when” aspects of a project plan but largely doesn’t touch on the “why” or “who” aspects. A Gantt chart, then, can exist without a project plan, but a project plan usually cannot exist without Gantt charts. For the purposes of this post, we’re concerned only with the Gantt chart… and a very basic one at that; we’re stepping into the project management world as relative novices. By design, our sample Gantt chart here will be as simple as possible.

At this point, with your Trello board complete, you are ready to head over to Ganttify:

We’re working from Trello here, obviously. Click the Trello button and you’ll be taken to the following screen:
Allow Ganttify access to your Trello board by clicking the “Allow” button; you’ll be taken swiftly to the Trello/Ganttify dashboard:

And there it is waiting for you… automatically created from the existing Trello board you made earlier. Click on “Interesting Article Idea” and you’ll be served this pop-out window:

You did it; that’s a Gantt chart! It needs a little refining, of course, but you’ve created a usable Gantt chart. Perhaps the best part about the Gantt chart you’ve just created is the fact that you can simply adjust any of the “activities” on the timeline of the Gantt chart and the associated changes will be automatically reflected in the original Trello board. Let’s have a look at how this works:

Drag to increase the width of the first “activity” (red arrow above) and you’ll will see this change directly on the Gantt chart:

That change on the Gantt change then becomes part of the parameters of the original Trello board (requiring no changes to the underlying Trello board; Ganttify and Trello are essentially working together):
Changing all or part of your Gantt chart, then, changes the underlying Trello board (and vice-versa). Using the same process, you can easily change the activities back to the original dates. This means that changes are then automatically shared with collaborators (assuming we’ve shared our Trello board with other team members).

Exporting the Gantt chart to a format of your choosing means you can insert it into any document in the appropriate file type. To export, click the print icon (indicated by the red arrow below):

From the pop-out window above, click the print icon in the upper left corner. That will result in the following option window:

I’ve added the red arrow here to remind you that the cleanest possible outcome is a result of condensing the timeline to show only the dates relevant to the project (especially important when planning longer, more complicated projects).

Export to your preferred format by clicking “print.” The resulting JPG for our for our simplified example project looks like this:By this point, you’ll have a Trello board built out, a working version of a Gantt chart, and the knowledge/ability to edit in one place, with those edits reflected across platforms and immediately available to collaborators. You’ll be ready to insert your newly created file wherever you need it. It really is that simple! Of course, time and practice will provide for more detailed and complex, in-depth Gantt charts, but this is a great place to start.

We’ve started here with a very simplified Gantt chart but, as you begin to use them, you can add layers of depth and make them increasingly advanced. As you’ve seen, building basic Gantt charts is simpler (and perhaps more useful) than it at first might have seemed.

To summarize the process:

1. Outline the project.
2. Frame the associated Trello board.
3. Define the start and end dates of each activity.
4. Allow Ganttify access to the Trello board.
5. Export from Ganttify to your preferred file format.
6. Insert the newly created file into a proposal, business case, report, etc.

Regardless of your role, or whether you are agency-side or client-side, organizing work and communicating timelines via Gantt charts provides a necessary baseline for just about any project. When you build Gantt charts from shared resources like Trello, Basecamp, or Google Calendar, you also encourage efficient collaboration by ensuring that everyone on your internal teams, and those of your clients, start from “the same page.” Framing your work in Gantt charts improves your ability to organize, communicate, and collaborate, all of which increases efficiency and allows you to, as we say at Distilled, “work smarter, not harder.”

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Posted by randfish[Estimated read time: 8 minutes] Have you ever actually tried to create 10x content? It’s not easy, is it? Knowing how and where to start can often be the biggest obstacle you’ll face. In today’s Whiteboard Friday, Rand talks about ho… Continue reading →

Posted by Web_Perfectionist

[Estimated read time: 9 minutes]

What is Google AMP?

The Google AMP Project is a way of fast-tracking content to mobile devices. It improves upon the traditional model of serving mobile content because it relies on a specific form of HTML, called AMP HTML, to strip down the presentation of content. Here’s an example of what an AMP page looks like when rendered on an iPhone 6.

The net effect is that the mobile user will see articles with comparatively basic text and images, but that content will load up to 10 times faster (or more!) over traditionally formatted content.

Why is Google AMP important for SEO?

As Google often preaches to the industry, page speed and mobile-readiness are high-quality ranking distinctions that determine the placement of a site’s content link in the search engine results pages (SERPs). The faster a site is (among other ranking signals), and the more it caters to mobile devices, the more likely it is to be seen and clicked on by Google search users.

Since 2013, Google has been evolving from being the company that provides links to other sites in search results to the company that provides answers to questions in search results.

For example, the “featured snippets” aspect of Google, shown below, has been a method of providing quick answers in search results to simple questions such as “Who won the 1969 World Series?”

But featured snippets don’t work well for more complex questions, like “What are the main issues in the 2016 presidential election?” Those types of questions lend themselves more to in-depth articles. Unfortunately, when simple answers are not plausible, one must load another page that may be slow to load on mobile devices. As a result, Google has been developing ways to make the links you click on in search results load more quickly. And now, with Google’s AMP Project, they have been making those appear more prominently in SERPs.

How does Google AMP work?

There are three parts to Google AMP:

1. AMP HTML
2. AMP JS
3. AMP Cache

AMP HTML has a strictly defined set of pre-processing tags. Those are mainly limited to text formatting and image embedding tags such as amp-ad, amp-embed, amp-img, amp-pixel, and amp-video.

AMP JS is a severely limited Javascript file. It loads all external resources in an asynchronous (in the background) way. This keeps “render blocking” from interfering with how quickly what the user came to see renders on the screen. Everything extraneous to the actual words and images in the article loads last. AMP JS also grabs and pre-renders the content by predicting which DNS resources and connections will be needed, then by downloading and pre-sizing images. This is all done to alleviate work for the mobile device to economize data use.

AMP Cache, or the AMP Content Delivery Network (AMP CDN), is Google’s system of servers doing the heavy lifting of grabbing your most recent content and pre-positioning it around the globe. This ensures that a page requested from, say, Italy doesn’t need to be sent over the wire from Mountain View, California each time it’s requested. Instead, Google places a pre-rendered, optimized copy of that AMP page on a server close to or in Italy. The CDN is refreshed each time an article is updated or added.

The positive impacts of AMP on SEO & online marketing

Faster-loading articles improve the publisher/reader relationship. Speed is the most obvious benefit to publishers using AMP for improved SEO. That speed translates into more page views and fewer frustrated readers, which also translates to more ad views, sharing, and engagement with content.

1.) AMP-enabled articles will rank higher in SERPs.

AMP content will have the advantage of being shown above the fold, at the top of Google searches, unless Google changes how and whether it displays all AMP results in this way. An example of how AMP pages displayed in search results is shown below.

Currently, AMP articles appear in a swipeable carousel. For now, there is not a paid placement option, but it may appear in the future. AMP-enabled articles do have an icon in the SERPs indicating that they are built on AMP.

2.) Paid search impressions will likely increase.

After viewing an AMP-based piece of content, the most common thing users do is click back to the SERP to see what else there might be. This will positively affect the number of paid search impressions over time.

3.) Google AMP is for every publisher.

Facebook limits participation in its Instant Articles feature to just a select set of publishers. With Google AMP, anyone with a little know-how or willingness to learn can format his or her content to be accessed quickly by a potentially enormous number of readers.

4.) AMP is open source.

This means that contributions to its evolution are not limited to the world of Google’s best and brightest developers. Anyone who has an idea for making it better can contribute to the specification. AMP’s feature set will more readily adapt to a changing publishing world.

5.) Analytics are coming for AMP.

According to Google, several analytics providers — including comScore, Adobe Analytics, Parse.ly, and Chartbeat — are gearing up their services to tell publishers how well their AMP content is doing. In fact, the AMP specification provides instructions for supporting current AMP analytics vendors, as well as how to support your own custom analytics solution for AMP.

6.) Content gets to more readers.

Even though AMP mainly benefits Google in that it helps them compete with Facebook’s Instant Articles, that improved reach benefits publishers because their content can now be more widely read when users click on them in Google’s SERPs — not just in Facebook’s walled garden.

7.) More features and formatting options are coming.

Even though AMP deals in a limited set of tags for formatting pages, all’s not lost. There are still plenty of extended components and even some experimental components to be released as they become available.

The negative impacts of AMP on SEO & online marketing

1.) There are no forms in AMP content.

That means that if a publisher’s goal is to generate leads by inviting a reader to subscribe or submit his contact information, it’s going to have to wait until AMP provides an upgrade to the specification that allows publishers to have forms in their AMP-optimized content.

2.) AMP doesn’t solve the problem of page speed SEO for non-publisher sites.

It really only covers “news”-type articles and blog posts and is not intended for speeding up general e-commerce or brand sites. An e-commerce site that doesn’t focus on articles or blog posts as its main content will probably find the design constraints of AMP much too restrictive and will want to stick to traditional HTML.

3.) The number of paid search result item impressions could go down.

If the search term is broad or general (i.e. “news,” “fashion,” or “food”), AMP articles will probably appear more frequently than paid search results items. Only time and analytics will correct for assumptions here.

4.) There are no external style sheets or Javascript.

Because of a lack of external stylesheets and external Javascript, the design and user experience (UX) of pages is lackluster. Publishers and non-publishers alike will have to decide if it’s more important to their brand to have the design complement the content to attract return visitors (in which case they might opt out of AMP for now), or if their content stands on its own and their visitors only care about rapidly loading pages (in which case they’ll want to start implementing it now). Use of experimental components as a hedge against dull pages carries the risk that the component will have bugs or will be rejected by the next release of the AMP specification.

5.) Domain Authority may suffer.

From their Learn SEO page: “Domain Authority is a score (on a 100-point scale) developed by Moz that predicts how well a website will rank on search engines.” One of the factors included in the calculation is the number of linking root domains. An indirect negative effect would be that a publisher’s site would earn fewer links. That’s because other sites linking to AMP content will not be linking to the publisher’s domain name, but to google.com. For example, here’s a screenshot of an article loaded on an iPhone 6 as accessed from an AMP carousel search.

Note that the URL, https://www.google.com/amp/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/35800232#, begins with “www.google.com/amp/” and then tacks on the article’s originating domain. When viewing the article, visitors will still be on Google.com, not on the publisher’s website.

6.) The way publishers serve ads inline with content will necessarily change.

This could be a good thing, in that it will force publishers to rethink their ads so that they no longer annoy the 16% of customers who block their ads anyway. It could be a bad thing for publishers who rely on high-bandwidth, over-designed ads to capture attention, though. They’ll have to either opt out of AMP or find another advertising strategy. Of course, if a publisher is part of the Google AMP ads partnership of Outbrain, AOL, OpenX, DoubleClick, and AdSense, the publisher’s own burden of improving its ads is greatly reduced. More ad partners are being brought into the fold as they come into compliance with the AMP spec for their ads.

7.) Budgeting for content development will need to increase.

If you don’t have a CMS that already supports AMP, you’ll need to budget for developing in AMP or build into your custom or extensible CMS as an additional feature.

8.) Publishers can’t get away with poorly-constructed HTML pages with AMP.

This is actually both a positive and a negative aspect of AMP. On the positive side, every page has to be free of errors before Google will even pick it up and put it in the AMP caches. This means that users will have a better experience downloading the content on a variety of devices. However, on the negative side, publishers will need to budget time (and developer hours) to further debug every page. Fortunately, Google has provided a validator with AMP.

Conclusion

Page speed is a ranking factor in Google’s algorithm. The fact that Google has come out with its own way of constructing and displaying content faster and more concisely speaks to its desire to make page speed an even more important indicator of a page’s value in SERPs.

If a site deals primarily in long-form, news-type content (as opposed to marketing or selling its products), then it’s a good candidate for an AMP overhaul. If publishers only add AMP to get ahead of the emerging trend towards mobile-optimized content, they’ll be doing themselves and their SEO ranking a favor.

By now, you may be wondering what you can do to boost your page speed, given its increasing importance. We’ve got an awesome free performance report you can use to get actionable intel on how to optimize your site for speed and performance. Feel free to check it out if you’re interested in learning steps you can take to improve your website’s performance.

Thoughts or questions about Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages? Let us know in the comments!

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Posted by nikkielizabethdemere

This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author’s views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of Moz, Inc.

[Estimated read time: 5 minutes]

Can you recall Don Draper using statistics in a quote? Neither can I.

Draper’s pitches were successful because they focused on stories. (Remember the famous Kodak Carousel pitch?) He was on to something: Research highlights stories as key to capturing an audience’s attention.

Jennifer Aaker, a social psychologist and professor at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, cites a study in which students were asked to present a one-minute persuasive pitch to their class members. Each pitch included an average of 2.5 statistics. Only one of those pitches included a story. Ten minutes later, the researcher asked the students to pull out a sheet of paper and write down every idea they remembered. Only 5% of the students remembered a statistic; 63% of the students remembered the story.

For most people, numbers aren’t memorable. Stories are.

Numerous studies have shown that stories aren’t only more effective in making a message memorable, they’re also more emotionally persuasive. Pair this with research that shows we make decisions primarily with emotion (using logic to justify them later), and you have the power of story in a nutshell.

Your brain on stories

When we hear a story, not only are the language parts of the brain activated, but also every other part of the brain we would use if we were living the story. Mentally, we become the protagonist. In our minds, the story is real and it’s happening to us, not to somebody else.

Warm chocolate oozed out of the center of the cake, swirling with mocha eddies of ice cream.

Oh, sorry — are you feeling hungry now?

There are 63 grams of fat in Chili’s Chocolate Molten Lava Cake.

How eager are you to forget that statistic?

If the story is about food, your sensory cortex lights up. If the story is about motion, you motor cortex lights up, as if you were the one shoveling cake into your mouth or driving a race car.

An even more remarkable study from Princeton shows that when you tell a story, your brain and your listeners’ brains actually sync up. This implies that you can plant ideas and emotions into your audience’s brain through story.

Don’t ditch the data

There’s a case to be made for ditching data altogether in favor of story.

If you’ve read about the “identifiable victim effect” — demonstrated by Carnegie Mellon researchers presenting study participants with the story of a starving child versus statistics about child starvation in Africa — you know why. In the experiment, participants who received the Save the Children pamphlet featuring the story of a starving child named Rokia donated double the money of those who saw a pamphlet with statistics only.

But, in another experiment (part of the same study), they handed participants a Save the Children pamphlet that included both the story and the statistics.

That may seem like damning evidence as far as data is concerned.

Paul Slovic, one of the researchers, explains this phenomenon (nearly a 40% drop) as a “drop in the bucket” effect. Read about poor starving Rokia, and your emotions and mind are fully engaged. But read about the millions of starving children on the African continent, and as Slovic says, “The data sends a bad feeling that counteracts the warm glow from helping Rokia.”

But data doesn’t always give a bad feeling. It all depends on how you use it.

Marry stories with data for compelling content

If story activates the emotional centers of the brain, data activates the logic centers. Activating both at the same time can be incredibly powerful — if done correctly. For example, if you tell a story about someone your business or product has helped, then combine that story with data that explains how much you’ve helped them, your story becomes more trustworthy.

In John Allen Paulos’ New York Times piece “Stories vs. Statistics,” he explains that people are afraid of committing two types of judgment errors: observing something that is not really there (Type 1 error); and missing something that is there (Type 2 error). Some people are more comfortable committing one type of error over the other, depending on their personality types, and this is where stories and statistics come into play.

For a certain type of consumer, story is really all they need. They’re ready to make a decision based purely on the emotional connection you make with them. But others aren’t so sure about your story. They’re less impressed by the flashy details. Their discerning minds want proof in the form of hard numbers.

Why do numbers make us trust? While data and statistics can be woven into just about any form to support just about any theory, we still think of numbers as unbiased, objective, unemotional. Perhaps this bias is a result of how our brains treat numerical information; it just doesn’t tickle the emotional parts of ourselves. We treat numbers with logic and, illogical as it may be, expect the same treatment from data in return.

It’s a bias we marketers can use, especially when we know that, while people are likely to act on their gut instinct, they still confirm that instinct with logic.

I would argue that we need to use data in this way, as a confirmation of the story we’re telling, not as a replacement for the story.

Professor Jennifer Aaker explains it like this:

Whether you’re writing a web page, ebook, or presentation, lead with the story. Grab attention with an anecdote that paints a narrative picture of the problem you’re trying to solve. Then, don’t just throw a data set in.

Instead, put your data into a meaningful, visual context that literally illustrates your point.

In Visage’s related ebook, they tell you how to thoughtfully blend the data and storytelling to provide value, insight, and meaning to your audience.

And, to drive your point home, explain your data visualization. Don’t assume audiences will get it at a glance (even if they can). Highlight important patterns. Explain your axes. Answer the question lingering in your audience’s mind: “So what?”

When you deliver data within the context of a larger story, that is the moment when it becomes incredibly powerful, and you become your most persuasive.

How are you using data in your content marketing?

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Posted by AshleySefferman

App Store Optimization, or ASO, is a way of ensuring your app meets app store ranking criteria and rises to the top of a search results page. But how does a marketer optimize for better discoverability in an app store?

To help you boost your app marketing strategy (along with your app store ranking!), I’ve put together a list of 10 favorite ASO tips, many of which have their roots in well-known SEO strategies marketers know and love.

Let’s dive in!

1. Understand your customer and your competition

How well do you know your customers and your competition? A well-formed ASO strategy hinges on understanding how your customers use your app, along with a deep view of your competitive landscape. To start, ask yourself the following:

• What language do my customers naturally use?
• How would they describe my app?
• What are their top reasons for downloading and using my app?
• What is my competitive advantage?
• What keywords do my competitors target?
• How easily can I compete against these apps on the same keywords?
• Should I target the obvious keywords or the less obvious (and less trafficked) keywords that better speak to my unique offering and points of differentiation?
• Your ASO strategy begins with putting yourself in your customer’s shoes. Your goal is to improve discovery in app store searches and target those keywords that drive the most traffic. The best way to identify these optimal keywords is consumer research — finding out exactly what search queries brought your customers to your app and the natural language they use to describe it.

It’s equally important to survey your competition to identify which keywords are being targeted by apps similar to yours. You can then determine whether or not it makes sense to target these same keywords or a separate set of keywords unique to your individual value proposition. Similarly, you’ll have to decide if it makes more sense to rank in the top 10 for a few highly competitive keywords or to rank in the top spot for keywords with a lesser search volume.

2. Choose the right app name

Coming up with a unique name for your app isn’t just a matter of branding. For best results with ASO, include relevant keywords within your title, as this text heavily factors into app store search results. In fact, our friends at TUNE recently conducted a study of the top 25 ranking positions and found that apps with a relevant keyword in their title ranked, on average, 10.3% higher than apps without a title keyword.

Titles in the App Store can be up to 255 characters, allowing for plenty of keywords or keyword phrases. However, don’t take this as an opportunity to stuff every keyword you can think of into your title; after all, your app’s name is, first and foremost, your first impression to a potential mobile customer. Longer titles, however, will be truncated on a search results or top chart page. Titles are typically truncated after the 23rd character (including spaces) in the App Store and the 30th character in Google Play. App titles for installed apps in a device’s navigation menu or home screen are truncated after 11 and 14 characters, respectively.

To ensure that your app can be clearly identified, keep the actual name short and sweet. You can augment this short title with nonessential keywords after the name, typically preceded by a dash or vertical bar, to associate your app with select keywords.

It’s also important to use only URL-friendly characters in your title, particularly in the App Store. Special characters or symbols will detract from your ASO strategy and cause iTunes to refer to your app’s numeric ID, rather than its name, to scan for relevant keywords.

3. Maximize your keywords

While many of these strategies apply across the board when it comes to the different app stores, the App Store and the Google Play Store have two very different approaches when it comes to ASO keywords.

The App Store

The App Store has a 100-character keyword field. It exclusively uses title and whatever keywords or keyword phrases you include in these 100 characters to determine which search strings your app will show up for. With this in mind, it’s important to use all of the allotted characters and carefully research your keywords to maximize your organic traffic.

Google Play

On the other hand, the Google Play Store takes an approach more similar to modern SEO. Google does away with the specified tags and scans your app’s description to extract relevant keywords. In this scenario, you’re given 4,000 characters to describe it in natural, customer-facing language. Without trying to jam as many keywords into this text as possible at the expense of your messaging strategy, try to sprinkle relevant keywords where they logically make sense. A recent Sensor Tower study showed that the optimal number of times to repeat a keyword in an app store product page is five, at which point you will maximize the likelihood of ranking prominently for that keyword. Additional mentions have little to no effect on ASO and may even turn off potential customers if your description appears intentionally repetitive.

With this in mind, everything consumer-facing in your app’s product page should be designed not for an algorithm but for the customer. If its description is a hodgepodge of contextually irrelevant keywords, that coveted rank will become meaningless, as your wordy description will struggle to entice customers to take the next step and download it. For best results, write for the customer first, and make small edits for keywords next — remember that the ranking algorithms take both keywords and conversion metrics into account.

4. Create a compelling description

With the exception of a few of the aforementioned strategically placed keywords, your app’s description should be targeted toward your customer base, rather than a search engine index. Your description should be viewed as a call-to-action for potential customers. Describe what it does in simple and concise language, list the unique benefits it offers, and compel the reader to download it. You’ve already convinced the app store that your app is relevant to a specific list of keywords, and now it’s time to convince your potential customers that it meets their needs.

We recommend focusing the bulk of your energy on the first three lines of your description to immediately grab your reader’s attention. Given the ever-growing number of apps in the marketplace, customers are sure to have a few — if not several — alternatives to consider when evaluating yours. Make their decision easy by immediately communicating what it does and why they should use it.

Your app’s description, as well as the rest of your product page, should be treated as a living document. As it changes with each new update, so should your description. Each time you submit an update, take the time to reflect the changes in your product page’s description and screenshots to call out new features and accurately portray it.

5. Stand out with a unique icon

As your potential customers browse a nearly endless list of apps, your visual icon is the first impression they’ll have of yours. It’s important to make it count!

When approaching your icon design, it’s important to note that the App Store and Google Play vary in their approach to, and rendering of, app icons. Both stores have preset standards for the ideal size, geometry, and color scheme of app icons, designed to match the rest of the OS.

For iOS icons, the most important thing to note is that icons should be sized to at least 1024×1024 pixels, the dimensions required by the App Store. From here, the Apple OS will resize your icon for any other applications, including app icons (180×180), navigation icons (66×66), and tab bar icons (75×75). Your image must therefore be designed with the meticulous detail of a 1024×1024 icon and the simplicity necessary to still look good scaled down to the smallest size.

Additional resources: iOS 9 Design Guidelines and iOS Icon Sizing Reference Chart

When designing an Android icon, the only difference is that Google Play requires a 512×512 icon, rather than 1024×1024. While not required, Google recommends designing app icons in accordance with its material design guidelines, which details everything from icon anatomy to lighting and shading.

Additional resources: Android Material Design Guidelines and Android Icon Sizing Reference Chart

Regardless of which OS you’re designing for, you need an icon capable of breaking through the clutter. Icons should be clear enough that they immediately convey what your app does, even in its scaled-down form within the apps menu. As such, don’t overcomplicate your icon with unnecessary words or logos that demand extra time from your customers.

To get an idea of what works historically, simply browse the top-rated apps in your category or Google/Apple’s top picks. Across the board, you’ll see a trend toward bright colors, unique shapes, and simple imagery. Few icons use words, and some will incorporate a border or drop shadow to make them pop, regardless of their background. And once again, it’s important to do a little competitive research to ensure that your icon is different enough to avoid having your app confused with a competitor’s.

6. Include screenshots and videos

Like icons, screenshots in your description may not have a direct effect on search rankings, but they do drive downloads. Images convey more about what it actually is and bring your descriptive text to life, allowing potential customers to visualize using your app before they make the download.

While you can upload up to five screenshots for an iOS app and up to eight for an Android app, only your first 2–3 screenshots will show in the gallery on page load. Take special care in ensuring that these screenshots speak to your biggest customer benefits and are strong enough to convince the reader to browse your additional screenshots or download it.

While the app stores prefer images that are representative of the customer’s experience in your app, you can technically upload any graphic into the screenshot field — including concept or character art. Commonly, publishers will blend graphic design with their screenshots to incorporate a text overlay describing key elements or new features. For example, Candy Crush Saga adds a graphic overlay to its screenshots to promote its new update.

Whatever your approach, your screenshots should show off your app’s most pivotal features, latest updates, and the pages on which your customers will spend most of their time. Skip the pretty splash pages and show the customer what they can expect during everyday use. For best results, A/B test different screenshot sets to determine which screenshots drive the most downloads.

7. Localize your app listing

When it comes to global marketing, a “one-size-fits-all” approach simply won’t cut it. Today, only 31% of app revenue is generated by North American consumers. And of those consumers outside the English-speaking world, 72% prefer to use their native language when shopping, even if they’re fluent in English. These two statistics speak to the massive opportunity available to app publishers. That is, those app publishers who are able to tap into this market by catering to the unique preferences of its customer segments.

In other words, if your audience goes beyond the English-speaking world, consider adapting your brand communication and language to the wants and needs of each audience segment.

At the most basic level, speak to your customers in the language they use at home. There are myriad solutions for low-cost translation or localization services that can translate your app’s title, keywords, description, and screenshots to the languages of your largest segments.

Both the iTunes App Store and the Google Play Store allow you to localize your listing to make both discoverability and readability easier for customers in different countries. By doing so, you can increase both adoption and conversion, as more customers find your app using keywords in their language and as more customer download it after seeing a welcoming product page in their language. Together, these two effects can add up to as much as a 767% increase in downloads.

For example, Clash of Clans publisher Supercell translated its app description and screenshots to capture the Chinese market:

8. Increase traffic with outside promotion

At the end of the day, it’s important to remember that on-page optimization is just one tool in your mobile marketing kit. And this is where your SEO knowledge really comes in. It is widely believed that both Google and Apple factor in your app’s total page visits and product page backlinks when determining your search and overall ranks.

Simply put, the more traffic you drive to your listing, the higher it will rank in search results. To drive traffic, build an online presence around your app with social media and content, soliciting press and reviews, and investing in online advertising.

For many publishers, app indexing has proven the most effective strategy for driving traffic to an app’s product page. A relatively new concept, app indexing is the process of making Android or iOS app content searchable and linkable from a web or mobile web search. Customers who see you indexed in a search result can click on your link and be deep-linked to either it’s product page (if they don’t have it installed) or to the page in your app from which that content is indexed (if they have it installed). Indexing, therefore, helps with both re-engagement and acquisition by promoting your content in new channels.

App indexing allows you to drive downloads and app store traffic directly from a search engine results page.

App indexing has quickly shaken up the world of search, with 40% of searches now returning app indexed results. The world is going mobile, and those apps ahead of the curve in ASO and app indexing trends will be those that nab market share from traditionally web-dominated search results. (For more ways to move beyond the app store with your marketing strategy, check out our guide The 2016 Guide to App Marketing Channels.)

Additional resources: How to Get Your App Content Indexed by Google

9. Update frequently

Mobile customers are looking for apps that are constantly improving, with regular updates based on customer feedback. Apps that are frequently updated are seen, by both the app store and the customer, to be of a higher value and more customer-centric. Consequently, app updates highly correspond to better reviews as each new and improved version of the app should naturally receive higher ratings than the version before.

Of course, releasing the update is only half the battle. The next step is to encourage existing customers to download the update. To help sell your next update, try these three strategies:

1. Entice customers within your app (such as a note prompted at login, a push notification, or an update link prominently displayed in the main navigation) notifying them of the new update and what improvements they have to look forward to.
2. Update the app description and the “What’s New” field in your app store product page to outline new/improved features with a compelling call-to-action.
3. Maintain a large volume of five-star reviews for your app, and especially its latest version. Our 2015 Consumer Survey revealed that one-third of existing customers check an app’s ratings before downloading an update. Maintain a positive rating for an easy win.

To come up with a general recommendation for update frequency, we scoured the 500 top-ranked apps and found that the average update frequency was between 30 and 40 days. Keep in mind, however, that each time you update an iOS app, your ratings reset — and with that, your rank temporarily plummets. As a result, frequently updated iOS apps experience slightly higher app store rank volatility, while frequently updated Android apps experience reduced volatility.

10. Encourage ratings and feedback

Last but certainly not least, a consistent flow of positive reviews serves as the highest possible validation of your app’s quality and one of the highest determinants of rank. In our analysis of the 500 top-ranked apps posted last year on the Moz blog, we found the highest correlation between ratings (both average rating and rating count) and ranks than any of the other factors we tested. Across the board, apps with a large volume of positive ratings dominate the top charts.

We also found that rating volume almost always trumps rating sentiment when it comes to determining rank. The app stores are looking to recognize apps that have the largest fan community — and the best proxy for determining that is the rating count.

The apps with the highest rating counts are those that keep their customers engaged and proactively solicit customer feedback to shape their product roadmap and future updates. It’s important to keep in mind, however, that app store ratings provide just a myopic view of customer satisfaction. Typically, only your vocal minority — those who either love or hate your app — will take the time to write a review. In reality, most of your customers lie somewhere between these two extremes and require that extra engagement or prompt to give their feedback. With intelligent rating prompts, you can boost your rating — and ultimately, your rank — by prompting only those customers most likely to give you a 5-star review.

Wrapping it up

Backed by an understanding of the data and science behind app store ranking algorithms and these top tips for App Store Optimization, you’re well on your way to a bullet-proof ASO strategy. With careful measurement and a little trial and error, you’ll soon catapult past your competitors in the app store top charts.

Of course, App Store Optimization is an ongoing process, thanks both to the continually evolving ranking algorithms and to the competitive nature of the app stores. A successful ASO strategy requires a keen eye, a penchant for analytics, and regular check-ins. Manage this, and your investment will pay off many times over.

See you on the top charts!

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