Your attendees expect a premium branded event app experience, but in order to have people use your app, they need to be able to find it first.
As Apple and Google continue to make updates within their respective App Stores, your brand needs to stay abreast of how to best improve your app’s App Store Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Make sure your attendees can find your app by following these tips to improve your event app’s searchability.
Use a custom branded event app
Recently a number of event app vendors announced that in order to host your event within their branded app, you’ll need to have your attendees use their universal app, rather than an app unique to your brand. With this method, attendees must download the vendor-branded event app and then search for your event within all available events, potentially including your competitors. The Apple App Store has done this to prevent commercialized templates or app generation services from duplicating the same apps and essentially flooding the App Store with cookie-cutter apps.
In order to have control of where your event appears, you need to leverage an enterprise event app strategy. Eventbase provides premium event apps tailored for every brand we partner with—meaning no cookie-cutter templates, and a fully branded event experience for your guests. Further to this point, a branded app allows your guests to easily search and find your event within the App Store. Should they type “IBM Events”, for example, your branded IBM Events App will appear.
Promote your Enterprise Event App landing page
Having a single enterprise event app streamlines your ability to market this as the destination for anyone attending the events you host through a single landing page on your site. Even if you’re hosting multiple events, your guests will be able to easily find their event via a consistent landing page.
Most importantly, your enterprise event app landing page allows you to fine-tune your website’s SEO with information on every one of your events to further improve your guests’ ability to find you online. Because your app’s product page within the App Store is largely only updatable with app updates, your website’s SEO will play a big part in improving your attendee’s experience.
Brush up on App Store SEO
For both Apple’s App Store for iOS Apps and the Google Play Store for Android Apps, it’s important to optimize your listing to ensure your enterprise event app achieves top position in search results. With the introduction of iOS 11, the App Store has offered more customization to app product pages and thus further opportunities to improve your app’s SEO.
Looking for a simple rundown on how to maximize your enterprise event app’s App Store SEO? We spoke with David Marshall, founder of Digital Brand Services for advice on how to prioritize your keywords and set up your app’s product page.
App name
30 characters
The most easily searched apps have names that are simple, memorable and unique. For example, [Your Brand] Event App.
Subtitle
30 characters
Your app’s subtitle appears below its name and is intended to summarize the app with a concise phrase. This offers further metadata to help your guests find you. You’re able to update your app’s subtitle each time you release an app update to further test and improve on SEO.
Promotional text
170 characters
Your app’s promotional text appears at the top of your description, giving your guests a brief rundown of what to expect. You’re able to update promotional text at any time without needing to submit a new version, however keep in mind that this text doesn’t affect your SEO rating.
Description
Your description should be concise and informative and include a list of features important to your app. Use this section to communicate the tone of your brand and your events. Don’t fill the description with unnecessary keywords to improve your search results—you’ll be able to include keywords later. It’s important to remember that the description can only be updated with new app versions, so hone your focus on writing a great description the first time.
Keywords
100 characters
Your keyword metadata improves search results, without needing to keyword-stuff your audience-facing text.
“I use Sensor Tower for App Store keyword and competitor research and tracking,” says David Marshall. “You can quickly get an idea of which keywords your competitors are ranking for along with relative search volumes. A good place to start is to compile a list of all keywords that similar apps are successfully targeting, the relative search volumes, and difficulty to rank for those keywords.”
Remember that improper use of keywords is a common reason for App Store rejections, so don’t use unauthorized trademarked terms, celebrity names or irrelevant keywords.
Apple has eliminated cookie-cutter event app creation but is now offering a new opportunity for your brand to customize your App Store searchability. If you have chosen to consolidate your events within your own Enterprise Event App, it will be important to focus on App Store SEO to eliminate confusion and ensure attendees find your app.
Want to do more with your mobile app?
Eventbase partners with premium brands to offer them a fully customizable, seamless event app experience. The Eventbase Team is here to help. For an evaluation of your enterprise event app strategy, request a demo and find out how you can take your event to new heights with one of our account executives.
About Eventbase
Eventbase is the leading mobile technology platform for events. Half of the top 20 technology companies in the world trust Eventbase to power their event apps. Current customers include IBM, Cisco, Microsoft, SAP, Century 21, ESPN and TD Ameritrade. We also power official apps for many of the largest events on earth including SXSW, CES, Comic-Con, Sundance and three Olympic Games.
The Eventbase Platform is uniquely positioned to meet the needs of global enterprises. We deliver visually-rich and engaging mobile event apps that can support the entire portfolio of conferences and meetings that an enterprise hosts every year. Eventbase is a leader in innovation, pioneering the “Intelligent Event App” with technologies such as an Advanced Chat Bot and Recommendation Engine, and the use of proximity beacons for Hyper-local Networking and Indoor Location. We've been named “Best Event App” by the Event Technology Awards for three consecutive years.
