NEW YORK ? An OpenTable executive at the Mobile Women to Watch 2014 Summit said that marketers should optimize their Android applications for search to earn more downloads, while with iOS apps, marketers can push burst campaigns to affect App Store ranking.

During the ?Bringing your brand to the head of mobile? session, the executive discussed five different strategies for successfully implementing a mobile program. She advised marketers to approach Android and iOS with different tactics that play up the rules and makeup of the different platforms.

?On Android, ranking is not affected by velocity of installs, it?s affected by long installs, installs minus uninstalls,? said Iryna Newman, head of mobile growth at OpenTable, San Francisco. ?It is pretty much impossible to influence it through marketing spend.

?Search is much more important on Android,? she said. ?No. one is title. Title is the most important real estate.

?Don?t bother with SEO on iOS.?

Mobile Women to Watch 2014 Summit is a Mobile Marketer presentation.

Android SEO
Google Play ranks apps by subtracting uninstalls from installs, so marketers do not have a way of leveraging paid installs and targeted campaigns to drive more downloads.

According to Ms. Newman, search optimization is the way to go for Android apps.

First of all, marketers can leverage the title of an app. The title can be 32 characters on Android.

Ms. Newman suggests using certain keywords that relate to your app in the title itself to drive your app to the top of search results in Google Play.

Beyond the title itself, marketers can also leverage the app description to increase visibility in Google Play?s search results.  They should also make sure that the developer and bundle names are accurate and that the description includes geo-specific keywords if applicable.

OpenTable saw the direct effects of such search best practices when it changed its title on Google Play from OpenTable to OpenTable- Free Reservations.

Before the switch, if a consumer searched for ?free reservations? in Google Play, OpenTable would not show up in the top 50. Within an hour and a half after the title change, the rank moved to No. 1 for the the following searches: ?Restaurant reservations,? ?reservations? and ?free reservations.?

More importantly, OpenTable then saw a five to 20 percent lift in daily installs after the title change.

Burst campaigns
Unlike Google Play, Apple?s App Store does not require as much effort in terms of SEO. For iOS, it is all about velocity of installs per day.

According to Ms. Newman, it takes on average 10K-50K installs to get into the top 25 rankings.

One way to boost number of installs, especially for a set amount of time, is by pushing a burst campaign.

A marketer can push a burst campaign with a number of paid installs in a short period of time to move an app up in rankings. Once the app is listed higher and more consumers see the app, organic installs will follow.

These organic installs tend to be as valuable as base installs before the campaign in terms of in-app purchasing and can make up for the money spent on the paid installs.

?This strategy is an effective strategy for many if not most of the apps but it cannot be sustained and cannot be applied frequently,? Ms. Newman said.

?It?s not sustainable, but it?s a useful tool to have in your pocket if you need to achieve certain results around certain events in your business lifecycle,? she said. ?Just like retailers compete for placement in stores around holidays, this is a way to be strategically placed in the app store during certain times.

?It may be something that would work well around those targeted dates in the business lifecycle that require extra boost and enhancement. If you look at what do I get out of it, this may be a very effective investment if you really need that targeted concentrated boost.?

Final Take
Iryna Newman, head of mobile growth at OpenTable, San Francisco.