It’s not secret that mobile usage is growing rapidly. According to comScore, 58 percent of all US consumers already own a smartphone. To go even further, Latitude says that 61 percent of people have a better opinion of brands when they offer a good mobile experience. Moral of the story: Mobile initiatives are more important now than ever before for small businesses.

The first step for many companies was to create a solid mobile strategy by developing a mobile website and tailoring emails that work for the mobile screen. By 2014 most companies should have this strategy set in place, so what’s next? For many, it’s going to be creating a mobile application and then optimizing that application for people searching around the app store.

Top Reasons to Create an App for Your Company in 2014
When you consider the time and cost it takes to develop an app versus the benefits you can gain, it becomes clear that a mobile app for most companies makes sense this upcoming year as mobile usage continues to grow. Some of these benefits include:

• Users find mobile apps convenient to use, which then helps make them more apt to use your product/service.
• You can easily integrate your app with other features of a mobile phone, which could help your product/service be even more successful.
• Stay in-line with your competition who might very well be working on creating a killer app for users. If not, then you be the one to create the killer app and set yourself apart. In either case, creating that app is a win.
• Get involved in the trending discussion about apps. Mobile apps are the latest thing, and you’ll soon see (if you haven’t already) companies listing out the best apps for certain tasks. Work with your PR department to help get onto those types of lists and improve your branding and SEO.
• Reach new audiences by creating something on the app platform.

Once you’ve decided that creating an app is right for you, you of course have to brainstorm what you want your app to include, how it’s going to work, and then actually develop the app and put it out on the market. You can learn more about the development process here.

How App Store Optimization Works

You can either optimize your application on your own or with the help of a few optimization tools. I recommend using a little bit of both. Below are a few tips and tricks to making it happen:

• Audience. Consider your audience and how you’re going to market your app. Track your mobile visitors separately than your desktop visitors so that you know their usage patterns and how you might want to market.
• Marketing. Advertise your app on your website and create an easy-to-find button where your visitors can install the app right away.
• Keywords. Determine the keywords that users might use to find your app and then use those keywords in your description and tags.
• Tools. I recommend using tools such as Flurry or AppCod.es. to help get your started with optimization and analytics regarding your app.

As you can see, optimizing an app is actually quite similar to optimizing a website. ASO is essentially the SEO of the application world, so it will likely go under the SEO umbrella and be the responsibility of your SEO department.

Do you think creating a mobile application for your company is worth your while? Why or why not? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

Photo Credit: imore.com

Amanda DiSilvestro gives small business and entrepreneurs SEO advice ranging from keyword density to recovering from Panda and Penguin updates. She writes for HigherVisibility.com, a nationally recognized SEO agency that offers online marketing services to a wide range of companies across the country.