For years now, innovative search engine optimization (SEO) specialists have been working to get clients to the top of Google's (mostly) and other search engines' rankings. However, due to the mobile boom there is a new sheriff coming to town that is estimated to overhaul SEO in importance and popularity and that would be app store optimization (ASO).
The incredible growth of apps has come from the innovations and abundance of mobile devices. In no way are websites a thing of the past, but so many sites and brands have built or started to built their own app presence. Facebook is one of the biggest names that realizes the importance of mobile integration and has been working feverishly to catch up with the mobile trends. There are records being broken with the growth of mobile only startup companies. These companies realize the importance of mobile businesses and applications creating the idea that they don't believe a website, or brick and mortar for that matter, is necessary for success.
The importance for ASO comes from those businesses who create apps but seem to get lost in the mix of over 2 million apps, a market that grows daily with more competition. Mikael Cho, CEO of App discovery service, Ooomf, mentions, "If you don't make it into the top within your first two weeks, you can fall into the app graveyard." Just as there are millions of sites on the Internet vying for first page search engine rankings, apps are doing the same thing in the iTunes App Store and Google Play.
ASO presents one of its biggest challenges in the amount of spam throughout these app stores. Many apps are falsified and after a while will cause customers to become agitated and potentially stop giving their business. Quality apps are not being found because of these fraudulent apps.
SEO and ASO are surprisingly similar in that they are very arbitrary in nature and many times very confusing as to the future of its search algorithms. It is also pretty clear that some sites/apps are favored to other ones causing the outcast apps having to work harder to see success.
As time goes on, ASO is sure to become more prevalent than SEO. It will be interesting to see the level of speed that companies switch their focus from SEO to make ASO a bigger priority.