Deep App Links and how they help mobile marketeers
Google has started indexing Android apps in a move which looks to send shockwaves throughout the organic search arena.
15% of Google searches carried out on Android devices now result in the SERP showing deep app links. 2014 Q4 saw a 10x increase in clicks on deep app links in Google, so their popularity is obvious.
But what exactly are deep app links and how can they help mobile marketeers?
The Basics of Deep App Links
A deep app link gives marketeers the chance to take consumers not just to a specific app, but a specific area of that app. To start with, you’re going to need a uniform resource indicator (URI). It sounds pretty similar to a URL and in fact, it functions in a similar manner.
Say you work for the BBC and you want to drive traffic from your iPlayer app to your YouTube channel. You can’t use a URL here as it’s not in a language apps understand. However, a URI along the lines of youtube://user/bbc would allow the iPlayer app to launch the YouTube channel on your mobile device.
What Can Deep App Links Do for You?
The beauty of deep app links is that they engage consumers much quicker by taking them directly to where you want them to go. This instantly speeds up the conversion funnel and gets your users closer to clicking that ad or upgrading to the paid app.
By providing their customers with a better user experience, marketeers are likely to find an increase in brand loyalty. Take Spotify, for example, which uses deep app links to take users directly to music and biographical content for an artist. This level of engagement means the consumer wants to upgrade.
And deep app links are a great e-commerce tool as well. Advertising can be used to deliver consumers deep within shopping apps to the page that contains a product they can’t resist adding to their basket.
The Power of Search
Search traffic is highly important for Apps, so deep app linking will help consolidate this mobile SEO.
A good example of successful deep app linking is Facebook. SimilarWeb shows that nearly 60% of traffic to the Facebook Android app comes via search channels. And over 50% of that is from Google.
That’s why It’s important to realize just how effective mobile SEO can be. Increased page rank via this optimization method means your app is more likely to be promoted. And don’t just work at optimizing that attractive home page. You need every page optimized for deep app links to truly excel.
Getting Started with Deep App Links
Deep app links are starting to sound pretty tempting, right? But where do you begin? Start by getting yourself a great development team! If you have that, you can move to the next step of adding deep linking to your app. This allows your app to converse in the language of deep app links.
Next, you can get to work by connecting your official website to your app through Google Play Console and Webmaster Tools. This is the only way to ensure your app is listed as your site’s official app.
After you’ve completed this step, your development team needs to work on optimizing your site, so that Google can crawl it and give it the green light. To make sure this happens you need to start adding the deep app links and associated tags.
Then you’re ready to let Google know that you’re ready for your deep app links to take the search world by storm!
Don’t forget that Google loves highly optimized content, so you need to pay attention to your coding to rise up the SERP. Luckily, Google helps, not only by allowing you to monitor your deep app links performance, but also by identifying any crawl errors.
2015 Is the Year for Deep App Links
A highly competent deep app link strategy is the best way to start optimizing your mobile app. By driving engagement levels higher than ever before you can show customers just how amazing your brand is.
Remember that mobile SEO is very important to help index your site and promote your app. That’s where SimilarWeb comes in, to help optimize mobile SEO with our various app analysis tools. Couple these tools with deep app links and you could be seeing a nice boost in revenue.
