How To Make Your App Rank No 1 On Google Playstore Content Marketing, your app Social media and in-app referrals are 3 most effective mediums of organic growth
By Siddhartha Ahluwalia •
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There are 3 million mobile apps on Google Playstore and just 30 categories. This implies on a average you are competing across 100,000 apps in your category. Every mobile app developer wants their app to stand out and get ranked as the top app. Getting your app ranked high is a science depending on various factors. It takes time, patience, understanding your target audience and lot more to get to no 1 position.
If you are an app developer looking to improve your app ranking and ultimately aiming to get your app as Rank 1 you have pay attention to the following factors:
Build a product which people want: As said numerous times by Paul Graham founder Y-Combinator, the best startup incubator in the world, "make a product which people want". If you build an app nobody wants than what you are doing is blindly hoping that people stick on your product and keep on using it. Your app has to be centered around a niche user need which it can fulfill. The test of a great app is "the toothbrush test". If you build a product which users cannot survive without using it daily like toothbrush you are on your way to becoming a successful app developer. Google measures how much time users spend daily on your app, frequency of app usage and retention i.e. for every 100 users how many do not uninstall your app
Organic Growth: Are your getting paid downloads or have organic downloads. Google tracks source of your customer acquisition. Organic downloads are those which users discover without you displaying ads across various ad networks like Google Playstore and Facebook. Content Marketing, your app Social media and in-app referrals are 3 most effective mediums of organic growth.
Time Spent: If you make an app which users love, they will start spending more and more time each week after they downloaded your week. The best apps featured and ranking as no 1 on google have time spent per user of more than 1 hour per week. Great apps like Whatsapp and Facebook have users spending on them couple of hours per day.
Retention: If 100 users download your mobile app every day how many still use the app 30 days, 60 days or 90 days afterwards. How many users have uninstalled your app. The app with highest retention in a category has the highest chance to be featured as rank no 1 on playstore.
Daily Downloads: When google chooses to feature an app the app with highest daily downloads also counts with above factors.
No of Overall downloads: As you grow day by day and keep on improving your product your downloads increase. A steady and consistently healthy rate of downloads improves the rating of your app.
App Store Rating: The best apps in any category have ratings above 4.4 out of 5. App developers should not try to get fake ratings and reviews as google measures "time spent in the app' and "retention' of the user who gave your 5 Star rating. If the google measure any asymmetric correlation between these two then it might penalize your app with decreasing your ratings. The best way to boost your ratings is to keep on improving your product, interacting 1 to 1 with your users and taking in their feedback constantly. Loyal app users love when they see their feedback being implemented as new features in the app.
App Store Reviews: Google tracks keywords like "love', "like', "useful' and other positive keywords in the app reviews the users write along with app store ratings. Negative keywords are also taken into consideration like "not-useful', "bad', "hate, etc. If users leave negative reviews of your app on playstore then try contacting them personally. Seek out their concerns and try to work on that. You should contact them again and request them to revise their reviews. The apps which get featured have positive keywords count of 1000 or more.
Active Users: 90% of the mobile apps have active users below 10%. Active users are those who downloaded the app but yet not un-installed it. The apps getting featured have active user base of above 30% except gaming apps. Snapchat the most trending app these days has active user base of 44%.
If you keep on working on your app keeping the above 9 factors in consideration your app store ranking will improve drastically.
