3 tips to improve ranking and optimize App Store keywords

Now more and more teams and companies are developing apps and uploading them to the app store after development. After rigorous review, I thought everything was fine, but unexpectedly, a war without gunpowder was quietly approaching. Let’s analyze the main sources of traffic for an IOS app after it is launched on the app store.

1. Why do keyword optimization?

1. Recommended products

This is the first page of the app store [Featured Recommendations]. Many users download apps from here. However, generally speaking, if an app can be included in the [Featured Recommendations], it means that the app has done a pretty good job. Therefore, not every app can be included in the [Featured Recommendations], but it can be the goal that every app strives for.

2. Rankings

There are three columns in the ranking list: paid list (ranking by number of purchases), free list, and best-selling list (ranking by unit price x number of purchases). Each column shows the top 150 apps. So, at most there are only 150 * 3 = 450 apps appearing here, so the competition is quite fierce.

3. Explore

As the name suggests, users can explore some apps here. There are 24 categories listed here, and there is a ranking under each category, which we call the category ranking. This is also a battleground. After all, the competition for the top 150 positions in the overall ranking is more intense, while it is relatively easier to get a higher position in the classification ranking, and the traffic is also more objective.

4. Search

If the previous ones were all downloaded by users unintentionally. So, the users who come here all have clear needs. If users want to download a travel app, most of them will search for travel and then choose an app with a relatively high ranking to download. This is also the behavior of most users.

What are the main sources of traffic for an iOS app in the app store? Now, we can summarize it as follows: IOS traffic = boutique recommendations + rankings + category rankings + search.

Most apps cannot be recommended as premium apps, and it is also difficult for an app to enter the top 150 of the overall list. However, you can still try the rankings in each category. If the top 100 apps in each of the 24 categories have traffic, it will benefit nearly 2.5k apps. But after all, there are more than 1 million apps, so it is still quite fierce. The last one is search. Each app has a 100-character keyword to set. After setting it, you can search for your app. Research shows that for an iOS app, 60%-70% of its traffic comes from user search traffic. Therefore, for most applications, the source of traffic should be like this: IOS traffic = list + search.

Since most users come from search, we will focus on keyword search. Keyword search optimization is what we call ASO (App Store Optimization).

2. How to select keywords

1. Concept

● Relevance: The relevance between a specific keyword and your app and target users. Irrelevant keywords are unlikely to generate effective conversion rates.
● Difficulty: The degree of competition for a particular keyword. A higher value means it is more difficult to rank in the top positions.
● Traffic: The popularity of a particular keyword. The higher the number of times it is searched, the higher this value will be.

2. Analyze your competitors’ keywords

First of all, we can use some tools to understand your competitors' keywords. For example, if you are a travel app, you can use a tool (appannie) to find out the keywords that your competitor (Tuniu) may use, such as self-guided tours, outbound tours, etc. (appannie is a third-party tool, and the data displayed may not be the keywords that the app actually submits to the app store. There may be some discrepancies, but it can be used as an analysis tool).

3. Keyword selection priority

The selection of regular keywords is divided into three directions: brand words, related words, and competitor words. For example, if you are using the Qunar travel app.

● Brand words: qunar, qunar.com, qunaer;
● Related words: tourism, travel, hotel reservation, air ticket reservation, special hotel price, special air ticket price;
● Competitive keywords: Ctrip, eLong

Of course, the conversion rates of these words from search to download are: brand words > industry-related words > competitor words.

The core of keyword selection is "relevance". For example, if you develop a math game, but you define the keyword as "swimming", although swimming has excellent traffic and intermediate difficulty, it has nothing to do with your product. If a player wants to find a swimming app, your math game product does appear in the top ten searches, but will they download it? Only relevant keywords can generate effective conversion rates.

4. Combine Difficulty and Traffic Analysis

In addition, you can also start from the difficulty and traffic. Difficulty and traffic are two concepts. Although it is easy to confuse them, there is still a difference. For example, a travel app might rank 100+ when searching for cheap air tickets, but the traffic for this keyword is not very large because it is ranked too low. Therefore, the difficulty is very great. Therefore, the difficulty is related to the current ranking of the keywords, while the traffic is related to the popularity of keyword searches.

Select keywords based on your understanding of competitors or yourself, build a keyword library, and then sort the keywords in the order of brand words, industry keywords, and competitor words. Then further filter the keywords based on difficulty and traffic, and finally determine the 100-character keywords.

3. Improve keyword ranking

After the keywords are determined, they are repeatedly iterated and replaced. However, if you don't work hard to improve the ranking of keywords. Well, even with repeated iterations, the space for optimization is limited, so the next thing to do is to select relevant, traffic-rich, and moderately difficult keywords to improve the ranking of keywords.

So, here comes the question. What factors determine the ranking of keywords? Practice shows that the ranking of keywords is related to the app’s own download volume, number of comments, and keyword search volume, especially the keyword search volume, which occupies a relatively large weight. Therefore, an effective way to improve keyword rankings is to let real users search for keywords, find your app, download and activate it. If enough users do this, the ranking of the keyword will improve.