Google Application Search SEO: The First SEO Lesson of 2013

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Earlier today I noticed an addition to Google's search engines menu.

Sure enough, it searches for applications.  Software.  Was this a part of Google in 2012?  Am I just losing my mind?  I checked.

Well alright then, we're on to something.  I decided to look at one of the largest niches of software that I could think of - project management - to see who the SEO winners were.  Let's look at the results.

Right away, a few glaring facts jump out: 

1. Some are phone apps from the Apple iTunes store and Google Play store.
2. Others are desktop, web, and SaaS applications.
3. SourceForge appears to have Wikipedia-like dominance over the downloadable applications.
4. There is extremely little domain diversity at present (which I'd expect to change once people catch on, considering the prominent menu placement of this item).

Now the next, obvious question on any software developers mind is obviously going to be how to get into these search results.

How do you SEO for Google Application Search?

Click each of the results.  View the source code.  It's possible that SEO for Google Application Search will grow in complexity with time, and probably considers most standard SEO principles to determine relevance, value, and authority. But there is one common factor that can't be ignored.  One line of code.   You're going to find it on every freaking site in these results.

And here it is.

<article itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/SoftwareApplication"></article>

Just as we SEO's spent the huge chunks of 2012 talking about, schema.org is going to be one serious path to salvation in 2013.  Don't ignore it.  Convert to HTML5/CSS3 and get as many of these tags on your sites as you can without spamming / being irrelevant.  The traffic is free.  Google just needs this kind of structured data to know what you're doing with total confidence.  

Feed Google your structured data.

Our search engine overlord is demanding it.

Corey Northcutt

Corey is the CEO of Northcutt. He's been rocking inbound marketing for more than a decade, and not blogging on this site as much as he should.

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